Stories hold us all together. They're our way of talking about things that would otherwise be impossible to explain. Things such as ideas, beliefs, feelings, and dilemmas. They're a language we all understand.

When we share stories, we're essentially saying "I get you." 

With sales, it isn't any different – we simply don't think about it in the frenzy of everyday life. Think about it now: what made you buy the last product you bought? 

Was it desire? Necessity? Impulse?

Whatever that reason was, they all have something in common: you'd already, even if subconsciously, imagined this product as part of your life – the better version of your life. It doesn't matter if it was a new pair of shoes or a new software. 

A well-told story brings in potential customers by showing them how a product or service could make a positive impact on their lives. And salespeople, by sharing stories that dive into what customers care about – their concerns, dreams, and challenges – build a genuine connection. 

They can turn a regular transaction into something far more meaningful.

What Is Journey? And How Can It Help You Tell Best-Selling Stories?

Journey is a storytelling platform (or a digital sales room) that helps B2B sales teams replace complex email threads and attachments into a single organized workspace, accessible to all stakeholders with a single link. Each Journey is a chapter leading to the grand finale: the sale. 

All you need to do is create your first Journey to get started. 

Customers adore it because everything they need is in one spot throughout the entire deal process. 

There's no need to move in a million different directions, which is a big deal for time-strapped buyers. 

On the seller’s side, Sales teams appreciate it because it provides them with insights on which contacts are actively engaged, as well as which deals show the most promise. So they can focus on what matters and close better deals faster.

This article is a story, too – a story about how Journey's clients create next-generation sales presentations, proposals, and other sales materials. 

You’ll learn from people who have seen their ROIs grow 75x since implementation.

(Yes, you read that right.)

How to Use Journey’s Digital Sales Room for Sales Presentations

A sales presentation is your potential buyers' first touchpoint with your product. If you don't set a good first impression from the beginning, it could also be the last you ever need to make. The story you tell could make or break your shots at closing the sale. 

As Alli McKee, Product Lead at Google puts it:

"Your sales presentation is your top tool to capture your story and train sellers on it. That way, the same story shows up at every stage of your buyer’s journey, no matter who’s telling it. If you want to influence what they say, change what they see."

To change what they see, you need to capture the audience's attention and grip their interest through effective visual storytelling. This engagement is crucial for conveying key messages, addressing objections, and ultimately influencing their decision-making process.

In other words: a sales presentation should make potential buyers feel elated that this product is in the world. But it's hard to make that happen when the slides look like a high school presentation. 

Does the design of your sales presentations matter? Yes, it does. 

As CEO Robbi Katherine put it, she loves Journey's design, and the whole UX, is...ahem, "fire."

And while Journey offers ready-made templates, you can and should personalize your presentations to your heart's desire. You'll be able to create sophisticated presentations with videos, text, images, and embeds from your favorite tools. 

Need extra social proof? Bring in those Trustpilot reviews. 

Need to be available for calls without having to hit someone's inbox? Slide in a Calendly link.

It's that easy. 

"It was a platform I didn't realize I needed, and now has become a vital part of my communications. The most helpful aspect is the beautiful design, and interface when presenting to prospects. Each time I think to myself of creating a demo, pitch, or brief about the business, my first thought is initially to create a journey. I have now started using Journey as a verb in my outreach!" (Lauren D.)

Hopefully, just like Lauren D, you'll soon be journeying towards closed deals.

Fundraising with Journey.io

The real challenge with fundraisers lies in translating that knowledge into a story that is not only compelling but also engaging for your investors. 

While numbers matter, the way they’re explained is even more important. Every piece of information you present should serve as a building block in shaping a narrative that resonates with your audience.

Instead of just relying on bullet points, text, static elements, and all that B2B dullness...why not take your fundraising presentations a step further?

And instead of simply relying on what you, dear founder, think is best for your prospects…why not get insights directly from them? Like the co-founder and CEO Justin B, who has been using Journey to change the way he structures his presentations:

"For me, as a founder, Journey has been instrumental in refining my storytelling both in fundraising and in sales. The platform's analytics helps me hone in on what's most compelling to everyone we work with." (Justin B.)

With Journey in his toolbelt, not only is his company inspiring investors but it's also making him a better storyteller with each new deal. 

Onboarding Customers with Interactive Sales Rooms

Some people have a really low tolerance level for onboarding sequences. Why? Because they're getting increasingly tedious. 

Try to remember the last time you had a good onboarding experience. Many of us can recall moments when the first experience of a product pitched so fervently to us as absolutely amazing left us feeling entirely at sea. 

