Effective storytelling is an essential component to successful sales results. In this episode I dive into the components of “story selling” from the stage with my guest, Sylvain “Sly” Haché.

His methods have helped people from 18 to 81 years old get over stage fright and his systems have replaced yearly incomes with 20-minute talks and produced multiple 6-figure days from the stage.

The Beginning of Sly’s Story Selling Journey

Everybody knows you must tell stories if you want to sell something, especially from the stage. Sly’s first experiences on stage weren’t the best to say the least. One time he had a panic attack on stage and because of that panic attack he made no sales. And at the time he was still a part-time stutterer.

Picture this. He started out as a chronic stutterer, meaning he was somebody that couldn’t easily form cohesive sentences. On top of that Sly was starting to learn English. He went from being a chronic stutterer in French (his native tongue) to now teaching international keynote speakers, TV hosts, and national trainers while speaking English.

Getting Into Story Selling from the Stage

The story selling part comes from the fact that if you don’t have the proper conversational frame straight from the beginning of when you open your mouth on stage, it’s nearly impossible to get people to take the action you want them to take by the end of your presentation. The only reason people do something is because they feel like doing it. The reason they don’t do something is because they don’t feel like doing it. So, the question becomes, how can you make people feel like doing the thing you want them to do? And how can you get them to do it when you ask them to do it so that your conversion rates go up, your buy-in goes up, and your sales go up?

One of the best ways is to be a professionally trained conversational hypnotist. But it takes a long time and it’s a difficult process. How do you get similar results without being a professionally trained conversational hypnotist so that you can do it without scripts, without stress and without memorization? The best way is to tell stories. So, when people hear that, they think, well, that’s easy enough. I just have to tell a story. So let me tell the story about how I discovered whatever the solution is to my audiences problems. And they start telling stories that, frankly, their audiences don’t care about. You can’t be making up stories just to say what you want the audience to hear, because otherwise it’s inauthentic.

How do you tell your story in a way that people care about your story? And so it makes them take the action that want them to so that they end up doing what you want them to do? Buy, vote, click, download, swipe, stop polluting the ocean, whatever you want them to do by the end of your story. With any story you’re telling, you need to be mindful of this: What the purpose of each part of your story is so that you can chunk your information based on when the audience is ready to move on to the next section of taking some kind of action.

Where Do Stories Start?

You start to build stories by meeting your audience where they are. It might sound simple, but you can’t know where they are before you actually know for sure. If you don’t know where they are, you must ask them. When Sly is story selling he shares stories about him this system to have six figure days selling from the stage. He gets his audience to ask themselves “How do I have a six figure days” What he doesn’t do is immediately “go in for the kill” by just saying “Do you want to work with me? here’s what you have to do. Let’s do it. You ready?” That doesn’t work.

Then you need to know what their pain points are. What’s the bottleneck in their lives? What are they bumping up against? In Sly’s case: Out of all the problems his audience could be having that prevents them from having six-figure days, which ones are they struggling with the most? How long have they been struggling with this? What’s the consequences of that struggle? Ideally you want to send a pre-event questionnaire. You can do an email campaign. You can do what Sly teaches his clients to do, get answers to their audience’s key questions.

Even if you have ideas beforehand, double down at the event. During your presentation you want to take live questions from the audience. Then share how what they tell you fits in one of the pillars of your service offerings, one of the steps of your process, or one of the things you help people with. Then you offer to share your secrets to solve their problems.

This means that the answers to the questions the audience asks you fit into one of those boxes, one of those checkpoints in your system. Based on that audience, you can customize in real time all the answers to their questions. You get to offer to share everything that’s congruent with and fits within your system. That addresses a problem or problems that your audience is stuck on. You can stop holding back. You can tell all the stories you need that reflect the transformation that that audience needs to have to get past that sticking point.

You don’t hold back as a storyteller, as a teacher, as a pedagogue, or as a coach. You don’t hold back. But at the same time, you connect each little thing your audience is struggling with through stories. Then your audience gets their “a-HA!” moment. Oh, my God. This is amazing. I can see clearly now the rain is gone. Then you tie that to your system that you want to sell. And for those that want to move forward, they can move forward with you and your offer by purchasing the rest of your system.

In this episode we also dive into topics such as:

Why people don’t do what they know they should do to get what they want.
How to keep your audience’s attention once you get it.
What parallel storytelling is and how to use it in story selling.
How to set up the plot of your story and how to build on it.
How to dispel ignorance and myths when you’re teaching.
The best ways to overcome objections.
Why trying to sell with traditional logic doesn’t work.
The definition of emotional logic and how to leverage it.
Why if what you’re saying isn’t wrapped in story it doesn’t go deep enough into peoples’ psyche to move them forward.
Where and when the sale happens in the story selling process.
Why the stories you tell yourself dramatically affect your sales presentations.
Why your entire presentation is actually a “close”.
Why sales is 10% overt and 90% covert.
What the true purpose of your presentation is.
The one thing, above all else, what you need to do to tell stories that sell.

…and other golden nuggets of advice!

You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”

About My Guest

Sly is an ex-chronic stutterer who has created a new public speaking system that turns regular people into ‘‘naturals’‘—without scripts, stress or memorization. Clients include international keynote speakers, TV hosts and national trainers. His methods have helped people from 18 to 81 years old get over stage fright… And his systems have replaced...