Devoted to Managers and those that seek to improve their management skills

One of the constant dangers that all of us are daily tempted with is to embrace new thoughts and ideas in our minds and then be deceived into thinking that because we understand them, that we know how to execute them.

There is one occasion that always has stuck with me when a company I worked with sent some training manager to help to increase sales in that particular store.

He used the concept that we had a 'story to tell' and we weren't getting our story out there to the customer. So he spent the whole day telling us what the story we needed to tell was. It was about the biggest flop I've seen in this particular area.

He concentrated on things like the fact that the company had 600 plus stores and so we could buy in bulk and get good prices and pass the savings on to the customer. We were to talk about how long we were in business and our low-price (yawn) guarantee.

He said that everytime someone greeted a customer they needed to take this sales book with them to show numerous options and remind them of the company story outlined in the book. I'm not joking when I say that the book was 4 inches thick. 

In other words, what he and the company considered the story, wasn't a story, it was a geneology. It never occurred to the company that it is the creation of products, services and customer service excellence that makes customers' want to tell your story, that is the real power of this concept. What a customer really wants, is to be able to come away with something from their interaction with your company that they can tell to those they are in constant contact with.

Customers really don't want to hear your story, they want to enter into your story and add their input to the ongoing legend, by telling their own experience of the products and services you offer.