B2B sales isn’t just about numbers and logic — there’s an art to closing a big deal, and a crucial component of this art is storytelling. In this quick article, we’re going to take a look at what storytelling entails in regards to B2B sales and how using it effectively can help motivate leads and frame your products or services in a new light.
What Do We Mean by “Storytelling”?
Of course, storytelling is a broad term. While it’s self-explanatory in a general sense, what storytelling means for B2B sales is unique involves more than introducing narratives to an audience, as one does with other forms of storytelling. More than telling stories, B2B storytelling puts an emphasis on having an actionable effect on the audience and forging a connection with or bringing out certain emotions from them.
It can be used to make sense of a product or service, motivate leads to consider how the product or service can improve their business, or show how previous users have experienced positive results — such as case studies. It’s also a much more engaging way to share the best parts of your brand, vision, and product or service — without just listing it.
How Does Storytelling Help?
The power of storytelling in sales isn’t just wishful thinking or a common talking point among sales gurus – it’s a skill and an art that can make your product or service seem even more valuable to your B2B buyer. In this section, we’ll explore how the right narrative can motivate leads and show off a new side of your business.
Storytelling Motivates
The key to any marketing plan is motivating a lead to complete the sales process, or at least complete a lead capture form so your team can follow up with them. Storytelling is a powerful medium for this. Unlike other sales strategies, stories can engage your buyers’ emotions, express your brand with more nuance, and provide real-life examples of your product or service in action.
An even more powerful approach to storytelling is using a data-driven narrative. This might involve displaying B2B buyer success rates on a few metrics and then finding datasets to set the stage on the nature of the market or industry. Being able to quantify how your product or service provides great results and nesting that information in an emotional, qualitative story can really pique the interest of your leads.
Storytelling Frames Your Product or Service
B2B buyers don’t just buy products and services — they also buy into the narratives and brands around them. The right narrative can emphasize how the product can help the buyer, and how much they need it to meet their business goals.
This strategy, like many other marketing strategies that B2B companies are beginning to implement, is most commonly used in the B2C market. However, plenty of companies have been using storytelling for B2B purposes, like Google’s marketing effort to promote AdWords.
You can watch the ad here. It’s not quite a case study, and it’s not quite an ad. Over the course of two minutes, it tells an inspiring story about how a small business was forever changed when it began using AdWords.
Notice how all of the major features of AdWords were seamlessly displayed within the narrative — without relying on bullet lists or tech demos. Instead, we see the face behind the product — the people using it and the effect it had on their business and families. It’s heartwarming, motivating, and informative.
That’s the power of storytelling: in two minutes, B2B marketers can engage a wealth of emotions and share all of the crucial aspects of their product or service. In this way, savvy marketers can use storytelling to do more than list features and hope something resonates with buyers; they can use stories to make it clear to the buyer what their product or service does, how it can improve their buyers’ businesses, and how much heart is behind your company.
If you have any marketing questions, our team can help. Beyond Codes is a B2B lead generation service provider that helps businesses simplify their biggest demand generation challenges and deliver programs with measurable results. With expertise in Appointment setting, Account Based Marketing, Account profiling, Sales Intelligence, Digital Marketing, Talent Acquisition & Staffing, and plenty more, our team has the knowledge and experience to keep your business at the forefront of the modern marketing landscape.
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