How to Use Story Telling to Generate and Convert Leads – In Just 7 Minutes with Kyle Gray

Resources/Links:

• Free resources and downloads from The Story Engine: https://www.thestoryengine.co/resources/

Summary

Stories are powerful because they transport us into other people’s minds and gives us reasons to think about something that we never thought of.

It is like connecting their emotion to their purchasing decision once you hit that buyer’s soft spot.

Storytelling is one of the cheapest yet effective methods to naturally educate, convert, and sell to your audience for connecting with the emotions (and wallets) of your audience.

Kyle Gray is an entrepreneur, story strategist and author who helps coaches, startups, and influencers combine timeless storytelling with cutting edge marketing to ensure you’ve got the right story to tell while presenting or on a sales call.

In this episode, Kyle shares how he helps impact-driven coaches use storytelling to craft a profitable presentation and funnel that attracts their ideal audience and inspire them to take massive action.

Check out these episode highlights:

• 01:04 – Kyle’s ideal client: “I can do great with anybody who has really brilliant ideas, but just has a challenge expressing them. But my most ideal client is a health coach or health entrepreneur, right now, that is trying to work with usually complex, challenging inflammatory conditions and needs a bit of coaching and a bit of high-end work with them..”
• 01:58 – Problem Kyle helps solve: “Like many highly intelligent entrepreneurs, coaches and consultants, in communicating what they do and how the result they’re going to get is going to be really valuable. So, I started working with her as well to improve or help them start sharing their story. And it’s enabled them to reach more people and heal more conditions like my own.”
• 03:08 – Typical symptoms that clients do before reaching out to Kyle: “They’re trying to do a whole bunch of things. They’re trying to, you know, maybe they’re trying to build their social media following. .”
• 03:41 – Common mistakes people make when trying to solve that problem: “They discount their services, they discount what they do, and then everybody ends up being a little bit dissatisfied with it all.They’re not really charging what they’re worth. They feel, they wake up or they feel like this, and maybe this is a mistake, maybe this is a symptom, but they just say to themselves, “I wish marketing just wasn’t a thing so I could just help, I just want to help people. I don’t want to manage all this stuff in between me and doing that.”
• 05:17 – Kyle’s Valuable Free Action(VFA): Do one clear message. Figure out what you do that resonates with your audience. Put it together into one clear lesson, whether it’s a presentation or a stage talk. And then align it with one clear offer. And one of the great things about having a proprietary process like that is once you understand the steps you can take; you can start to connect it with different stories.
• 06:17 – Kyle’s Valuable Free Action(VFR): Free resources and downloads from The Story Engine: https://www.thestoryengine.co/resources/
• 07:06 – Q: “What would be my guilty pleasure business?” A: That would be rent a pug.Rent them out on the weekends. And I want this business to exist, just so I can occasionally run to plug. I don’t really want to own one because they have a lot of breeding, kind of, noises and they’re not exactly my ideal dog. But if I could just have one for a weekend,

Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode:

“Do one clear message. Figure out what you do that resonates with your audience. Put it together into one clear lesson, whether it's a presentation or a stage talk. And then align it with one clear offer.” -Kyle Gray Share on X

Transcript
(Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)

Tom Poland: 0:09
Hello everyone, a very warm welcome to another edition of Marketing The Invisible. My name is Tom Poland, joined today by Kyle Gray. Kyle, good day, very warm welcome. Where’re you hanging out, sir?

Kyle Gray: 0:19
Thank you so much for having me, Tom. It’s exciting to be here. I am coming to you from Salt Lake City, Utah.

Tom Poland: 0:25
Where you are waiting for the snow to fall because you are a ski junkie, right?

Kyle Gray: 0:29
We’ve just got the first signs of fall but starting to get cool and breezy in the mornings, and that’s getting me excited.

Tom Poland: 0:35
Beautiful. Folks, for those of you don’t know Kyle, he’s an entrepreneur, story strategist and author, who helps coaches startups and influencers combine timeless storytelling, very effective marketing strategy by the way, with cutting edge marketing to ensure you’ve got the right story to tell while presenting or on a sales call. And our title today is, “How to Use Storytelling to Generate and Convert Leads,” in just seven minutes, of course. Kyle, your time starts now. Question number one is, who is your ideal client?

Kyle Gray: 1:04
So that’s a great question. My ideal client is,

…I can do great with anybody who has really brilliant ideas, but just has a challenge expressing them.

But my most ideal client is a health coach or health entrepreneur, right now, that is trying to work with usually complex, challenging inflammatory conditions and needs a bit of coaching and a bit of high-end work with them. So I help them communicate who they are and what they do, why they’re different and the results they get, which is very similar to a high ticket coach, or business consultant that’s about the same prices, but they’re just usually much less sophisticated in the storytelling and business management aspects of it.

Tom Poland: 1:44
Thank you. And even those people who have a great business to business service often find it very difficult to articulate the magic around the, you know, the message, the magic about the service. So, question number two, six minutes left, what’s the problem you solve for them?

