Reflection – Story Telling

Challenge & Selection

I work in the Healthcare IT field selling a software product that consolidates hospital’s data.  In our world  of sales, we face obstacles everyday when trying to explain why our product will improve the financial  well being, cyber risk , and ease of data use for hospitals and other healthcare organizations. Explaining  why these organizations can benefit from our product is our sales team’s lifeline for success and to be  able to tell our story and tell the story’s of organizations that have benefitted from our product makes  the difference between winning and losing sales opportunities. The use of effective storytelling makes  all the difference for our sales team.  Telling the story of our company and how our product and services  can positively impact a prospect’s organization allows them to see the value offered and allow for our  sales team to continue hitting our goals.

Application

To put the story telling tool into practical use, I have found that I first must fully understand what our  prospects want from a data consolidation stand point. Although we can provide them every figure as to  why our product can save them money, time, and resources, it is clear that providing a compelling story  along with this pitch is necessary for a successful sales cycle. Since beginning to better understanding  storytelling as a tool, we have decided as a company to leverage our clients that have been willing to be  used in case studies to tell their stories in an effort to show prospects how they may benefit from our  organization.  Not only do we now leverage our client references through offering our contacts to be  contacted, but we have now created 1-2 page case study overviews about how we have been able to  address and tackles some of our client’s largest IT issues.

Being able to send case study overviews has proved highly effective for our sales team.  We can now  show prospects in a clear and concise way how we have benefitted other organization similar to their  own without setting up any phone calls or asking them to simply take our word on the matters.  An  ability to tell the stories of our client’s success through our partnerships in a clear visual manner has  made the prospecting and introduction phases of our sales cycle much easier get our points across.

Insight and Approach

Since creating the case study hand outs and emphasizing story telling in our sales process, we have seen  a sharp increase in prospect engagement as well as overall sales. It has allowed us to better understand  our prospect’s goals and show how we can address those goals as well as show how we’ve already  successfully benefitted other similar organizations that were facing comparable IT issues. The focus on  story telling as opposed to simply laying out facts and figures has allowed us to better connect with our  prospects and get to the root of their issues and wants as opposed to having them simply look at us as a  vendor and us looks at them as a client.  We have been able to dig deeper to understand their issues  from a human standpoint and help tweak our approach to makes life easier for the individuals that are  using our product, not just the organization’s bottom line.

In summation, the increased stress on telling our story and the story of our clients has resonated well  with our prospects. It has created strong relationships between our organization and those we are

selling to as well as lead to increased sales. This class has showed me the importance of designing our  product and services from a client-centered approach and using this to shape our sales approach as well  has been a great benefit to myself and out team.

