Part 1. of this article, Activating Direct and Channel salespeople,lays the foundation for a transformative approach to sale and channel activation—a proven technique that captures your compelling “why change” story in a whiteboard visual story. Combining multiple stories in a compelling hero's journey narrative that resonates with partners and customers effectively engages your direct and channel partner sales team and elevates their skills for more successful engagements.
Part 2. Whiteboard storytelling workshop
Why whiteboard storytelling?
If you are familiar with the power of whiteboard storytelling, you can skip this explanation.
Whiteboard storytelling sessions are an effective way of training salespeople because they help to convey complex information using simple pictures and stories.
According to theNeuroLeadership Institute, storytelling significantly helps us pay attention and cut through distractions, which is particularly important in ourdistraction economy.
When we see or hear a story, the neurons in our brain fire in the same patterns as the speaker’s, a process known as “neural coupling”.
This process occurs across many brain areas, including the motor and sensory cortices and the frontal cortex.
These networks are nurtured and solidified by anticipation of the story’s resolution, involving the input of your brain’s form of candy, dopamine.
When we experience an emotionally charged event or hear a story of the same nature, certain parts of our brain release excess dopamine, making it easier to remember something with greater accuracy.
Whiteboard imagery uses primary colours black, red, green and blue with universal meaning and simple line drawings that convey ideas and are easily understood, as is the cave art of 50,000 years ago.
Running a Whiteboard Storytelling Workshop
As the revenue champion, you will engage and build the partner relationship and set up the initial channel training sessions.
If your reseller channels partner has an active enablement team, they may offer to help and become trainers to spread the load.
It is ideal to create a video preview of the whiteboard story and load it into their LMS so salespeople can preview it before the event.
The Whiteboard Workshop Sales Kit
The following are in-person or virtual training prerequisites and must be available before a virtual or in-person training event.
A video of the complete whiteboard presentation (10 mins. max).
A storybook with the whiteboard build, matching narrative, objections, responses, and discovery questions.
A transparency flipbook with just the visual story that builds the story in a logical sequence.
A visual confection of the completed whiteboard image printed on a folded A-3 sheet of paper is a powerful way of telling your story and captivates attention.
A PowerPoint version of the visual story that matches the transparency build.
Your 1-hour session starts now!
Whiteboard storytelling workshop
Start the storytelling workshop by explaining what is about to happen, why the story is structured as it is, how the hour will evolve, why sellers need to give it their best shot and explain the competition and prizes for the best two roleplays.
Immersion and spaced repetition are proven techniques to build long-term memory, and we use these techniques in the whiteboard storytelling workshops.
The most effective whiteboard storytelling workshops will engage participants in role-playing the story as either the buyer or the seller, where they will see, say, draw and do the whiteboard story up to ten times in an hour. This technique is proven to build memory retention.
Multiple visual storytelling techniques are employed in a fun way to engage salespeople and build long-term memory.
A useful way of capturing the completive spirit of salespeople and reinforcing the story is to provide a prize for the best whiteboard storyteller and select the top two candidates to compete in a final roleplay for worthwhile first and second prizes.
Post Workshop Reinforcement
In the whiteboard storytelling workshop, participants will see, say or do between 8-10 repetitions of the story. From experience, we know that any speech, talk or whiteboard story must be practised at least 20 times before it sticks so that the speaker knows the script and flow and doesn’t have to think about what comes next.
Salespeople can practice their delivery using video rehearsal or with peers.
With practice, salespeople can confidently use any story's elements at any point in a sales call.
Post-workshop certification is where sales managers and an LMS are required for competency certification.
Reinforcement of key stories each month for the following quarter is important in combatting Ebbinghaus’s forgetting effect.
Capturing feedback from the field
The top performers in the direct/channel team will likely engage and adapt what they have learned in the workshop.
It’s essential to capture what works, share the success of early adopters and what salespeople learn from each opportunity and use it to improve the story.
Are you ready to activate a channel to help accelerate growth? If so, using the whiteboard story we built in Part 1. in immersive whiteboard storytelling workshops combined with field reinforcement can supercharge your channel activation efforts and elevate your direct team's skills.
