The Storytelling Blueprint ™

"The Most Potent Form of Persuasion Which Indirectly Captivates & Influences

Others to Act, Follow, and Buy"

Ask yourself the following questions:

Will you ever be in a position where you would need to make a business pitch?

Would you find yourself in a situation where you need to convince investors and secure funds?

In the future will you appear for a job interview?

Will you need to recruit prospective talent?

Do you feel you would need to influence the mindsets of others like prospects and customers?

Would you need to inspire your employees or teams to strive harder to collectively achieve organizational milestones?

Guess what? You can do all of them more effectively with a Story!!

How? Read on……..

Module 1 - Storytelling 101Module 2 - Business Storytelling 101Module 3 - A Story vs. Everything ElseModule 4 - Story MechanicsModule 5 - Storytelling TechniquesModule 6 - Story “Piloting” Module 7 - Constructing Your Library of StoriesModule 8 - Storytelling To Market Products and Services Module 9 - Storytelling To Enhance Credibility Module 10 - Storytelling To Inspire ActionReference Aids

“STORYTELLING IS BY FAR THE MOST UNDERRATED SKILL IN BUSINESS” - Gary VaynerchukEntrepreneur, Speaker and Author

Storytelling is the latest in a series of business tools that, if effectively utilized, can provide business leaders with a platform to communicate their visions and goals to employees and win over customers from their competition.

Well-crafted stories are designed to captivate audience attention, differentiate the organization profile from the competition and elevate brand equity. Storytelling from the business perspective is used to:

➢ Elicit funding for the organization’s endeavors by establishing that you have the resources, visions, expertise and economic profitability to justify their investments.

➢ Win over customers, promote sales, by showing them that your products or services are exactly tailor made for them.

➢ Align employees and internal customers with the organizational mission, strategies and culture. Thus inspiring them to drive performance and results.

➢ Get your customers to share their real life experiences with what you have to offer, thus broadening the potential customer base for the products or services with authentic testimonials.

➢ Why Use Storytelling?: The modern business environment is filled with daily occurrences that may not have immediate or standard solutions. In addition to this factor the lines of communication, imperative to providing solutions, has become increasingly complex in the modern corporate world. Data, information and knowledge need to be packaged into palatable forms that can be disseminated and absorbed with comparative ease. This is where Storytelling comes in!!

➢ Stories Help Business: Captivate your Audience. Make them LISTEN. By focusing on their Emotions and Memories, you can get them to identify with their own experiences to the message you are portraying. This then makes it much simpler to get them to relate to the tangible or intangible benefits and features of your products and services.

At best, storytelling is a tool, a technique, a strategy, and a core competence for business leaders. All well-crafted stories touch people and inspire them to improve and to act. A good story can influence potential customers, speak to audiences and enhance business!

➢ Stories HAVE Substance: The Internet, radio or television are sources for quick stories, however these are more in the line of narratives such as statements, comments, anecdotes, recitals, reports, surveys and Opinions/Testimonials . The impact of these narratives is questionable as they lack underlying depth, and are more of an “As Is” scenario. Stories on the other hand have an impact by focusing on an “a-ha” moment. This inspires the audience to conceptualize the message in terms of their own lives, and more importantly in ways you would want them to.

Storytelling in business can be used across a wide target audience depending on the need of the hour. A sales manager uses a story in his pitch to prospective customers during a sales exhibition. The same manager could use a story in his bid to align his sales staff to the company’s values and annual targets.

Let’s look at the audiences we could use a story to influence:

➢ Clients (B2B) and End Users (B2C): Convince your targeted audience that they need your product or service.

➢ Investors: Convince potential investors that your endeavor is worthwhile and secure the required investment commitments.

➢ Employees and Internal Customers: Target, focus and address the aspirations of your employees by inspiring them and aligning them to the organizational objectives.

➢ Potential Customers: It’s called the “Word of Mouth”. Allow your customer’s actual experiences to further benefit the business. This could be testimonials.

