Fiction in Sales: Expert Exposition

We have all read books before (if you haven’t read a book before, stop reading this and go read a book…also please email me directly so I can ask questions and give recommendations). We’ve read books about cats in hats, books about sales, books about books. Sometimes the lessons for our profession are obvious—talk less than 50% on a discovery call, discuss budget on the first call—but sometimes they are hidden amidst the dragons and flames and fun of the stories we tell about making deals.

Some of these lessons can be found in the basic structure on which most stories are built. Books usually follow what’s known as Freytag’s triangle. This week and next, we examine books, storytelling, and lessons from Gustav Freytag to discover the parallels between sales and fiction.

EXPOSITION

A great book and a great sale have several things in common, but the biggest is that they are full of great information. They are not just flashy and surprising; they fill you with things that are important or interesting to you. A fun book isn’t just full of pretty words, and likewise, your first call should relate to your prospect and what they need. I have harped on the idea of listening, but I have not harped much on the idea of information. Good books and good sales have substance.

A good book does not just happen. Authors take time to research, plan, and observe their world to create amazing ideas before the pen ever touches the paper. Likewise, a sale should not begin on the first call; a sale begins before the call. How much are you willing to research about a prospect before you speak to them? The more you research, the more likely you will secure the deal.

This research is evident throughout a book and throughout a call, but often it appears right at the start—right in the exposition.

The exposition is the beginning of a book, the introduction that eases (or sometimes throws) you into it, where you learn about the world and the characters. You get to view the world before something crazy happens. Think Harry Potter before he is told he is a wizard.

Even before you hear about Hogwarts and Quidditch and the Crumple-Horned Snorkack, it is obvious that JK Rowling didn’t just write at random and hope that things aligned (just Google, “Harry Potter outline,” and you’ll see how much she prepared before writing a single word). She planned and thought about her books for five years before the first even came out.

For your deals, even the “small” ones, you should plan like Rowling. You want every sale to be a best seller, so act like it. Look at your prospects’ LinkedIn, Google them, find an article about them from when they were in high school. Look up their company and learn about it. Go to their website.

When you do this, don’t feel like you need to force the information. Like the best exposition, your research will show naturally and bit by bit. You will be able to mention things that surprise your prospect, interest them, and show them that this book is one worth sticking around for—that it has substance.

INCITING INCIDENT

Over a quarter of US adults do not read a single book each year. I know friend after friend who have told me they never read. Books are too boring. If it’s any good, it will get a movie or TV show and they can just watch that. They tell me they can never get past the first few pages. Even prolific readers are guilty of abandoning a book because they simply couldn’t do it.

Likewise, a lot of us struggle to get past that first call. Why? Because pitches are just like books. People have heard the same pitch, the same opening lines, time and time again.

“Once upon a time…”

“My product is the best and it will help you! Just give me a million dollars and see.”

I have read some amazing books, and seen some amazing sales professionals in action, and they are always the same: they are different (the same by being different, alike in that they are not alike, you get what I’m saying). My favorite books wowed me—I couldn’t stop reading. The best salespeople amaze me—I can’t stop watching them in action, and neither can their clients.

And much like your favorite book, the best sales professionals feel like a source of comfort. A place you can go for questions, a source of information. You are sad that the interactions will stop when you get to the end.

Much like the exposition, in the time before the call and the beginning of the first call, you can lay the groundwork for interesting anecdotes, spots to prove you know your stuff. But a moment will come when you must be prepared. You must not fumble the inciting incident.

The inciting incident is the one that really gets the story going. The thing that keeps you reading. When it comes too late, often the author loses the reader; that’s when many of us abandon a book. If it comes too soon, it wasn’t earned. There is no build up and it feels empty.

The inciting incident is when Harry finds out he’s a wizard, when Kvothe’s parents die in Name of the Wind, when Bran is pushed off the wall in Game of Thrones. All these moments would lack any value or entertainment if they came on the first page. We wouldn’t understand Harry’s surprise, we wouldn’t feel for Kvothe, and we wouldn’t want to push Jaime Lannister out the window and care for Bran. He would just be a random boy in a book that tried to be exciting but wasn’t.

To earn this moment in a sale, you need to listen. You need to wait. You need to be prepared. When the moment comes for your inciting incident, you must know when to write it (or speak it). After your prospect mentions that perfect thing—their pain point that you know you can help with, that issue that they haven’t been able to solve with other vendors—you must speak up.

In order for authors to get things right, they must write and rewrite their best moments. The same goes for sales professionals. Watch old sales calls. Actually sit in front of a mirror and practice what you think the best thing would be to say in each moment. Practice saying the hard parts ten times a day until they are easy. Practice the moments that you think you could have won if you had been better prepared. Practice your inciting incidents until you know you will keep more readers than you lose. It’s what the best writers do and the best sales professionals love.

If you can handle these two parts of Freytag’s triangle, you are on your way, but you still have many pages and calls to go. The exposition and inciting incident come in the first few pages, and on the triangle, we aren’t even on the uphill yet. Take this week to practice these, because next week, we’re heading up and down the triangle. We’ll take a closer look at a deal in motion and find out how to get it to an ending that makes everyone happy.

Do you know what’s not fictional? How much you’ll learn from a Maestro workshop. Reach out at mastery@maestrogroup.co to find out more about our live trainings and self-paced learning modules.