Seven Stories Every Salesperson Must Tell – Book Review

26 November 2018

Author:

If you’re in sales of any kind, especially B2B, you should read Seven Stories Every Salesperson Must Tell.

Mike Adams sent Seven Stories Every Salesperson Must Tell for me to review as an honestly. All the thoughts expressed here are from my own mind.

I’m a big fan of reading business books which deal with storytelling. The topic never gets old to me. Seven Stories Every Salesperson Must Tell is all about sales. Although I haven’t read many sales books it is a topic which I have always wanted to learn about. So put the two together and it makes a great pair. Mike Adams approaches the topic of storytelling from a salesperson’s point of view and gives you seven storytelling tools you can use to push the sale through.

What are the seven stories every salesperson must tell?

It’s like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.

-Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

You can use the seven-story framework in the book as a toolbox for your future sales team. The framework goes as follows:

Hook Stories – Stories to connect

1.Your personal story

2.Key staff story

3.Company creation story

Fight Stories – Stories to differentiate

4. Insight stories

5. Success stories

Land Stories – Stories to close the deal

6. Values stories

7. Teaching stories

Why should every salesperson use stories?

As every person in the business world should know, it’s essential that people buy from you otherwise you would be out of business. Stories are just one tool which helps your customers connect with you and the product or service you’re selling.

In my opinion, the reasons for using stories in your business are better explained in one of the best storytelling books for business and public speaking called The Storyteller’s Secret. I highly recommend reading my review of that book and getting yourself a copy of it.

Stories are fundamentally linked to the way we think. People have been using stories for survival since the beginning of humankind and this is why this concept is so important for all of us in the business world. If you’re able to use stories in the right way you can honestly impact your customers to go through with the sale.

Related Post: Why Every Business Needs Powerful Storytelling To Grow

What I didn’t like about Seven Stories Every Salesperson Must Tell

I felt like this book was just a review for me. There are some interesting aspects I feel like I can use but I had to sit there and search for them. It almost felt tedious reading this book. When I finally did find something of interested I highlighted the hell out of the book. In fact, the other books I’ve read on this topic are much less jumbled and much more specific. Take for instance one of the best books I’ve read in 2018 so far (just one month left) is called Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller. You can not go wrong with that book and I mean cannot go wrong! Ironically Building a StoryBrand was referenced in Seven Stories Every Salesperson Must Tell.

The stories mentioned in this book were very dry which is one more thing that got on my nerves. It just comes down to the fact that I’m used to reading more inspiring stories. There were too many unrelated stories as well which felt out of place. But it is possible if you’re involved in sales that you will love this book so don’t take my word too seriously in this review. Go make your own judgment if you’d like.

My recommendation is if you’re looking for a book to help you increase sales then go with one of the books I mentioned above. However, you could glean some gems from this book if you’re strictly involved in just sales.

What I did like about Seven Stories Every Salesperson Must Tell

I did love the fact that Mike Adams tried to take a different approach to the very popular business storytelling topic. And It’s completely possible that Mike was trying to reach a completely different market than a book like Start With Why, Storyteller’s Secret, or Building a StoryBrand which all have storytelling aspects in them.

Make your own choice

You might enjoy this book if you’re involved in sales of any kind. I want to warn you that I did not cover every single aspect in this review otherwise it would be way too long. So now you must make your own choice as to whether you want to buy this book or not.

Buy this book from Amazon here.