People love stories. They learn from them, feel more engaged through them, and gain confidence in making choices they know others benefited from.
Sharing stories of your clients or your own personal successes can open others to understanding and wanting what you have to offer. There is something about knowing someone else made the same decision and did well that gives them internal permission to take the leap toward hiring you.
Using compelling success stories can breathe life into your marketing campaigns and presentations. Your stories should be authentic and have three parts:
- Shared Pain – start your stories with the problem and pain that reflects what your potential clients are feeling and use emotional language to draw them in. When they hear about your pain they will know you understand theirs and want to hear more about how you resolved it.
- Solution – this is where you share what you learned and did that turned your life around. It should reflect what you will offer to do for them. Keep this part simple and clear. You can go into more details later.
- Happy Resolution – now you get to share how the situation turned around and how great it feels to be free of it. Once again, use feeling words and go beyond the outer world success into the deeper benefits you experienced.
Here is an example:
- My life was in a shambles. Socks were disappearing faster than I could buy them and I had no idea where they were going. It was embarrassing to go to meetings with mismatched socks. My confidence took a nose dive and my business started to fail. It all came to a head when I was supposed to give a presentation to a large group of potential clients. I looked everywhere that morning, but could only find one purple and one Christmas themed sock. I was so embarrassed I could barely speak. When I went to the podium I knew everyone was staring and judging me. I felt so unworthy. After all, if I couldn’t even manage my socks why should they listen to me? The shame kept building until I finally ran from the room crying.
- I was devastated and swore nothing like this would never happen again. That is why I invented the indoor sock clothesline and never put my socks in the dryer again.
- My life is wonderful now. My confidence returned quickly when I was able to wear matching socks. I no longer feel unworthy and hopeless. I even created support groups and lead seminars now for other people who suffer from lost sock syndrome. I met my soul mate and my business is on track for 6 figures this year. Life is good.
It’s your turn to write your compelling success story. I would love to hear about it in the comments section for this post. Feel free to post the whole story if you like. It might be fun to share them.
Photo courtesy of Flickr
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