Creating the Plot .

Developing the Key Characters

Introducing the Dramatics

The Ending

Weaving the Characters into the

Plot

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01

02 03

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Below are the requisite qualities of a good story.

Let us now examine in detail what the qualities of a good story would be…..

➢ Creating a Plot: The plot forms the basis of the story and is key to the success of the narrative. It should have a strong theme that the audience can relate to. It should also have lots of potential to create scenarios that can then be embellished to captivate the audience. The plot should revolve around situations of struggle and discomfort and the more the discomfort, the more the potential for the story. This will eventually relate to the solutions and the triumph of the key characters.

➢ Developing the Key Characters: A Hero, around whose struggles the story revolves. A Villain, who is the key reason for the conflict and also the obstacle in the Hero’s struggle. The Supporting Cast, add spice to the story. They may be protagonists, antagonists or just neutral. It is not necessary to have all characters in every story and generally business stories will focus only on the Hero and their struggles, conflicts and triumphs. By introducing flaws or shortcomings in the nature of the characters, you can enhance their reality and acceptability.

➢ Weaving the Characters into the Plot: Once you have the Plot, Characters and Key Questions – Next comes the Theme. Individual scenarios based on the questions are integrated with the characters to create the flow of the story. Infuse the scenarios with drama and theatrics, as the more you dramatize, the more compelling and captivating the narrative is. Keep reiterating the theme throughout the entire story as much as possible. The flow of events should essentially lead to the ending.

➢ Introducing the Dramatics: The more the drama, the more the interest in the story – What happens next? Out of the box situations create narrative questions at the beginning – Who, What, Where, Why, How, When? These questions lead to individual scenarios that can be developed and utilized during the course of the story. Raising the stakes in terms of creating larger-than-life situations increases the dramatic effect.

➢ The Ending: The ending is the message the story was to deliver. The ending is designed to answer the key questions raised in the beginning. It should portray the benefits of all the strands of the plot being woven together, for example relating to why your products or services are best suited to the customers requirements. The ending should ideally “show a Win-Win outcome”, that delivers the message.

There may be many forms of storytelling:

➢ Classical Stories - The likes of Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella etc.

➢ Animated Stories - Disney and Pixar for example…… Cars, Ratatouille, Up, and Frozen etc.

➢ Fables - Addressed to adults covering religion and socio/political themes. They have more commonly been known to be used as ethical standards to educate children.

➢ Business Stories - Real life incidents and anecdotes that would assist in relating to the target audience.

The word “story” can be defined in many ways. One definition is: a narrative that tells of a character’s struggles to solve a problem, against obstacles, to conquer or achieve an important goal.

In summation, the qualities of a well crafted story would envisage and incorporate…

➢ A Story Provides a Quick Understanding: The flow of the plot gives the listener a quick understanding of the battles/struggles the character has had to face in overcoming the conflict and reaching the ultimate objective. Data and information are much more memorable when presented in the context of a story.

➢ It Uses Sensory Language: All well-crafted stories provide sensory language that reaches the audience through stimulating sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. The audience can virtually put themselves in the situations and accordingly relate to the theme of the story.

➢ A Story Creates Meaning: The story provides a memorable key message that has meaning on a universal level. It is easier to comprehend as it drives the audience to associating the narratives with their own experiences, thus creating reality and credibility.

➢ Physical: When people are truly listening, their behavior changes. They may sit at the edge of their seats, lean back, look at the speaker more closely, or stop taking notes. Dynamic or heart tugging stories create an impact reflected by silence or even tears.

➢ Mental: When a speaker has an audience’s attention, the brain patterns of the audience mirror that of the speaker. The exception being the fact that the audience is awaiting what will happen next.

The Result: Telling stories can change the physical behavior of an audience and you can get their minds to resonate with the information being communicated. Storytelling is wired into the human brain. It’s a powerful way for people to form connections with each other.

