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Anecdotes are an effective tool in overcoming common selling challenges, according to RainToday.com. However, to use anecdotes to your advantage while selling legal services, you need to know which elements to include to be sure that your story is effective in closing new business.

According to writer Ford Harding is the author of Creating Rainmakers (Wiley, 2006), there are 10 guidelines to follow that make a good anecdote in a call on a prospective client:

1. The story must be relevant to the prospective client. The idea is to let listeners know that the story you are about to tell will be linked to the specific concern they have raised.
2. Select an anecdote the listener can relate to.  Bankers like stories about banks, and are unlikely to be impressed by a story about a your successf helping a government agency solve a collections problem.
3. Emphasize the similarities. So, when telling a story to a banker in Chicago about a much smaller bank you work for in Cleveland, it becomes "another Midwestern bank."
4. Every good story has a plot, character, action and outcome. Plot is built around the fundamental threat or opportunity that the character in the story faces.
5. Use only one plot per anecdote. More than one plot will result in a long, rambling, and confusing story that will not help you. You can always tell a second anecdote later as the basis to make a different point.
6. Use a character whom your prospect identifies with. Perhaps the single most common weakness of anecdotes is the absence of the character. A a story that is about someone with whom the client identifies will be much more interesting and memorable to him or her than will a story about you.
7. Tailor your character to your listener. If your'e speaking to the CEO, you should have a CEO or other line manager as the hero. If you're speaking to the head of human resources, you should have the human resources professional as the hero.
8. Describe actions. Action increases interest by creating images that the listener can visualize. And the client is more likely to remember the story that he visualizes.
9. A good story must have a clear outcome. So, for example, a story should end with a crucial outcome, "I have never forgotten that lesson," without which you may simply sound as if you were complaining.
10. Practice your stories. Stories that you plan and rehearse are often better than those told extemporaneously. Listen to a professional tell a particularly compelling story, and it is probably one that she has told many times before.

That reminds me of a story...