ome say a picture is worth a thousand words. In sales, however, sometimes a few well-chosen words can punch up your point with more power than any four-color brochure. A story that relates to a prospect's situation can make a forceful statement, requiring less effort on your part. Providing the right anecdote in the right way demonstrates to a potential client that you have insight. It can also be tremendously persuasive. A story is like a crystal _ transparent and multifaceted. It focuses reality in a way that mesmerizes the eye, stirs the emotions and moves the mind. Stories can make your sales more memorable and more fun. And they can help advance prospects toward closing the deal.

Connecting with stories

A fitting description illustrates your point more effectively than simply stating the facts. This sales strategy can give you a decisive edge. Here's an example:

Imagine a stack of $1 bills, 1 million high. You could have a stack of bills as high as the Chrysler Building in New York.

Linking your product or service with a true story that relates to your prospect's interest creates forward motion, while simultaneously preparing the atmosphere for a close.

In the early 1990s, Fortune magazine published an article on selling. The question it posed was, Why are some people so effective at selling while others are so blatantly bad?

Writers interviewed two dozen top sales performers across a broad spectrum of industries. Among those interviewed were financial advisers, insurance producers, executive recruiters, and a wide variety of consultants and high-value service providers.

The magazine learned the most-successful salespeople sell without it ever being apparent that they are, in fact, selling.

There's nothing obvious or obnoxious about their pres-entations. They sell, but they sell invisibly. Moreover, the Fortune article concluded the more you market and sell high-value services, the more important it is to sell invisibly.

How did the top performers build trust and credibility, overcome often deep-seated skepticism and persuade others to their points of view?

They all told stories - lots of them:

• Stories that demonstrated how others had successfully achieved results by using their services
• Stories that pre-emptively addressed objections or concerns
• Stories that made it easy for others to refer them to friends and colleagues
• Stories that built credibility and reduced skepticism.

Marketing with stories

Stories enable people to visualize things that are incredibly difficult to grasp otherwise.

Good marketing stories paint a clear picture. They make us want to learn more. A good salesperson can also help prospects see themselves enjoying the value of what the salesperson is offering.

Thus, if we want people to be intrigued about our services and tell others about what we do, and if we want to carve out a niche, we need to create great marketing stories.

Effective stories don't scream, "I want to impress you" or "Buy my services now." They give readers or listeners the warm feeling of being taken on an interesting trip.

If the story is well-constructed, potential customers will be impressed. They will want to take the next step in the sales process.

That's why the most successful salespeople incorporate stories within their presentations. Remember to come up with scenarios similar to a given prospect's situation and provide a relevant third-party story with a successful ending.

For example, if I sold security cameras, I could tell my prospects the following story about someone's life being spared in an armed robbery:

A thief in action noticed a surveillance camera point slightly. He smashed the camera. But because of the recorded tape, enough evidence was captured to positively identify the burglar. This led to the arrest and conviction of the thief and, quite possibly, saved the clerk's life.

Then I might suggest to my prospect, "I think you fine folks are very brave for operating this establishment without cameras in this day and age."

When I purchased my home, the real estate agent didn't talk much about the obvious. However, because the home is on the Gulf of Mexico, he told us stories about the previous owners' catching tarpon right off the deck. He spoke of how they felt like they were on vacation every evening as they heard waves crash against the seawall and watched dolphins play.

He then asked me if I could picture myself enjoying such a lifestyle. You know the outcome.

Succeeding with stories

Stories allow potential clients to connect emotionally with the salesperson as the storyteller, as well as with the story itself.

Best yet, facts and figures are forgettable. A good story is remembered and retold.

Stories also succinctly showcase your skills, past accomplishments, values and style. Through your story, a prospect can easily gauge your professionalism, confidence level and so much more. Many years ago, I was training a new agent. We walked into an antique store that had been open only 90 days. After much discussion and persuasion, the owner still could not embrace the concept of giving up a percentage of his profits to offer his customers the convenience of accepting credit cards.

Finally, I tried the following story:

How would you feel if over one weekend you were to have a special grand opening sale for your antique store and I could put two millionaires beside the cash register?

These millionaires would allow everyone who walks into your store to pick out whatever they wanted, and the millionaires would loan them the money and give them 10-plus years to repay.

All the millionaires would want from you is a 2% to 3% fee from the total gross sales. Mr. Smith, if I had those two millionaires, would you let me put them in your store? (He answered yes.)

My millionaires' names are Visa U.S.A. and MasterCard Worldwide, and that's what they do. They sit in your store, loan people money to spend in your store and give them a long time to repay. And you get your money deposited in your bank in two days. ... Would you like to lease the terminal or just purchase it today?

Closing with stories

If you can figure out ways to make concepts real to individual merchants, you can become a storyteller and a closer at the same time.

Need more encouragement? Have you ever come across those rare salespeople who sell phenomenally well even during the worst economic times, while doing business in highly competitive markets and when the price of their product is well above their competitors' prices?

For super salespeople, there's no such thing as a slow day or week. What's more, they make it look easy. You know why? Because it is easy, if you know how.

The average sale takes place after the fifth no. That tells me you need 10 solid methods of asking for an order. Storytelling should be one of your methods. Here's a story I heard from Brian Tracy about a salesman who made a sale with every one of his prospects. He didn't use tales to make sales. But the story he told about his tactic transformed his company's sales approach.

A salesman at Corning Inc. developed an awesome strategy the year Corning came out with safety glass. Before long he became the company's top-selling salesman of safety glass in North America.

At the national sales convention, he was given a big prize and an award. His colleagues implored him, "Please tell us your secret. How is it that you sold so much more than everyone else?"

"First of all," he said, "I'd get some panes of safety glass cut into 6" x 6" pieces as samples. Then, I'd get a hammer. And then I'd approach a prospect and say, 'Would you like to see a piece of glass that doesn't shatter?' When the prospect would say, 'I don't believe it,' I'd put the glass on the counter and whack it. I'd watch him protect his eyes, and then afterward he'd say, 'Holy smoke, that's incredible!'

"Then I'd say, 'How much of it would you like?' And I'd pull out my order pad and start writing the order."

Corning Glass was so impressed with this story that it equipped all its salespeople with hammers and sheets of glass, and they all sold truckloads of the product.

Once again, through this column, you've gotten a peek into the kind of sales knowledge that will bring you that much closer to your million dollar portfolio.

One last piece of advice: Make sure the stories you include in your presentations are told with enthusiasm.

Jason A. Felts is the founder, President and Chief Executive Officer of Florida-based Advanced Merchant Services Inc., a registered ISO/MSP with HSBC Bank. From its onset, AMS has placed top priority on supporting and servicing its sales partners. The company launched ISOPro Motion, its private-label training program, to provide state-of-the-art sales tools and actively promote the success and long-term development of its partners. For more information, visit www.amspartner.com, call 888-355-VISA (8472), ext. 211, or e-mail Felts at jasonf@gotoams.com.