Well-crafted stories with deep meaning have the potential to influence people in at least four different ways—physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.

➢ Spiritual: Stories that trigger the spiritual experience are very important as they are more memorable and remain longer with the audience. These stories inspire and highlight the human experience in a business environment and eventually the triumph of the human spirit.

The Result: Persuading people to take action is more emotional and spiritual than logical. Stories help take people to these levels and lift data and information into something more personal. Stories where the audience relate to their own experiences will influence their emotional side and the human aspect of the story is what will make it stick.

➢ Emotional: Most of the decisions we make, 95% or so, are made unconsciously on auto-pilot. The left sides of our brains are skeptical and want facts, but the right sides are creative and emotional – hence impulsive. Surprisingly, most consumer decisions are not made primarily by using logic, rather, every day decisions are made in response to emotional triggers based on past experience.

➢ Stories Take Too Long: Yes, it’s true that it generally takes longer to tell a story than to just do a presentation of facts. However, which do you think an audience would remember longer?: A 5-minute story of how a manager overcame odds to meet his sales goals or a chart that just shows sales figures for 3 years.

➢ The Audience Just Want the Facts: People claim they just want data, facts, and figures but the truth is that if this is the way you present findings, the audience will need a lot of follow up to commit it to memory.

➢ Stories are Too Revealing: Stories make us vulnerable. It takes courage to discuss our personal or business failures and hard-won successes. However, these are the business stories that have the power to transform behaviors and change lives.

Sometimes it takes people a while to understand the value of storytelling. Below are some objections that others may have to storytelling.

Myths around Storytelling

This example comes from the UK banking industry. The organization, VServe, was in the business of providing 3rd party banking and financial services to the customers of the leading banks in the UK. So, for example the staff of Vserve would answer inbound calls on behalf of Barclays Bank from customers of the bank, attend to the service requests and attempt to promote other products that the bank was offering its customers – Service and Sales.

The market was extremely competitive, with many 3rd party vendors such as Vserve jostling to prove that they could provide the best cost effective service. The outsourcing business was just in it’s budding phase and there were still some reservations around the capability of staff based out of another country, on a different continent, being able to service the requirements of the average UK citizen.

Contd...

As the cost was relatively similar across vendors, it was the “What’s in it for you?” that became the key focus of business pitches. The pitch riveted around what “more” your organization can provide the bank and the customers of the bank, at the same cost as any of the other vendors.

It was in this kind of a economic scenario that the Chief Operating Officer of Vserve approached a leading bank in the UK to offer their services. All detailed information about Vserve’s founders, stakeholders, financials, locations and sites, human talent pool, facilities, IT structure, and other customers had already been shared with the bank previously.

The COO decided the best approach to address the bank’s board of directors was to differentiate his organization from the vendor pool in terms of customer satisfaction and the ability of the Vserve talent pool to be able to not only service the UK customers but to also go out of their way to ensure that the customer is not negatively impacted. Contd...

He began his Story: “This is an example of the service our staff provided for the customer of a bank who had called in to report fraud on her account. The customer had followed all the procedures laid down by the bank for reporting fraud on their bank accounts. She was calling in to find out the status of her claim. The call was answered by one of our fraud executives who informed the customer that the claim had been received and was currently in processing. It would take 2-5 business days to resolve. The customer was distressed as the money had been removed from her bank account and without that she would not have the required finances to pay the bills and make ordinary daily purchases. This would make survival very difficult as she was a single working mother. The fraud executive, in an attempt to comfort the distressed customer, offered to fast track the investigation. Even then the refund to the account, in the event that it was a genuine case of fraud, generally took 2 business days. However with an approval from the Head of Department and a call to the investigation team the refund could be done immediately.” Contd...

“The fraud executive assured the customer that he would do everything possible from his end to close the investigation and based on the outcome accordingly arrange for a refund. She was apprehensive, but short of any other option agreed to await a callback from the executive.

