An Accidental Sales Story: How to Make Your Product Worth More to a Buyer

Not many people would disagree that a good story can help you sell. But can a story actually make the product you're selling more valuable to a buyer -- literally make it worth more money?

Actually, yes, it can.

In July 2009, journalist Rob Walker and author Josh Glenn conducted a remarkable experiment. They purchased 100 ordinary used objects from thrift stores and garage sales—a jar of marbles, a meat thermometer, a wooden mallet, a toy pink horse, etc. Each item cost on average $1.29.

They then asked volunteers to write short, fictional stories about each item. Care was taken to make sure it was clear that the story was purely fictional so as not to suggest that the object being sold was somehow more special than the common household item it appeared to be.

Walker and Glenn then placed each item for sale on eBay. But instead of putting a simple description next to the picture of each item, they put only the fictional story that had been written for it.

Within five months, all 100 items had been sold. The experimenters originally paid a total of $128.74 for the items, but the resale price paid on eBay totaled $3,612.51, or a 2,800 percent increase in value. In the words of Walker and Glenn, their experiment showed that “Narrative transforms insignificant objects into significant ones.” In other words, stories turned cheap objects into valuable ones.

Now, is it possible that those same items, if listed on eBay with a simple description instead of a story, could have sold for more than the thrift store prices they were acquired at? Of course. But my own work with professional salespeople and professional buyers tells me that much of that increase in value is actually due to the story. Here's an illustration of that:

In May 2015, my wife and I went to an art fair in Cincinnati, Ohio. She was looking for a picture for our sons’ bathroom at home.

We got to the booth of an underwater photographer named Chris Gug. His gallery is full of breathtaking underwater shots of anemones, corals, sea turtles, and whales. My wife got attached to a picture that, to me, looked about as out of place as a pig in the ocean -- because it was. Literally. It was a picture of a pig in the ocean. She described it as inspired genius—a cute little baby piglet, up to its nostrils in the saltwater, snout covered with sand, dog-paddling its way straight into the camera lens. I thought it was a picture of a pig in the ocean.

When I finally got a chance to ask the artist a question, I asked him what on Earth that pig was doing in the ocean. And that’s when the magic started.

Chris explained that the picture was taken in the Caribbean, just off the beach of an uninhabited Bahamian island officially named Big Major Cay. He told us that years ago, a local entrepreneur brought a drove of pigs to the island to raise for bacon. Gug went on:

But, as you can see in the picture, there’s not much more than cactus on the island for them to eat. And pigs don’t much like cactus. So the pigs weren’t doing very well. But at some point, a restaurant owner on a nearby island started bringing his kitchen refuse by boat over to Big Major Cay and dumping it a few dozen yards off shore. The hungry pigs eventually learned to swim to get to the food. Each generation of pigs followed suit, and now all the pigs on the island can swim. As a result, today the island is more commonly known as Pig Island.

Gug went on to describe how the pigs learned that approaching boats meant food, so they eagerly swim up to anyone arriving by boat. And that’s what allowed him to more easily get the close-up shot of the cute little sandy-nosed, dog-paddling piglet.

I handed him my credit card and said, “We’ll take it!”

Why my change of heart? The moment before he shared his story (to me at least), the photo was just a picture of a pig in the ocean. But two minutes later, it was no longer just a picture. It was a story—a story I would be reminded of every time I looked at it. The story turned the picture into a conversation piece—a unique combination geography lesson, history lesson, and animal psychology lesson all in one.

In the two minutes it took Gug to tell us that story, the value of that picture increased immensely. That's not why he told us the story. He told us because we asked. The fact that it turned out to be such a great sales story was entirely accidental as far as Gug was concerned. But that doesn't mean it has to be for your stories and your products.

What's the story behind the product you sell? The price your buyer is willing to pay might depend on it.

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Note 1: I've since learned there are other theories about how Pig Island got its name, but this is the one Chris Gug heard and the one that he shared with me. Not that it matters. The truth is there is no situation in which a pig would find itself in the Caribbean Ocean happily swimming its sand-covered snout up to a camera lens that would not be entertaining. I was just happy to hear one of them.

Note 2: A story like this to add value to the product or service you sell is only 1 of 25 types of sales stories most salespeople need. Click here for a summary of all 25.

You can learn how to tell your own sales stories in my book, Sell with a Story: How to Capture Attention, Build Trust, and Close the Sale, by Paul Smith

Paul Smith is one of the world's leading experts on business storytelling. He's a keynote speaker, storytelling coach, and bestselling author of the books Lead with a Story, Sell with a Story, and Parenting with a Story.

Connect with him via email at paul@leadwithastory.com. Follow him on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Sign up for his newsletter here to get one new story a week in your inbox.