Hey guys, this week’s vlog is really cool. It was my mum’s 70th birthday and we shared that up here on the Gold Coast, and my better half, Tereza. For those of you who don’t know, Tereza’s the nice one in the relationship. And so she took mum out shopping because my sister wanted to buy her some pearl earrings for her birthday. They went down to Pacific Fair, which is this massive shopping centre. There are lots of jewellers in Pacific Fair, so it’s a very competitive situation, but very transparently competitive—pricing is very transparent. A lot of the earrings are pretty similar.

Yet one of the jewellers created the most amazing experience that resulted in not only a sale for that jeweller, but also, more importantly, a compelling story—that I’m now about to share with you—that my wife will tell everybody on the Gold Coast and is the essence of the Compelling Stories Workshop that we’ll have at the Building Your Compelling Story Webinar that I’m doing in a couple of days.

UPDATE: You can now access the Building Your Compelling Story Webinar recording here

 

What compelling story is about

The first half of developing a compelling story is basically—do you have a story? Or can you share a story when you talk about your business—what it is that you do, what it is that you sell—that really compels others to pay attention, be interested, and want to be part of your story? As in want to buy what you’ve got, or want to use your service. Or, at the very least, tell others about it.

And the other half is do you do it in a way that compels you to get out there and tell more of the story? But we’re only going to talk about the first part here.

 

How a jewellery store create a compelling story

So my better half Tereza took my mum in one of the jewellery stores. While they were trying on jewellery—this is really smart—the young lady in there said, “Hey, while you’re here, why don’t I clean those rings for you? I’d love to clean your jewellery and I’ve got something here that can do that.”

So my mum said, “Yeah, that’d be lovely.” And so, a couple of things about that:
1. They’re leveraging reciprocity, so they’re doing a favour.
2. It’s a relevant favour because they’re in a jewellery store and cleaning your jewellery is connected.
3. They’re keeping you in the store for longer because while they’re cleaning your jewellery, you’re looking around at their products.
And so on many levels, that ‘jewellery cleaning’ on its own is a very smart strategy.

So the young lady did that for my mother, they looked at earrings and sized them all up, and they said, “Listen, we need to have a look around, we’re not really sure.”

The young lady was totally cool with that. She said, “That’s totally fine. Go for it.”

As a result of the great service and the great service experience, they went back the next day to actually buy the earrings. Now, this is where the story gets even better.  They are a great example of a company that’s very deliberate about creating a compelling story that others tell about them.

 

So, they went back in there and they wanted to try the earrings again. The young lady said, “Oh it’s fantastic to have you back.” So she remembered that my mum had been in there the day before—which is pretty good service in a retail environment. Then she said, “Oh, by the way, I didn’t get to clean your chains yesterday. Why don’t you give them to me and I’ll clean them while you’re here.” So that’s another level of reciprocity.

Then my mum said, “Look, I really like these.”

And the lady said, “Sure, how would you like them packaged?”

And Tereza said, “It’s actually her birthday. So is there any chance you could wrap them?”

And the young lady said, “Absolutely. Look, are you guys doing any other shopping?”

And Tereza said, “Yes.”

And she said, “Well, why don’t you go do some other shopping? I’ll get that all wrapped up for you. And when you’re ready you drop back in.”

So they did that. When they dropped back in, the young lady had packaged it up beautifully and it was wrapped really nicely for my mother’s birthday. And then she said, “Oh I’ve got a little surprise for you.” And she pulled out this basket with a bottle of bubbly Champagne and some chocolates in it and said, “Happy birthday, thanks so much for shopping with us.”

Now, that’s pretty smart, right? These earrings were not mega expensive, but obviously, there’s some margin in them. The basket probably cost them, I think around about $35 to $50. Which would’ve taken some of their margins, but when you think about creating a customer for life, creating a referral, creating a story about yourself, it’s not that expensive.

And now they’ve got Tereza running around the Gold Coast saying, “Oh my God, this jewellery store is incredible. These people are fantastic, you wouldn’t believe what they did for Dean’s mother. They are awesome. That lady in there is unreal, you’ve got to go see them.”

And the interesting thing is, by the way, they had another experience with another jeweller in exactly the same shopping centre, who’s also been around for a very long time. They walked in and there were two people on the counters, and they actually had to call out to those two people just to come over and pay attention to them.

 

How you can create your own compelling story

So what’s the moral of the story? The moral of the story is: if you want to create a compelling story that makes people want to buy from you when they first engage with you, or actually makes people come and chase you down, you’ve got to be doing these little things that make them talk about you.

You see—if you can create a story that they can share with others, then other people will tell your compelling story. And it often doesn’t cost a lot of money but it does take quite a bit of thought to figure out what are the little, special things that I could do to absolutely surprise and delight somebody at that moment when I get to interact with them—whether I sell them or something not at that moment. What are the little things that we could be doing that will create stories that others will tell about us when they leave our store or when they leave a meeting with us or when they leave a phone call with us?

So that’s the thought for this week: what are you doing or what could you do that would compel others to talk about you, your service, your product, your solution, the way you deliver it after you’ve had that engagement with them? How can you get others to be telling your compelling story out there in the world?

Remember we’re doing a workshop on that on Thursday. It’s still not too late to join in. And we record those and we make those available. So check out the Compelling Stories Workshop, because at the end of the day, life is so much better as a salesperson or as a business owner when people are compelled to come and talk to you about you about how you can tell them.

And that’s at the essence of compelling stories, which sits in the middle of the Sales Growth Blueprint.

 

Just a reminder, if you haven’t downloaded the Sales Growth Blueprint eBook, it’s FREE. It’s 30+ pages of really great strategies and ideas that are the essence of everything I’ve picked up over the last 20+ years in over 25 countries with the very best salespeople and sales organizations in the world.

So please check it out. I’m incredibly proud of it. But, more importantly, I know it’s incredibly valuable, whether you’re an individual salesperson or a business owner or the leader of a sales team. Make sure you check out that eBook on the Sales Growth Blueprint, which is available here.

Remember, it’s all about the better sales life. When you’ve got a compelling story, life is better as a salesperson. So make sure you get out there and do the work.

 

PS. For those who are wondering, the jewellery shop is Paradise Jewelers in Pacific Fair Shopping Centre—these guys deserve a shout-out!