There’s nothing more influential than hearing how someone else has become successful to inspire people to action during your presentation. If you had to include ONE presentation skill into your next presentation, make it this one!
The key benefits of using success stories are:
- They hammer home your credibility.
- They convince your audience that you do what you say you do – that you can deliver; the bigger the results the better.
- They prove you have market trust in you – this makes your audience more receptive to putting their trust in you. This means more sales.
- In terms of presentation skills, it uses social proof perfectly – other people have risked their time and money investing in you. It worked for them so it could work for you.
- By using someone else’s words to promote you, and not just you saying how good you are, it’s a compelling call to action.
The “HOOK” to grab your audience from the get-go!
The best way to start a great success story is with an audience-grabbing opening question. It’s a fantastic way to engage your audience. An obvious opening question would be, “Does anyone here know Joe Bloggs?”
Painting the Picture
The next step is the details of the story. When I met the person, here’s what their life was like before they joined my program. Let the audience know the biggest challenge for that person that they needed to overcome.
Prove Success
This part of the presentation skill is where you will explain how the tools were applied to create proven success. We are going to want to know those skills and lessons. And then you show the results:
- Increased his closing ratio from his presentations three times
- Has more clients that he knows what to do with
- Is enjoying the financial rewards of that with his partner..
Before Picture: My biggest challenge was!
After Picture: Ultimate benefit!
It’s key that you get into the details of the story by following these steps:
- Does anyone know …?
- Acknowledge that – “I wish you did…” or “Brilliant, you’ll love…”
- When I first met them – their biggest challenge was…
- What happened was…
- What that meant was…
You’ll love this TIP!
If you don’t have any success stories for your next presentation, go to your clients.
- Ask them what successes have they had.
- Find out what people have been up to or get on the phone to your clients.
- You can run “The World’s Greatest Testimonial Competition!”
Summary
By now, you know why and how to use success stories in your presentations! It’s an absolute must if you want to increase your sales. So, if you still haven’t got any success stories, why don’t you make it your focus this week to gather as many as possible so that next time you give a presentation you can inspire your audience to take the next step with you.