Kyle Gray: 1:58
So, the reason I really love working with these kinds of people in particular, it’s because I had a really challenging autoimmune condition a few years ago, that was causing me, I mentioned I was a big skier, it was causing me a lot of joint pain. My knees hurt, my elbows hurt, my neck hurt, my jaw, I was grinding my teeth. And I was kind of having a really challenging time. And I couldn’t connect, like why I was feeling fatigued and anxious and all of these things. And then I started working with a gut health doctor, a functional medicine professional, and they changed my life in just a couple of months.
And so, I really started to understand the value in what they did, but they have a really difficult time, again, like many highly intelligent entrepreneurs, coaches and consultants, in communicating what they do and how the result they’re going to get is going to be really valuable. So, I started working with her as well to improve or help them start sharing their story. And it’s enabled them to reach more people and heal more conditions like my own.

Tom Poland: 2:57
Thank you. So, question number three is, your ideal client, before they find you, what are some of the typical symptoms they’re going to be experiencing that you could help them with? Four minutes 40 seconds left.

Kyle Gray: 3:08
They’re trying to do a whole bunch of things. They’re trying to, you know, maybe they’re trying to build their social media following. They think they need a website; they don’t really know what to do. Maybe they’re getting some referrals from people that when you’re on your sales call, you just kind of over-explain what you’re going to do. And usually you end up discounting yourself, because that’s the only way that you’re going to get your clients. And so, you discount your services, you discount what you do, and then everybody ends up being a little bit dissatisfied with it all. So that’s typically what I see.

Tom Poland: 3:42
So that kind of some of the common mistakes that people make, which is question four, thank you for answering in advance.

Kyle Gray: 3:47
Oh, yeah, yeah. I guess…

Tom Poland: 3:50
So, some of the symptoms that they’re going to be experiencing, I guess one of them would be, they’d probably feel like that they’re the world’s best kept secret that, you know.

Kyle Gray: 3:57
Best kept secret.

They’re not really charging what they’re worth. They feel, they wake up or they feel like this, and maybe this is a mistake, maybe this is a symptom, but they just say to themselves, “I wish marketing just wasn’t a thing so I could just help, I just want to help people. I don’t want to manage all this stuff in between me and doing that.

Tom Poland: 4:15
And if I could just find someone else to do the marketing for me, then I’d be pretty happy because, yeah, okay. Thank you. And so, three and a half minutes left. Question number five is, what’s one valuable free action that we could direct someone to that’s probably not going to solve the whole problem but it might take them one step closer?

Kyle Gray: 4:32
So, this is what I do with all of my clients that I work with through speaking, if we’re going to write a book together or create a marketing strategy, I have them developed a proprietary process. This is a three to five step process that is very simple, communicates here are the results we are going to get together and here’s what our journey is going to look together. You keep it three to five steps because it’s easy for people to remember and process even if you have a lot more steps. Oftentimes with people, I don’t want to change what you actually do with the client, I just changed how you explain what you do with the client. And so, by having a simple proprietary process, like I have one of my own, which I just called, “The one clear path to sales,” it’s got, one, we get clear on your message. So, we do one clear message. Figure out how what you do resonates with your audience. Two, we put it together into one clear lesson, whether it’s a presentation, or a stage talk. And then three, we align it with one clear offer. And one of the great things about having a proprietary process like that is once you understand the steps you can take; you can start to connect it with different stories.

Like, I love getting clear on this one clear message with this particular client, or this is why this is so important to me. You start building in stories and messages around each step.

Tom Poland: 5:54
Right. So, folks, I hope you get that about creating a proprietary model because it really is a key differentiator and communicates very easily and quickly declines that you have something that’s unique, and there’s a proven path to follow. Question number six, 90 seconds left, what’s one value-free resource that we could direct people to, now, I believe your resources, not exactly free, but at $2.88 it’s pretty damn close to it. Tell us about that, please.

Kyle Gray: 6:18
Yeah, one great way to learn a little bit more about creating a proprietary process, telling more stories, and putting this into a system that’s going to get you results fast, and just start getting you in front of the clients in the right way. It’s called selling with story. And it’s a book available on Amazon but you can go to sellingwithstory.co to learn a little bit more about it. And it’s got all kinds of free templates available for you. So, you can actually access those without buying the book. And one of them is a proprietary process template. So, I’ve got an excellent set of worksheets that you can download to come up with your own proprietary process and the key stories.

Tom Poland: 6:56
All right. Thank you very much. 40 seconds left, last question, so we’ve done really great. What’s the one question I should have asked you but didn’t? 30 seconds to answer.

Kyle Gray: 7:06
It would be what would be my guilty pleasure business and that would be rent a pug. I would have a maybe, you know, a bunch of different like pug dogs and I would just rent them out on the weekends. And I want this business to exist, just so I can occasionally run to plug. I don’t really want to own one because they have a lot of breeding, kind of, noises and they’re not exactly my ideal dog. But if I could just have one for a weekend, dang.

Tom Poland: 7:31
Kyle Gray, you are the most interesting human being. The world needs more people like you. Thank you so much for your time.

Kyle Gray: 7:37
Thank you so much, Tom.

Tom Poland: 7:37
Thanks for checking out our Marketing The Invisible podcast. If you like what we’re doing here please head over to iTunes to subscribe, rate us, and leave us a review. It’s very much appreciated. And if you want to generate five fresh leads in just five hours then check out www.fivehourchallenge.com.