The executive then contacted the investigation team and had the case fast tracked, the outcome of which was in the customer’s favor. He then requested the approval of the Head of Department, through his Team Leader and Group Manager. Once the immediate refund was sanctioned, he then followed up with the investigation team to ensure the refund was processed, and double checked the system to confirm the availability of the funds before calling the customer, before close of business the same day, with the much awaited news. All of this took about an hour instead 4-5 business days.”

Contd...

“The customer was ecstatic and was full of praise for the customer centric service that the employees of the bank had offered her. She insisted on speaking to the executive’s manager to express her gratitude and to praise the executive who had handled her case. These calls were all recorded and could be played back whenever required. She also sent a letter to the CEO of the bank expressing her gratitude to the bank and it’s employees.

The bank’s board forwarded the letter and the feedback from the customer to our, Vserve’s, management along with their appreciation of the level of service being provided by the our staff to their customers.

Essentially it was a case of our staff’s dedication to service in transcending from customer satisfaction (getting the case processed) to customer delight (getting it processed and refunded within an hour).”

Vserve secured the business. Contd...

Key Highlights: The setting was the current Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) Industry.

➢ Protagonist - The Chief Operating Officer➢ Antagonist - The budding BPO industry, a highly competitive market and the

doubts around the capability of the staff to service the UK customer.➢ The Problem - The costs of the services being offered being almost constant

across the industry, how would he promote his organization over the competition.

➢ Solution - The COO decided to get his clients to place themselves in the position of their customer, and relate to the excellent customer service being delivered and in going the extra distance to ensure customer delight.

➢ Result - Satisfied and loyal customers; Secured the contract.➢ Message - The COO was marketing Vserve’s brand image from a perspective

of the service oriented culture inculcated in their staff, where customer satisfaction is the prime focus.

“Story, as it turns out, was crucial to our evolution -- more so than opposable thumbs. Opposable thumbs let us hang on; story told us

what to hang on to” - Lisa CronStory Analyst, Program Instructor, Speaker and Author

The diagram below illustrates the three key impacts that a story will have on the brain of the audience:

CaptivateStories captivate the

attention of the audience and move them from

“Hearing” to “Effective Listening”

TransformStories transform the

listener from one state to another

InfluenceStories influence the thoughts, emotions and behaviors of the listener

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➢ Phase 1 - Captivate: For a story to have an impact on an audience it must first captivate their attention. Stories tend to focus the audience’s attention to a point and channel it towards building emotional bonds based on increased trust. Just attention by itself is not enough. It is only when you have both the audience’s attention and trust, can you truly move on to the next phase, which is to influence.

It has been demonstrated through scientific research and experimentation that an effective and emotional story does have a neurological impact on the human brain. A story increases the ability of the presenter to Captivate, Influence and Transform the targeted audience. It does this by increasing the release of prosocial neurochemicals in the brain, Oxytocin and Cortisol, which have a lateral correlation to reciprocity and attention. Let’s examine how a story impacts our brain and subsequently our behaviour:

➢ Phase 3 - Transform: A story will transport the audience into the “world of that story”, and the deeper they get engrossed in that experience, the more the resistance to change dissipates and they move towards accepting the message. Now when they emerge from the story their behaviors have been transformed. Further still, and more importantly, the lasting impact of this experience on the mind can extend beyond the audience themselves. They now become potential carriers of the message in their own circles, further captivating, influencing and transforming!

➢ Phase 2 - Influence: Having used the story to focus the audience’s attention and channel it to forge bonds based on increased trust, you are now poised to progress towards influencing their mindsets. The heightened attention and trust levels makes the audience more receptive and responsive to persuasion, which concurrently makes them easier to influence their behavioural patterns. Stories being used to influence behaviour have a lasting impact on the brain, essentially with the transformation that comes with the changes in the brain. That is the next phase, which is to transform.