Instead of indicating to us that we've made the right decision, the onboarding was saying, "Run while you still can."

A winning onboarding sequence should be surprisingly enjoyable. From the first contact to the demo and beyond, every step should be well-thought-out and sleek. You need to make your customers see that you, in fact, have got this. 

"This platform helps consolidate multiple sources of information and content into one easy link to share with users onboarding onto a new platform. The engagement tracking feature will be helpful to track content popularity and allow us to iterate and improve," one user told us. 

Bonus: Wow Your Top Talent with Onboarding for New Hires

Want to implement Journey for your own hires?

Learn from Emily R. If her employees ever go somewhere else, the new company will have some hard work to do. 

"We've been using it for our new employee onboarding and training for 6 months now and we've gotten all positive feedback." (Emily R.)

Speaking of positive feedback, Growth Marketer Vikki T also gets showered with compliments:

"I used Journey to onboard members into a Slack community I started, and I received a lot of great feedback on it from members. They all liked it!"

So, if you think the words "like" and "onboarding" don't belong in the same sentence, take Journey for a spin. 

Follow-Ups

You've said your goodbyes on Zoom. That wasn't half bad, you think to yourself, hopeful that your odds are favorable on this one. So what do you do next? 

You follow up, of course. 

Follow-ups are awkward, to say the least. You wish you didn't have to send that email. But you know that if you don't, you'll never get a second chance to hear a "maybe." 

So you crack your fingers and chip away at a mildly acceptable intro...

• "Just checking in..."

Not that one again. 

• "Circling back..."

  
  

  No, that's worse.

• "Bumping this up to the top of your inbox..." Now, that's better!

(Spoiler alert: It isn't.)

That follow-up email will likely, unbeknownst to you, send your closing chances deep down the B2B drain. That's where all unread follow-up emails are buried (if you ever wondered where they go).

What if you didn't have to go through that again? Like Blaze Ziolkowski who, as a revenue leader, uses Journey to make following up a strong statement, not a Hail Mary pass. 

"Journey is our eye beyond the call. Once the Zoom ends, Journey gives us insight into our buying committee in a way never before possible. It's non-invasive. It's enterprise-grade. It's personal. " (Blaze Ziolkowski)

Or, how Sales Director Andreas L has ditched ignorable PDF documents for good.

"With Journey, I can create beautiful follow-ups that are easy to share and collaborate with larger decision teams. There is no need to send PDFs that will get lost. All information is in one place and accessible for everyone that should see it," he says. 

Digital Sales Rooms

When a prospect is alone fighting an endless tug of war in their thoughts, a sales representative won't be there to soothe the "to buy or not to buy" dilemma. And they surely won't be there to smash deal-breaking objections that fuel their decision not to move forward.

For this reason, you need to provide prospects with everything they need, from A to Z, to make an educated buying decision wherever they may be. At home or an event. On their phone or their computer. 

The deciding moment will almost always show up uninvited.

As Peter D, one of Journey's users, says:

"Prospects make most of their buying decisions without the rep in the room. Journey gives them a non-threatening way to get them the information they need and arm our champion." (Peter D.)

The truth is, Digital Sales Rooms give you the sense of control you could only wish for with all the other siloed tools. In the words of Chief Growth Officer Eric M, Journey is the "one tool to rule them all." 

"I can pull in Google Docs, Spreadsheets, Videos, Decks, PDFs, Forms, Email Contacts – you name it. Think visual data room or visual "email attachments" in a beautiful, easy, mobile-optimized link that you can track everything on. I feel superhuman using it and I can't imagine the world before using Journey.” 

Contracts and Proposals

There's got to be something magical about contracts and proposals. Haven't you heard? They can make potential clients disappear in the blink of an eye!

No matter how eager someone is to work with you, a single look at your terms can switch their gears pretty fast. And there's an overarching reason why that happens: prospects aren't necessarily comfortable moving forward. 

Ideally, you should do your best to avoid what behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman calls cognitive strain. In situations of high cognitive strain, people might be more prone to noticing errors or negative aspects while overlooking positive elements. 

This is why your contracts and proposals must put readers into a state of cognitive ease instead. This will mean they likely, according to Kahneman, "like what they see, believe what they hear (or read), and feel that their current situation is comfortably familiar."

A tool like Journey was built to tick all of those boxes. And expectedly, people are selling more because of it. 

Need some inspiration on how to make prospects breeze through your proposals and contracts? 

