Selling with Soul: Embracing Storytelling in Sales
Many businesses and non-profits have a love-hate relationship with marketing and selling.
While they of course understand the importance of generating revenue/funding, they often don’t resonate with traditional marketing advice that can feel ‘slimy’ and ‘pushy’ and this resistance often stops them from putting themselves out there and shouting about their services/cause from the rooftops.
The fact of the matter is that we need you to be loudly and proudly telling the world about your work, because what you’re doing is incredibly important and needed.
So, how to market and sell in a way that feels aligned with your morals and values?
TELL STORIES.
Storytelling helps us:
- Shift from selling to sharing (which has a completely different feel to it!)
- Focus less on ourselves, and more on the humans/cause we support
- Connect, because stories are emotive and intrinsically ‘human’
- Inspire people to change the way they look at, and show up in, the world.
“But Maggie, I don’t have any stories to share!”
You are a human so yes, you do have stories to share, friend!
For the purpose of your marketing and sales, the stories you share don’t need to be ‘big’, show-stopping or mind-blowing, they just need to make people feel something.
Camaraderie, being ‘seen’ and understood, inspired, excited, hopeful, contemplative – these are just a handful of the emotions that stories can evoke (and when emotions are evoked, people are more likely to take action, like investing in your offerings or supporting your cause).
Mind blank about which stories to share? Here’s a helpful exercise for you:
- Grab a piece of paper and split it into two columns
- In the left-hand column write a list of things your dream clients/humans struggle with and/or hope for
- Now, in the right-hand column, next to each challenge and hope, make note of a story you have from your own life/business/non-profit that relates.
Curious to see how I’ve woven stories into my social media? Read how I promoted my business and marketing retreat, by sharing about my social media detox here.
While storytelling can take practice to become confident in, it has the sweetest potential to help you connect with and ethically sell to your dream humans – all while feeling really good for you along the way.
If you’d like 1:1 marketing and selling through authentic storytelling in your business or non-profit then please, reach out by booking an obligation-free call with me here.
P.S. A non-profit who wants to dive even more deeply into learning about how they can enact change and raise funds through storytelling?