How to leverage storytelling to sell without feeling “icky” (with Colin Boyd)

Colin Boyd is a certified speaking professional and business coach who works with his clients to develop live presentations that convert and get results. In today's episode we deep dive into his concepts of infusion selling and conversion stories and the value these can bring to your business.

– Colin's journey as a struggling entrepreneur to in-demand professional speaker and how just one irresistible offer can change the trajectory of your business
– The common mistakes online business owners make in selling and why selling is more than just the final ‘pitch'
– The importance of developing your own ‘conversion story' and the power this can bring to your sales strategy
– The 3 key elements to formulating a successful conversion story and the critical questions you need to ask yourself
– What is infusion selling and how you can build this into your business
– Understanding and addressing the mindset blocks that can stand in the way of successful selling

 

Today, I'm very excited to bring to you a guest who I have learned a lot from. Now, selling is something that gets a bit of an icky rap in the online world. And Colin Boyd, who is today's guest on the show, I have learned how to sell in a way that doesn't feel icky.

So without further ado, let's jump into today's chat with Colin.

 

How Colin started.

So, Colin, tell us a little bit about your story. How did you get to be the guy who now teaches people to sell from the stage?

“When I first started, I started as a life coach, and this was about 14 years ago. And I was kind of newly married. I had all these dreams of wanting to build a coaching business that made a difference, that made an impact, and be able to make some money from it as well, like to do something more, more meaningful. And the only problem was that I didn't have any clients. 

So that's a client who occasionally turns up, occasionally pays you. And so what happened was, I had a friend who called me up and he's like, Colin, I've got an event coming up that I can't do. It's a free event and I've had someone else refer it to me, but I can't do it. Would you want to do it? 

So obviously it's a very high-quality lead, like no one wants it, right? And I said, all right, I'll do it. I'll speak. And it was a free speaking engagement. And I'd only ever spoken, you know, at college or at school and youth group.

I hadn't really done much speaking before. And so I got prepared for the event. It was literally a dark and stormy night that night. I'm walking up the stairs, my wife's on my arm, and I'm really on her arm freaking out, and I get there and the event organizer comes to me, he's like Colin, you wouldn't believe this. This is the biggest event we've ever had in our history. We've got over 137 people here live to hear your presentation. 

In my mind, this is like bad news because I'm just telling myself, great, I'm going to look like an idiot in front of their biggest audience. So I'm freaking out, I'm sitting down, they announce me. I get up, I do my best presentation that I can for the night, and at the end, I made an offer. And I didn't realise it, but it was an irresistible offer. 

And out of the 137 people, I had about 125 of them give me their details on their business cards and then I followed it up and I did some free coaching with the group, and I ended up signing about 15 full-time coaching clients. This was when I was doing one-on-one coaching. And so I had literally overnight had a full coaching deck of clients, and then three days later, HP called me and asked me to speak at their next global training day, which ended up having five and a half thousand people.

That was my first paid speaking engagement and what was crazy was that I literally went from zero clients to a full deck of coaching clients and a big corporation whom I ended up speaking with and flying around the world with for over 10 years in one presentation. 

And so for me, this started a fire. Not just the content that I was sharing, but more the idea of how we create a presentation, whether that be a virtual or a live presentation that really adds value but also converts and gets the result that we want. And so that kind of started me on my journey and then that led me to create running hundreds of webinars, doing hundreds of speaking engagements over the last 14 years, and then now, uh, getting to coach people all around the world on that topic.”

 

The things that Colin has noticed most business owners go wrong when it comes to selling.

“I think people go wrong in the context of presentations, like if you're running a webinar or a speech or something like that. Even just being an online business owner, I think one of the big mistakes that people make is they think that the selling is just the offer itself. So they think that, oh, I'm selling when I pitch my offer, like when I go through my offer, I, I make the offer and, and people say yes or no.

For me, selling is the whole thing. It's literally the entire process from the messaging you have at the front end with the beliefs you address or any sort of marketing you're doing on Instagram or Facebook to the presentation. When I think about a presentation like the whole presentation is selling.

And, and the problem is that if you feel really uncomfortable selling, you're going to think that, oh, so I have to be like really pushy and salesy and all that sort of stuff. And it's not that at all. It's not about pushing them to buy anything, to be frank, it's actually about truly understanding your audience on such a deep level that you understand.

What is going on, what are their real pain points? What are the things that are really driving them and bringing that up, being clear on what that is, like reading their mail essentially, and then teaching them some strategies that are desirable and helpful? And if you do it right when you make the offer. You don't have to push them to do anything. 

In fact, if you do it right, they'll be asking what programs you have available before you even get to your offer and that's the goal.”

 

What is a conversion story and how is it different from an origin story and why is it better, or why is it more effective when it comes to selling.

“I think a conversion story is a clearer definition of the type of story that sells your offer naturally. And so what tends to happen is people like online creators make the mistake of thinking that their story is about informing the audience about their whole story. 

So, in other words, at the start of their pre-presentation or maybe their video or whatever, they're telling the entire story from, you know, maybe where they were born, where they grew up, what university they went to, what accreditations they've got. We've all done that, which is nice to know. But like I say in my ads, your mom probably wants to know about that, but like no one else wants.

Now we might want to know a little bit about that, but it's a lot less than we think. And so we make the mistake of thinking that our story is about telling our story, whereas a conversion story is about crafting the story in a way that does a few things.

The first thing it tell the story in a way that hits on pain points, desire points, et cetera, so that the audience is listening to your story, but they're also going, oh, Steph, Colin, that's exactly how I feel. And so a good conversion story just connects with the audience first on where they're at. Then it also shows and showcases your credibility, but it does it in a way that's built around a core idea or a core premise. 

