Reflection – Storytelling

Challenge

I am a Housing Loan Alliance Management Specialist working in a banking industry. My key responsibility is

to build stronger relationships with big developers in real estate industry so that I can create more opportunities to sell  some banking products such as housing loan, and other relevant insurance. Recently, I made one campaign in order  to help the developer sell their luxury condominium, as well as, help our sale team meet their target. However, there  were some limitations that I had to concern. 1) The developer didn’t want to spend too much to launch the mass  advertisement around the city because this condominium is costly, only a few could buy them. Therefore, they decided  to create an exclusive sneak preview event especially for the bank VIP customers. 2)  The bank itself couldn’t contact  the customers directly unless those who have already signed the consent form. Sharing customers’ detail with third  party is prohibited. What I had to do was engaging at least 40 potential clients to attend the event and made sure that  there would be some positive feedbacks in term of booking rate appeared after the event.     Selection

By statistic, there will be only 1 recipient from 1000 direct mails who shows up at the event. This traditional

way seems inefficient and also costly. I decided to drive the event by using the tool of ‘Storytelling’. This tool is the  most appropriate for driving the transformation among the target customers. It can help them easily realize their  current stage and challenge them to move to another step that they want to stand inspiring by the similar testimonial  and experiences of others. Moreover, this tool can encourage the sense of passion, and excitement of buying a new  condominium.   Application

Starting by knowing my target audient, as the condominium is located in the central business area which is a

high demand plus high growth area. Therefore, this condominium is best for investment. I and my team start narrowing  our existing customer database that have wealth and demand for real estate investment. We selected 200 customers  from this database, and then we send them a SMS through their personal mobile phone numbers about this  condominium grand opening event with the message of ‘Exclusive Condominium Investment Seminar’. The content of  the SMS wasn’t that much related to the condominium promotion detail, yet it contained 2 minutes VDO clip of a  famous real estate investor invitation speech. The speaker wrote 3 years best selling real estate investment books and  his trainings are very popular among other investors. In the video, he talked about his personal experiences of  selecting his first high yield condominium which was very attractive and real. As expected, there were more than 200  people registered and showed up in the event day.

During the morning of the event day, there was a seminar named ‘How to select condominium wisely’ by the

famous speaker. After that, the condominium owner was invited to engage the participant why they should buy this  condominium. It became more interesting when they open a chance for participant to have a direct experience with  the room and other facilities inside the condominium so that they can imagine how the residents could feel. All sales  people were well trained. They can perfectly tell the materials specific names and their stories which can bring the  sense of ‘Worth Money’. Moreover, they created wow effects among the participants with some high-tech smart

services, such as auto-parking lots, calling elevator inside the room, and etc. These kinds of experiences can add  more value to this condominium which is new, unique and rarely used in most condominium nowadays.

In the afternoon session, the participants were invited to sit and talk personally with housing loan specialist.

We arrange the space which can bring more comfort and friendly atmosphere to let them sit and create longer  conversation with bank sale staffs so that the staffs can have enough time to tell some previous success cases to  assure the investors about their concerns.   Insight & Approach

By doing all of these, at the end of the day, the bank can gain up to 25 bookings (almost 10% of the total

participants) which cost more than 500 million THB.

What I have learned from applying storytelling tool through this event is we can build up people from zero

need to the final booking decision within a day. This tool can shift the feeling of ‘want’ to ‘need’ easily by creating an  intersect feeling between speaker and the audients. Plus, combining the direct experiences of the condominium  (visualization tool) can make the story be more ponderable.    I personally believe that the more we can make interesting stories, the more the target customers we can

capture. That will be the very first thing I have to consider for the next time.

