"I did not want to live with the image or perception of being a salesperson, especially an insurance salesperson, so I did what I usually do when I have a decision like this to make; I called my Dad."
This is the opening of a story told last week to a group of twenty-four professionals, mostly salespeople, in a workshop I was co-presenting on using storytelling as an influence strategy. One of the stories that we help people build is their "Who Am I/Who I Represent" story. "Nick" opened his story with the line above.
Nick, a young man of about 24 years-old, but who doesn't look old enough to be out past curfew, had just been offered a job. As a new college graduate he was offered a position as a salesperson with an insurance firm that he had interned for during his senior year of college. The rest of his story had the entire group mesmerized.
Nick went on to say;
"My Dad reminded me about one of the toughest times in my life. As a senior in high school, I played hockey. During the junior varsity game, I received a telephone call from a person with my parents insurance company. She asked me a lot of questions and when I asked why she was calling me, she informed me that my parents had been in a car accident, but she could not tell me anything more, nothing about their condition, whether they were hurt, etc. So, I figured they probably had a fender bender, since I had not heard from anyone else in my family. I finished watching the junior varsity and then played in the varsity game. After the varsity game, I checked my phone and noticed that I had missed over two-dozen calls and texts. I contacted my sister and found out that my parents had been travelling across a highway intersection at about 55 miles an hour when another person ran a red-light at 60 miles an hour and "t-boned" their car. My parents were intensive care and the doctor was not sure if they would live. I got on the bus to go home. It was the longest two-hour bus ride of my life. When the bus got to the school, my sister and aunt were there waiting for me, both crying uncontrollably. It was about a week before we knew that my Mom and Dad would live. Over the next few weeks, I helped my uncle modify our house with handicap accessible ramps and other alterations for when my parents did come home from the hospital. My Dad owned his own company and it went from 22 employees down to nine. We lost quite a bit, but we didn't lose everything. My Dad reminded me that the reason we didn't lose everything was because of the insurance that he and Mom had taken out. That is when I decided that I could live with the image of being not only a salesperson, but an insurance salesman."
The room was silent. The old saying of "you could have heard a pin drop" ran through my head. The next thought I had was, if I was sitting in front of this young man thinking about purchasing insurance, wanted to know why he did what he does for a living and he told this story, I would simply be asking one question; "where do I sign?" It automatically would tell me that he has integrity, that he cares about being in the insurance profession and really does want to help other people if they end up in the same spot his family did when he was an 18 year-old kid living at home.
Another funny thing happened to me as well. I no longer saw some young kid trying to sell insurance. I saw a completely different person. I saw a man trying to help others through a chosen profession.
So, what's your "why" for doing what you do? Do you know how to tell it? Do you know when to tell it? I hope you do. Your "why" is a very powerful tool, if you know how to use it.
If you want to know more about creating, using and finding how to get stories from your customers, feel free to email me at rjs@storyseekers.com.