An origin story is like, kind of like just your whole story or it's building credibility is one of the main focuses of an origin story whereas a conversion story is really built around the transformation that you can help people achieve through the vehicle that you use to get that transformation.” 

 

Why should somebody care about telling these stories anyway?

Why can't we just give people slides with bullet points and lots of information? Why do we need to be telling stories to sell? 

“Well, I think that as human beings we're just built for stories. And so philosophy, beliefs, traditions are all passed down by story, and if you look at any sort of ancient spiritual practices and so forth, they're pretty much always built around mythology and story and parables and so forth. And so I don't think that's by accident.

That is by design, that the human condition loves stories, and now we as adults consider ourselves to be so sophisticated that we don't need stories sometimes that we're like, you know what? I don't need a story. 

The problem is that without a story, a lot of the time you don't have the fuel to drive those bullet points. And so sometimes what will happen is you'll get feedback on your presentation and people will say, ah, I really love those steps you showed us. But the reason why they loved the steps was because the story actually set the steps up.”

 

You’re not selling a program, you’re selling an idea.

“I feel like this is a higher level of consciousness of thinking about selling programs because essentially when you make an offer or sell a program, what you are really selling is the idea that drives the program.”

And so one of the secrets of the conversion story is having a really clear idea. And it's not just any idea, it's in fact the one idea that if your audience is to believe that idea, your program will be the logical next step.

And so the reason why a conversion story is so powerful is once again, it's not about credibility. It's not about just you getting to know them. It's actually about embedding an idea in the audience's hearts and minds that enables them to see consciously and even unconsciously, that when your program is revealed at the end, or whenever you reveal your program that methodology that you use to achieve some results can be experienced through your program, through your vehicle.”

 

The key elements that somebody needs to have for their conversion story to convert.

“At a high level, there are three big ingredients. The first ingredient is a core premise, so you have to have a very specific core premise or core idea that you are trying to share with the audience so that they understand how you help them.

The second thing is you need a connection and connection is built around both challenges and desires. And so a conversion story is really about digging deep into not just where you were at literally in your life before the breakthrough, but what were you internally experiencing.

And then the third element is you have to have credibility. You have to share that journey of the breakthrough that you went on to see the credibility that you've built because it has to answer three questions.

The first question is, are you like me? And so that is the connection piece.

Your story has to show your audience that you are like them on some level. It doesn't have to be culturally like them or even age demographics like them. It's more like you as a person has gone through similar sort of struggles, challenges, and desires. 

The second question is, can you lead me? So it's like, are you like me?

And so you have to show that you've seen a breakthrough some progress in the area, some credibility. 

And then finally the question you have to answer is, is there a path that I can follow? Is there a path I can follow to achieve that type of result, which is your core premise.

And so you answer those three questions and that starts to build a framework for a conversion story. So they're like the three core high-level ingredients.”

 

Infusion selling by Colin.

“So the shift is that the mistake that people make is they go to their course or their coaching curriculum to design all the content for their webinars. And so there's this belief out there that if I can blow people away with all of my amazing how-to content, then they're going to be so blown away by the free stuff that they're going to ask.

Imagine if I paid the amount of value I would get and the problem is that it's true to a certain extent, but it also backfires a lot. And the reason why it backfires is that you end up opening, it's like drinking from the fire hose for people and they're left and you get comments like, oh my gosh, like that was so valuable. Let me just get everything you've given me done over the next three to six months, and then I'll come back and check your course out and they never do.

And so essentially when you're teaching like that, you're almost hamstringing your audience because you are giving someone lots of to-dos without the level of commitment needed to do the to-dos. And it's actually slowing their process, their progress down because they're not really committed.

So in other words, people aren't ready for the how-tos usually until they pay. And I say that respectfully because a lot of people don't know how much resistance they actually have before they get into the how-tos. They think they're ready, but they're not. 

And so this idea of infusion selling doesn't just teach the stuff in your course, you can teach some of it, but you need to move from a speaking mode into both speaking and selling at the same time.” 

 

What other big mindset blocks come up with other business owners when selling. 

“I think another block is that my offer isn't valuable enough or my offer isn't good enough, and part of that I think should be worked out through doing the work, and what I mean by that is I think that there is a scale of certainty that you create in your offers. And if someone was to watch someone who is incredibly established in this industry and they make an offer and there's a huge amount of certainty in their offer, in fact, like they could truly believe in the offer.

First of all, that is incredibly attractive, right? We all know that you as the creator of the offer, certainty is one of the most powerful selling mechanisms there is because selling essentially is really a transfer of emotion as well and motivation. But if you don't feel comfortable or confident in your offer yet, that's okay.

 

Colin’s imperfect action.

“My example of when I launched Self From Stage Academy as a beta offer, I offered it for a few hundred dollars. I literally had, it was like six Zoom calls that I had booked in, and I had like six ideas I wanted to talk about. I had no templates, no structures, nothing. I didn't have anything kind of mapped out other than some core ideas. And we got like, I think it was like 40 or 50 people kind of joined and I just walked and each week I kind of designed the process and then that thing has turned into a multi multimillion dollar a year business.

And so that imperfect action completely changed my life.

And when I think about it, it's fascinating because if I look back on my course creation journey, my first course I built without audience interaction. Then I learned over the period over time that if I can get better feedback and kind of do it more imperfect at the start and get some really good feedback, then it ends up being a better experience.

And so the imperfect action where it wasn't trying to get it as perfect at the start ended up more profitable than trying to get it right from the start.”

 

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