If you want to get someone to pay attention to what you are saying, tell a story!

Everybody loves to listen to a good story but not many people tell stories in their sales letters and that's a pity because story telling is a sure-fire way of capturing a persons attention.

Selling and story telling are skills that we all possess but very few of us capitalise upon...

Think about your life and the things you've done and you'll be able to come up with hundreds of stories, all you've got to do now is package one and include it next time you write.

Start off with something like "I can remember the day I... " and instantly your listener will give you their full attention, wanting to hear more.

Here's an example of some selling that everybody does at some time or another, without even thinking:

Remember that fantastic movie you saw the other week and how you told all your friends about it, and you said they'd be mad to miss watching it?

Well that is selling by using stories in a nut-shell, and we all do it, we all have it inside ourselves!

What is more difficult, however is to take that natural skill and transfer it to our product. In other words to actually take those words and put them down on paper or in the case of online selling, onto that 'magic' little screen that allows us to talk to millions of other people around the world.

We often come up with a total blank when we try to put our thoughts down and write copy to sell our product.

When this happens we should revisit the wisdom of our ancestors, go back to the days before we all had computers and further still, to the times before books or even paper were thought about.

Go on think back...

Are you there yet?

Well, how did our ancestors pass on their messages and the folk lore of their times? They used stories. They told stories that captivated their listener's attention and kept them where they were, listening in enraptured silence to the lore of ancients.

Motivational Speakers Use Them Too

Think about all the great motivational speakers, how do they capture their audiences attention? They use stories of course. They paint a picture with words so powerfully that it allows their audience to SEE exactly what they are talking about!

I remember watching the great Jim Rohn in action a few years ago. He was telling a story of how, as a youngster, the bank wanted to repossess his car because he was having difficulty meeting the monthly payments.

He went on to tell how, on the day the tow truck came to take his car back, he stormed into the bank with a bag full of one cent pieces and slammed it on the desk right in front of the manager. How he told the manager to count out the money, every last cent that was owed, and the great satisfaction he had as he sat there for over an hour and watched the manager do just that, clear his debt and call back his hounds!

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