More often than not, a well-told story in a sales pitch can make the difference between a closed lost vs a closed won.

How?

Storytelling drives decisions. If you’ve ever wondered why some sales pitches land flat while others land perfectly and stick in a buyer’s mind, storytelling might be the missing piece - especially in competitive field sales where logic alone rarely closes deals.

Paul Smith, a former Procter & Gamble executive turned bestselling author of Sell With A Story, Lead With A Story, and The 10 Great Stories Leaders Tell, is truly one of the world’s leading experts on organizational storytelling. He joined host Steve Benson on Outside Sales Talk to reveal how stories outperform traditional pitches, in one of our greatest episodes yet. We’ve distilled the top Paul Smith sales insights into actionable takeaways you can start using today to make your pitches and sales process interactions more memorable, emotional, and persuasive.

Want the full discussion? Listen to the full Outside Sales Talk episode Selling With A Story with Paul Smith.

Paul Smith Insight #1 - How to Reach Both Parts of Your Buyer's Brain with Stories

"It turns out humans don't make the rational, logical decisions that we'd like to think they do," Paul explains. "Many, if not most, of our decisions are actually made in a subconscious, emotional processing part of the brain. And then we justify those decisions a few nanoseconds later in a more rational thinking, conscious thinking part of the brain."

This is the fundamental reason why storytelling works so powerfully in sales - it's the only communication tool that reaches both decision-making centers simultaneously.

• Your pitch only reaches half the brain: Traditional sales pitches with their logical feature lists and rational arguments only speak to the conscious, thinking part of the brain - not where decisions actually get made.

• Stories create emotional connections first: The emotional, subconscious brain makes the purchase decision before your buyer even realizes it, then their rational brain catches up to justify what they've already decided emotionally.

• Memories stick 6-22x better in story form: Research shows that facts embedded in stories are dramatically more memorable than facts presented in lists, giving your message staying power long after the sales call ends.

Why This Works: By engaging both the emotional decision-making center and the rational justification center of the brain, stories create a complete persuasion pathway. Your buyers feel compelled to act (emotional brain) and have the logical reasons they need to defend their decision (rational brain). This dual-engagement is what transforms interest into action.

People forget 50% of what they learn within the first 24 hours and remember less than 10% of that a week later. Learn why this concept especially matters in sales with Lee Salz and his differentiation techniques.

Paul Smith Insight #2 - How to Use the Right Story at Each Stage of Your Sales Process

"There are dozens of stories you need to be able to tell over the course of a sales process," Paul emphasizes.

Paul shares that effective sales communication requires different narrative approaches as prospects move through their buying journey - from initial contact through closing and beyond.

• First contact demands clarity: When you've just met a prospect, tell your "what I do for a living" story - a simple narrative that helps them understand whether you can help them or if you're just nice to know at the networking event.

• Rapport-building requires vulnerability: During your first sales call, share stories about why you do what you do, your company's founding story, or how you came to work there to build trust and connection.

• Sales pitches need problem-solution narratives: Once you're actively selling, tell the invention story of your product, a problem story that illustrates the quintessential challenge you solve, and customer success stories that show how you've helped similar companies overcome similar obstacles.

Why This Works: Each stage of the sales process requires different psychological objectives - awareness, trust, urgency, validation. Using the wrong story at the wrong time is like using a hammer when you need a screwdriver. Strategic story placement ensures you're addressing the exact concern or question your prospect has at each moment in their decision-making journey.

Paul Smith Insight #3 - How to Resolve Objections by Replacing Bad Stories with Good Ones

"An objection isn't a fact, it's a story - and it's a bad story," Paul reveals. "They're thinking if I buy what you're selling, it's not going to work right. It's going to be too expensive. I'm going to blow my budget. My boss is going to yell at me. I'm going to get a bad performance review. I'm going to get fired."

Understanding that objections are narrative constructs changes everything about how you handle them.

• Facts can't defeat story-based fears: When a prospect says "the price is too high," they're not stating a mathematical truth - they're playing out a disaster scenario in their mind where spending too much leads to professional consequences.

• Only stories defeat stories: "You can't replace that bad story with a fact. You can only replace it with a good story," Paul explains. Share a narrative about another customer who had the same concern but found the problem never materialized - or when it did, you solved it immediately.