Here's how one of our users, Meg S, makes it happen:

"We use Journey as a sales tool for our web design agency. And since we have been using Journey we've landed twice as many clients than before, when we sent cold proposals through an email.

We combine our proposals with a Loom video of us talking the client through the project, a link to sign up for a meeting on Calendly, various links to projects, case studies, or “Get to Know Us” videos. It makes us look super buttoned up. And we now have a hub for tracking proposal changes – something we didn't have before. The mobile view looks super solid and I'm obsessed with tracking the metrics to improve the UX of our journey experiences.”

Director of Sales and Partnerships Peter H also enjoys using Journey to get more eyes on his proposals. And the result couldn't be different:

"It really feels like going the extra mile." (Peter H.)

Speaking of which…

Closing

When sales professionals focus on creating a great buying experience, addressing customer concerns, and establishing trust, closing the sale becomes a “natural progression” rather than a forced endpoint.

That's why closing shouldn't be a goal, but a consequence. Your goal should be to make prospects so delighted that walking away will feel like they're losing something. And the first step to delighting someone is showing them you put great effort into what you're doing. 

A tool like Journey is proof of your diligence in and of itself. It'll make your sales collateral look sleek, put-together, and professional in an instant sign. 

Tie that with the elbow grease your team has put in, and you'll hit goals like Global Account Executive Alex Baker: 

"Since our entire North America sales team has started using Journey (+85% actively using the tool), we have hit our quarterly goal 3 quarters straight. In the 3rd quarter, we broke our company record on business closed. " (Alex Baker, Global Account Executive)

Sales Director Jessy Preston has found in Journey a new way of closing deals while driving 6 figures in the pipeline. Here's how she's done it: 

"Journey has allowed us to scale our outreach, follow-ups with prospects, customer education, and time to onboard. We went from having very limited sales materials to having a much more robust way to communicate our company, value to customers, etc. Journey has also allowed us to start the process of standardizing our new customer training, which has had an enormous impact."

And Everything Else!

Pre-sale. Post-sale. Throughout the customer lifecycle and beyond. 

Journey was built to support as many use cases as your customers are willing to get. 

How-to Guides Users Will Actually Want to Read

That one reader manual you swipe aside as you unbox your Amazon package – that's what most how-to guides look like to readers. 

But not with Journey.

"Absolutely love Journey, and have been using it for investor presentations and data rooms, how-to guides for the B2B users of our platform, and any content I need to package up quickly. So much better than slides alone, and so much quicker than putting up web content through our CMS," says Journey user Philip Rather.

Client Insights You Wouldn't Be Able to Get Anywhere Else

"Personalization" isn't just about matching brand designs. It isn't a set-it-and-forget-it arrangement, either. 

If you'd like to do business with specific people for a long time, you need to meet their needs at every step. 

And that means changing your strategy as your clients change!

The folks at Heist Collective, a branding studio for startups and VCs, agree: 

"The analytics provided also allow us to understand the client's path through each journey and adjust accordingly. This has been particularly useful when deciding the order of work for clients to review. Without the granularity of Journey's analytics, getting such a rounded picture of our onboarding experience from the client's perspective would not be possible." 

Lower Expectations and Greater Certainty

Nothing in this world is certain. But with Journey, you can rest assured that any red flags (e.g. prospects not viewing your content) will be flashing crimson. At the same time, it'll make document access so easy that potential buyers won't want to work any other way.  

"The platform is easy on the eyes and makes the information download process a cinch for both prospects/clients and the reps sending. Best yet, it makes your expectation setting easy and straightforward while also making your company look well organized and put together," says Head of Business Development Brian Cottone Jr.

Great Stories Are the Missing Piece in Your Sales Process

As Crunchit.ai founder, CEO, and Journey user Vikram Aditya put it:

"Everything, at the end of the day, is a story." (Vikram Aditya, CEO @ Crunchit.ai)

You don't need to be born as a gifted storyteller to tell better stories and close record-breaking sales. All you need to do is tell the right story, at the right time. 

Most importantly, you need the right tool for the job. 

We get it: introducing a new tool can feel like an unnecessary burden. But when a single tool is capable of skyrocketing your ROI, you can ignore it at your own risk. 

"At first I was skeptical... but it has been a game changer. After seeing the ability of Journey and seeing my customer feedback and insights, Journey became crucial to my sales process in a matter of days," shares Mid Market Account Executive Devin Halicki.

You can join the fine folks above at any time, with your first 5 journeys free. Start winning more deals with Journey!