➢ Stories Provide Enjoyable Listening: All well-crafted stories are enjoyable to listen to. They are engaging and captivate attention. Stories help by increasing retention. They stimulate the senses and are more memorable than tables of facts and figures.

➢ Stories Enable us to Communicate Quickly: It’s much easier and quicker to communicate by way of a story. Important information and messages are easier to incorporate within the context of a story than any other way. Complex details are more accessible to the layperson when it comes wrapped in a story.

When effectively listening to stories, people tend to assimilate information much more rapidly than they do when listening to a boring black and white list of facts or figures.

To elaborate further, when you present the audience with an enjoyable experience, in the form of a story, the probability that they would convey it further in their own forums is much higher because they have assimilated the message easily. It gives the message the potential to “go viral.”

➢ Great Stories Are Shared: When you tell a powerful story, the audience is more likely able to associate and relate to the concept being shared with ease. This increases the probability that they would willingly share it with different audiences. This potentially doubles or triples the effectiveness of the message that you are endeavoring to pass on. Stories are essentially the most preferred mode to relay information.

➢ Stories Spark Conversations: Stories assist in triggering conversations and discussions across various forums. These conversations, either within the organization or in other forums such as seminars and conventions, act as catalysts in sparking off actions. The impact can be local, national or global as stories can be tweaked to suit the audience. On a global basis, stories are being used to enhance the need for transformation.

➢ A Story can Let One Imagine the Future: The idea behind a story is to present new and unexplored possibilities. Stories can paint a vision of the future scenarios that are viable, profitable and most importantly - attainable. The art of storytelling incorporates audience participation, to envision the future as opposed to just telling them what to do.

Stories are used to inspire people, by arousing emotions within them to relate to a cause. Well-crafted stories can empower the audience to take steps toward specific goals by defeating procrastination. The delay in decision making is generally associated with the task of assimilation and understanding of large amounts of data, which a story does NOT have.

The key inspiration in using stories is to get the audience to relate to the situation at hand, the challenges faced and the possible solutions.

They can then work out for themselves the benefits and challenges associated with the concepts by relating to the story.

➢ Stories Help in Building Problem Solving Abilities: Stories show how others have collaborated in various situations to solve problems, and how this was implemented. Stories drive and inspire employees to strive for greater innovation and creativity as stories make abstract concepts more tangible to the audience. This can help individuals and organizations learn more rapidly. The improvement in the learning curve will then stimulate a quicker decision-making process followed by the implementation of actions.

➢ Stories Connect with the Senses and Emotions: When your story connects with people’s needs or emotional states, you are appealing to their human side. This will have a higher likelihood of staying in their consciousness for longer periods of time. The more accustomed they are with your concepts, that is the more the story sticks, the greater the probability of them retaining the information.

➢ Stories Stick (Longer Retention): Powerful stories that you may have heard stick with you for decades. Inspiring business stories stay with you for much longer than slideshow presentations with no support stories and a mass of black and white figures. Stories are filed away in the subconscious and potentially influence behavior and subsequent actions.

Most consumer decisions, over 90%, are unconsciously made. Stories appeal to the senses and heart and thus are much more “sticky” when it comes to retention of the message than the other ways of conveying information.

➢ Stories are Used to Captivate Interest: Stories are designed to captivate your listeners, in essence, move them from hearing to listening. By transforming the audience towards effective listening, the attention span automatically increases. Attentive and captivated audiences will retain much more of the information being conveyed. Stories provide the platform to steer the audience towards drawing their own conclusions. The empowerment associated with this converts them into active participants instead of just passive listeners.

The method to trick the audience into listening is by making them believe that it’s all about THEM!

Many companies use storytelling to convey the benefits and advantages of the products and services. They also use storytelling to enhance and market their brand image.

Some select companies use stories with a dual objective in mind - to organize all the actions they initiated both within the company and in their portrayal of the outward face of the organization to customers. When stories are used in this form they have a more lasting impact at all levels of an organization as well as on potential customers.