• Real examples provide emotional insurance: When prospects hear about someone just like them who took the risk and succeeded, it rewrites their internal narrative from "this will fail" to "this can work for me too."

Why This Works: Objections live in the emotional, story-making part of the brain - the same place where purchasing decisions are made. Logical rebuttals activate the wrong part of the brain entirely. Story-based objection handling meets buyers where their concerns actually exist and provides the emotional proof they need to move forward with confidence.

Paul Smith Insight #4 - How to Create Urgency That Closes Deals Now Instead of "Later"

"This is when the buyer says, you know what? I love that. We need that. I can afford that. But now is not the right time. Come back in six months," Paul describes. "That's like the worst thing in the world. Basically, I did my job great as a salesperson. And you're still telling me to come back later."

The dreaded "soft no" requires a specific narrative technique to overcome.

• Calculate the monthly cost of delay: Steve shares his approach of walking prospects through exactly how much money they're losing each month by not moving forward - turning abstract future loss into concrete present reality.

• Tell stories of those who waited and regretted it: Paul recommends taking this further with a narrative: "Let me tell you about one of my other clients who was in the same situation you are, stood to lose that much money every month and waited... It turns out they lost more than that or their company got acquired or they bought somebody else and therefore the department changed and they never got to implement it."

• Highlight unpredictable consequences: The most compelling urgency stories reveal unexpected costs that couldn't be predicted in advance - the unknown risks of delay are even more motivating than the known ones.

Why This Works: When everything else is working - they like your solution, see the value, and can afford it - the only barrier is psychological inertia. Stories about others who delayed and suffered real consequences create emotional aversion to waiting that math alone cannot generate. The fear of becoming the protagonist in a similar cautionary tale is often the final push needed to close the deal.

Paul Smith Insight #5 - How to Build Trust by Telling Stories of Your Own Imperfection

"I asked buyers, what could salespeople do to immediately earn credibility with you?" Paul shares. "Almost all of them told me the same two things. One is ‘tell me when you made a mistake before I find out from somebody else.’ And the second one was ‘tell me when you can't help me.’"

Counterintuitively, stories about when you weren't the hero build more trust than stories about your victories.

• Own your mistakes proactively: Share a narrative about a time you made an error with a client and owned up to it before it became a real issue - this signals integrity and accountability that buyers rarely see from salespeople.

• Redirect prospects to better solutions: Tell a story about when you had a client ask for something and instead of saying "yeah, I can do that," you said "that's just not my company's forte" and helped them find someone who could truly serve them better, establishing that you prioritize their success over your commission.

• Vulnerability creates believability: "I would trust you more if you were honest with me when you're not the best solution to my problem," buyers consistently tell Paul, "because if you are, I'm more likely to believe you when you are the best solution to my problem."

Why This Works: Every salesperson claims to be trustworthy and customer-focused - it's meaningless without proof. Stories demonstrating past trustworthy behavior provide that proof in a way that promises cannot. When you show through narrative that you've sacrificed potential sales to do right by customers, you separate yourself from 99% of salespeople and create psychological safety that enables larger commitments.

Want more tried and true tactics to demonstrate your credibility and build trust? Look no further than Chris Voss’s FBI secrets playbook - applied to sales!

Paul Smith Insight #6 - How to Structure Any Sales Story Using the 8 Essential Questions

"There are eight questions I think your story needs to answer, in this particular order," Paul explains, providing a universal framework for crafting compelling narratives.

Understanding this structure transforms storytelling from an art into a repeatable skill that any salesperson can master.

• Start with the hook (Question 1): "Why should I bother listening to the story?" might sound like: "Wow, that does sound like a tough problem. Let me tell you what my two best customers do when they run into that problem." Now they're all ears because you've earned the right to their attention.

• Answer the core narrative questions (Questions 2-6): Where and when did it take place? Who's the main character and what did they want? What was the problem or opportunity? What did they do about it? How did it turn out? These should flow in this exact order because "if you do it in a different order, it kind of freaks people out."

