Marcus Cauchi e Commerce Podcast Assets 24

Nothing beats a good story.

Stories are powerful connectors that break down barriers and build relationships. A compelling narrative evokes emotion and forms connections with the target audience that are vital for conversion.

Marcus Cauchi, an expert in buyer/ seller psychology, shares fascinating insight into how storytelling can increase our conversion rates and engage more customers.

Marcus Cauchi is a seller who teaches selling, not a trainer who teaches sales. He has been successfully serving his clients with Sandler Training since 2004. Marcus speaks regularly on sales, sales management, company turnaround and the successful recruitment of salespeople.

If you build stories that are deeply relevant, timely, that enter into the conversations your prospects are already having, then you lower resistance and you eliminate barriers to entry. But too often, people who are selling are selfish. They are, I-centered. I equate it to showing photos of their ugly children to strangers.

— Marcus Cauchi

The key problem of conversion is that people are too busy talking about themselves and not focussing on the customer.

Selling is far more about the customer than it is about the salesperson. The minute we start talking about ourselves, our company, our products, our services - our audience switches off. The customer needs a voice. They want to be heard and feel understood before they consider engaging.

Before we can begin to hear and understand our customers, we have to stop making assumptions and guessing what they might like or want or need. Instead we have to get inside their heads and think and see as they do.

The reality is that you have to tell stories through your customer's voice. You, as the owner of the business, have to tell stories that engage your customer in a way that makes them feel like you are a fly on their wall.

— Marcus Cauchi

We can use their stance and language to communicate that we understand their position, their situation, their problems, their challenges, their hopes, their fears, their aspirations. When we are crafting our stories, the customer must always be the hero.

It makes no difference what or where we sell, our job is to identify those people who need our help.

I always teach my clients that you have to answer two questions before you do anything else. 1) Can I help? and 2) Am I the right person to help? I would much rather refer them to a competitor than take on the wrong type of business for me or the wrong type of a solution for them.

— Marcus Cauchi

The result of attracting the wrong type of customer is that we end up diverting our attention away from understanding our ideal customer. The less we communicate with and get honest feedback from our core customers the more chance of developing the wrong range of products on our eCommerce site.

Marcus points to the three types of people that every business should be speaking to to get their story.

Our raving fans, because they can articulate why they love us and why they buy our product or service.
Those who hate us, because they communicate why they don’t like us.
Those who change their behaviour when they start or stop buying our product or service. We can look for the change because that is the catalyst that we need to understand the motive and the cause of the intent.

Speaking to people in these categories is crucial to understanding what makes our ideal customer tick - how they do life and what matters to them. The basis of story is starting with our customer.

Where there is a lack of understanding about the customer, we mistakenly make ourselves the hero of the story. In reality, the customer is the hero of the story, and we are the guide/ mentor striving to make their lives easier and better.

No one believes salespeople. They’ll believe some of what you show them, nothing of what you tell them. Some will believe a bit of what other people tell them, but they will believe everything they tell themselves.

— Marcus Cauchi

Storytelling has real power and even more so when we can use it to help customers tell themselves the right story. We are emotional beings and it’s emotions, not logic, that drives human behaviour.

People buy products and services because they are looking to create a better future for themselves by solving a problem. We need to identify the problem they are trying to fix and create that gap between where they are now and where they want to be in three to six to 12 months time. Before we can help them see what a better future looks like with our product and or service they need we must

draw them through that process and have them tell their story because prospects never argue with their own data.

— Marcus Cauchi

People buy from us because they're looking for leadership, a safe pair of hands. They're looking to solve a problem. The most damaging thing we can do at that point is to give them information about ourselves.

It is far better to inject value into the conversation by asking questions to identify their pain point and where they want to see themselves. The more clearly we can understand the journey our customer needs to go through the more relevant the story will be.

A customer journey that is full of relevant valuable and timely content is going to create engagement and conversion. Wherever our prospects and customers are on their journey (online or offline) they need to feel like we care and have their interests front and centre. We must bring value to every stage of their journey - be it marketing, social media engagement, online chat, chat bots, phone, email. It makes no difference. We give them value regardless of whether they are buying or not.

In the podcast, Marcus urged his listeners to get testimonials from their clients and have them talk about the stuff that really matters to them, what they love about you and also how safe they felt.

If your clients and your fans are constantly out there giving testimonials, raving about how brilliant you are and giving examples of how you've been able to help them, then that lowers the barriers because you can't convince anyone to buy anything ever … People buy from people like themselves.

— Marcus Cauchi

Reviews also help us understand the changing narrative that goes on in our customers' minds - what’s happening to them, how they want to engage and so on. This is important because in order to keep telling stories that convert, we have to meet our prospects and customers where they are and not where we want them to be.

As storytellers we have to be voracious students of our target audience so that with the use of effective narrative we can create strong leads and sales.

Takeaway #1 The basis of story starts with your customer.

Takeaway #2 You must think as your customer, not about them.

Takeaway #3 If you can get the customer to generate the story, you are far more likely to get a win.

Takeaway #4 Unless you build value into the conversation, the conversation will always degenerate into cost.

Connect with Marcus Cauchi

Twitter: The_Inquisitor

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maximisechannelsales/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marcus.cauchi

Email: marcus.cauchi@sandler.com

Marcus Cauchi’s Podcasts

TheInquisitor Podcast

Podbean: https://marcuscauchi.podbean.com/