Book Cover

The result doesn’t always have to be a happy ending as long as the story serves a purpose. Every experience (good or bad) can teach us something. Share what you’ve learned from that experience. Otherwise, there’s no point telling the story.

# Review

This book explores using stories and anecdotes to sell. Humm dives into how stories fit into the sales process (communicate with customers on relatable challenges), how stories are structured, and tactical advice on how to tell better stories and how to better tell stories.

Some tactical takeaways include giving more context on the time, location, and the main character (name, job role, company they work for, etc) to build credibility that the story is true, to use outer dialogue when it’s possible to bring the story to live, and for emotions, to show but not tell (“he was very happy” -> “he had a big smile on his face”). Humm also dives into the meta of stories, such as how to source them (interview coworkers). Outside of the tactical advice, there’s also some generic self-help advice on how to practice storytelling and how to be more confident. Overall it’s a decent sales book with some takeaways and many examples, but very shallow and lacking truly novel insights.

# Conclusion

A decent book about storytelling in sales that doesn't get too deep.

# Overall rating: 7.3

What does the rating mean?