• Let them draw the conclusion (Questions 7-8): What did you learn from the story? What do you think I should go do now? "You want your audience, the buyer, to answer questions seven and eight," Paul emphasizes, because "people are more passionate about pursuing their own ideas than they are about pursuing your ideas."

Why This Works: This structure mirrors how humans naturally process and remember stories. Answering "where and when" early signals it's a true story, not fiction. Following the natural narrative arc keeps listeners engaged. Letting buyers draw their own conclusions transforms your recommendation into their idea - the most powerful form of persuasion. When the buyer says yes to their own idea, you've achieved consultative selling at its finest.

Paul Smith Insight #7 - How to Make Your Stories Unforgettable with Surprise Endings

"There's a very simple technique to create a surprise ending," Paul promises. "Take one or two small but vital pieces of information that typically belong at the beginning of the story and don't give them to your audience until the end of the story. Presto, surprise ending."

Paul illustrates this with the story of James Watt, withholding the protagonist's last name and the year until the end, transforming a simple anecdote into a revelation about the inventor of the steam engine.

• Surprise triggers memory consolidation: "When somebody is surprised, their body naturally releases a little bit of adrenaline," Paul explains. "It turns out that adrenaline makes that memory consolidation process faster and more efficient, which means you remember things better when you're hopped up on adrenaline."

• Strategic information withholding creates engagement: You're not lying or being deceptive - you're simply revealing key details in an order that creates a "reveal moment" that locks the story into long-term memory.

• Apply to almost any story: Whether you're sharing a customer success story or explaining how your product works, you can restructure information flow to create that surprise moment that makes your message stick.

Why This Works: The physiological release of adrenaline during surprise literally changes brain chemistry in ways that enhance memory formation. Since sales stories only work if prospects remember them (especially when they're making decisions days or weeks later), making your stories more memorable through surprise endings directly translates to higher conversion rates. The prospect who vividly remembers your story is the prospect who chooses you.

Master a different emotional component of sales with Mark Bowden and his nonverbal sales communication & body language insights.

Paul Smith Insight #8 - How to Practice Storytelling Without Memorizing Scripts

"Don't memorize it," Paul warns emphatically. "The moment the tone of the conversation changes from just conversational to something that sounds scripted and memorized, that's when I know the sales pitch is on and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and I immediately go into defensive mode."

Authentic delivery requires a completely different preparation approach than most salespeople use.

• Never write it out word-for-word: "All you do is remember the outline of the story, the answer to those eight questions we talked about. Bullet point answers to the eight questions. Memorize that," Paul instructs, freeing you from the trap of recitation.

• Let your brain improvise the sentences: "Every time you tell the story, your brain will have to invent the exact sentences around that outline. And it will sound like the first time you've ever told the story because it will be the first time you ever told the story exactly that way."

• Practice the structure, not the words: Rehearse telling the story multiple times to family, friends, or coworkers using just your eight-question outline, allowing natural variation in your exact wording each time while maintaining the core narrative beats.

Why This Works: This structure mirrors how humans naturally process and remember stories. Answering "where and when" early signals it's a true story, not fiction. Following the natural narrative arc keeps listeners engaged. Letting buyers draw their own conclusions transforms your recommendation into their idea - the most powerful form of persuasion. When the buyer says yes to their own idea, you've achieved consultative selling at its finest.

Final Takeaway

Paul Smith's approach to sales storytelling reveals a fundamental truth: in a world where every salesperson has access to the same features, pricing strategies, and sales techniques, your stories become your most powerful differentiator. Stories reach both the emotional decision-making brain and the rational justification brain. They're 6-22 times more memorable than facts alone. And they transform you from just another vendor into a trusted advisor with a unique perspective.

Start by making your wish list - identify which of the 25+ story types you need throughout your sales process. Then find real events from your experience, your customers' experiences, or your company's history that can serve each purpose. Structure them using the eight essential questions, add surprise endings where appropriate, and practice delivering them conversationally rather than from a script.

The salespeople who master storytelling don't just close more deals - they build stronger relationships, command higher prices, and create memorable experiences that turn buyers into advocates.

As Paul puts it: "There's only one picture upstairs in my kids' bathroom, and it's the one with the story attached to it." (You’ll have to listen to the full interview for the story behind that!)