Chapter 1 From Mike Fallat's New Book
Here is a quick sample of new book ATTRACTIVE STORY SELLING
Chapter 1
What is Attractive Story Selling?
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I might not marry the girl at the coffee shop wearing the red heels, but I would go speak to her. She still has to be a good person, hold my attention, and be intriguing enough for me to ask her out. The same idea applies when it comes to attracting customers to your business.
Attractive story selling is a 3-part equation. (1) You need to attract their eyes. (2) You need to tell a story to hold their attention. (3) You need to get them to buy into what you have to offer. This book will show you how to do all three of these things.
Let's get this clear from the beginning. This book is not about helping you become the greatest speaker on the biggest stage. This book is about branding, marketing and growing your business by putting together your story from start to finish. People don’t fall in love with businesses. They fall in love with stories. And your ultimate goal is to get people to fall in love with your brand by utilizing the power of your story.
What I am about to tell you is not a short-term strategy. It’s not designed to be a one-night stand. It's a long-term game plan. Attractive story selling is not about one moment. It's not about creating the best elevator pitch you can in order make a good first impression. It's about telling your whole story in its entirety in a way that allows you to build trust, connections and influence.
The more attractive you make your story, the more you will attract the right people into your life. When you give someone your full story, including what you aim to accomplish with your business and the vision you have for helping others, you give them a piece of yourself they can truly connect with. When you form connections with the right people, and you offer them value with your business and service, that's when your business can skyrocket to new levels of success.
So, just how do you put together a business that creates and sustains valuable connections for you, rather than you forcing it? Well, it all begins with showing where you come from and what you know a lot about. You must include your past. Your past and what brought you to where you are now are what give you a competitive advantage over your competitors. When you discuss the challenges you have overcome to get to where you are now, it makes you real and relatable to your audience, and you get attention. After helping many entrepreneurs write their own books, I have realized a crucial piece of the puzzle: people care more about how you learned the lessons you have to teach them than the lessons themselves.
Your past is what resonates with people. As you know, nobody likes a fake. Fake people may get some attention initially, but when the truth comes out and exposes them, their careers are often ruined. Authenticity is not only attention grabbing, it's also attention sustaining. Your goal shouldn’t be just to get attention. It should be to hold it.
And whoever gets the most attention (for the longest time) in any market is generally the one who succeeds. Whoever doesn't get attention is the one who fails. Attention equals dollars, plain and simple.
This is why attraction marketing is built around your ability to hold other people's attention. If you can hold your potential customer's attention, then you can continue to help them for a long time. Long-term relationships are the key to building a successful business that doesn't crash and burn. Quit trying to sell to people before they are interested. It’s a major turn-off, and great brands are not built from that approach.
We write books at DreamStarters because books are an incredible attention grabber. Books simplify the typical process of a client or customer needing to get to know you before they can trust you. A book is a breadcrumb trail you leave out in the open for other people to follow back to you and the main product or service you provide.
Every person who writes a book is really just taking a piece of their brain and putting it out into the open for the world to see. If somebody out in the world picks up that book, and they get to know, like and trust the person who wrote it, then they're going to want to do business with that person.
A book is a simple tool you can use to capture attention. We all relate to stories better than any other form of communication or information. This is just how our brains are wired.
When you put your story out there, other people can see who you are, where you came from, and how you've succeeded in the past. This is the best way to show people you are the best person to help them with whatever problem they're currently having.
The more attention you can capture, the more people you will ultimately be able to help. Every post you make on social media, video you do on YouTube and meeting you have with another person is important. Telling a consistent, relatable story using all of the available tools makes a huge difference in the long run when it comes to building your personal brand and business. DO NOT HOLD ANYTHING BACK. If you do, you are killing the main reasons why anyone should trust you.
Everything you do, no matter what it is, is a part of your story and your brand. My business did not start to succeed until I realized how important it was to show who I was to people before showing them what my company could do for them. When I finally let loose and started getting serious about my social media game, I got people talking about me. Not only did I get them talking, I got them to see what I believed, what I've gone through to get to where I am now, and what I know a lot about. Once they saw that, they realized how similar I was to them. This is what has kept them talking.
Word of mouth is one of the most effective forms of marketing. This is important to keep in mind because if you never give people a story they can relate to and talk to other people about, they will never be able to spread the word about you and how you helped them solve their problems. If people aren’t talking about your company, how long do you think you will last? Get people talking however you can.
When you deliberately craft the story you want your audience to spread for you, you are influencing word of mouth in the most effective manner possible. If you create an attractive story, people will naturally want to become part of the journey and share it with others.
The first thing you need to do to spread an attractive story about yourself is to get people to take a second look at you. You have to get their eyes on you and their ears perked up to listen to what you have to say.
These days, people are bombarded by advertisements from all sorts of different sources, and most of the time they don't even slow down to look at them for even a second. To be able to get eyeballs on your story, you have to know how to hook people in and draw them to your message.
Take the cover of this book for example. What drew your eyes to it? Was it the woman on the cover's great legs? The pair of red shoes she's wearing? The bold, red lettering? I designed the cover of this book specifically with one goal in mind—to attract your attention.
Like I've said, I wouldn't necessarily marry the girl in the coffee shop with the red shoes and best legs, but she might catch my attention and get me to talk to her. This is why that first, eye-catching impression that people get of you and your business is so important. If you don't make a strong first impression that draws people towards you, then you have already lost half the battle. What are you doing that is bold? Anything?
In order to succeed with my business, I became a student of psychology, and I applied myself to figuring out what makes people's eyeballs look where they look. That's why I used the color red on the front of this book.
Red is a powerful color because it stands for passion and desire. The color red inspires action, and it has the unique ability of focusing people's attention because it's the first color that pops out at you in any landscape of color.
Think about all the places you might come across the color red in life. Stop signs are red. You wouldn't want to miss seeing one of those and end up in a car accident. Emergency vehicles and fire trucks are red. Everyone has to clear out of the way when they're flashing their red (and blue) lights.
The other key piece of the cover is the woman’s legs. It's not just men who are attracted to images of women. If you look at who the most followed people on Instagram are, most of them are women. I don't think this is just a coincidence. The fact is that people's eyes, regardless of their gender, are naturally attracted to images of beautiful women.
Victoria's Secret is also one of the most followed brands on Instagram. They know what's attractive on a mass scale. They know what people want to see, and they know how to capture attention that they then turn into paying customers.
The whole point I'm trying to make here is that eyeballs come first. If you've got nobody looking at what you're doing, you've got nobody listening to what you have to say. If nobody is listening to what you have to say, then there is no way you're going to be able to help anyone.
Attractive story selling is about getting other people to engage with you so you can help them in the most profound way possible. It's not enough in today's crowded market place to just tell a story. You've got to sell it, too!
Most people are turned off by the word "selling," and this is exactly why most businesses fail. Without sales, you have no business. And without attention, you have zero chance of making a single sale. I wrote this book to show you how to use your story as a competitive advantage and attract the attention your business deserves. It’s time to put on your own red shoes and get people to come to you. Be bold. Otherwise, expect your audience to go home with someone else.