➢ Stories Help to Differentiate Yourself and Your Organization: Stories help you to communicate to the consumer why you and your organization are unique. They form the basis of communicating the effectiveness and benefits of the products and services vis-a-vis the competition. The use of stories helps keep your employees in sync with the goals and objectives of the company, reminding them why you are in a niche by yourselves.

➢ Stories Assist in Establishing Economic Value: By using stories, you can establish the economic viability of your products and services. This could be done with both clients (B2B) and end users (B2C). It provides an opportunity to drive profitability for the organization by promoting creativity, innovation and ingenuity. It helps the end consumer to understand and appreciate all the efforts that go into the work you do, which forms the base of all their experiences with that product or service.

➢ Stories are a Platform to Communicate Values and Passions: Stories, with their supporting images, can greatly assist you in communicating your values and passions with a wide audience. Storytelling is also simple and effective channel of internal communication within the company. This syncs the employee behavior with the organizational goals, culture, values and mission statement.

This is a story that I share with prospective entrepreneurs who are looking to set up their own businesses online. My name is Helen Miranda and this narrative is what I actually experienced when setting up my own online business. My Story:-

“Turning a hobby into a means of living is what a lot of people dream of. I have been able to realise that dream by turning my hobby of crocheting into a successful online business.

I learned to crochet from the age of 8 but it was just a hobby for many years. Later on when the boom of the internet caught on, websites with hundreds of intricate and beautiful patterns captivated me. I honed my skills to perfection and learnt new techniques, but it was much later when this made a difference in my life. I was a college lecturer by profession, but after our daughter was born, I became a full-time mom!! It was not possible to hold down a full time job. Since I was now at home, my friends encouraged me to try and start selling my products as opposed to just giving them away as gifts. That’s when I realised I could strike off one item from my Bucket List - selling my handmade crochet items online.” Contd...

Contd...

“The only challenging obstacle facing me, was that I had absolutely no clue how to sell my products online. I wasn’t sure how to go about the whole process and every aspect of it was all new to me.

Then, I researched the web and found OLX and Facebook to be my first point of entry. I learned how to create a page through which I could showcase my products. Later, I also learnt about website creation and created my own website too. This really helped, as it let prospective customers know about my products. Through the years I continued to learn new techniques and further develop my crocheting skills. I have also learnt marketing and photography that have helped me in improving the visibility of my products online. One key factor that’s unique about my business is, that customers can view all products listed on the site and then customize them to suit their choice. As all orders are made from start only after they are confirmed, this is a benefit I can offer my customers. Furthermore, they can send me designs that aren’t on my site and I can make it for them. After I added these features to my website the business almost doubled.”

Key Highlights:

➢ Protagonist - The Narrator, a self styled entrepreneur.➢ Antagonist - The lack of experience in setting up an online business and the

fact that there were multiple players in the market already.➢ The Problem - The narrator was faced with the challenge of having to learn

all the necessary skills she would require to start up her own online business. She also had to differentiate her business from the other run-of-the-mill business’ online.

➢ Solution - The narrator researched the web by herself and learnt web page creation through OLX/Facebook, website creation, marketing and photography skills, all the time keeping her upskilled on her core competency, crocheting.

➢ Result - Successfully set up an thriving online business which is unique. Established a loyal customer base.

➢ Message - The narrator differentiated her business from the competition by offering unique value added features only she could offer. Also one should identify the key areas where training is required and then proactively set about accomplishing that requirement.

“One of the most intriguing things in management and in business is the role of storytelling - people need the anecdotes to do the work

that they do.” - Anita RoddickBusinesswoman and founder of The Body Shop

Many business presentations sound like:

➢ “We have a fabulous product. Here’s what our customers say about it. You should buy it.”

➢ “These are the sales figures for the past financial year. Here’s where the numbers have dropped. This is what needs to be done.”

➢ “This is the spread of the employee satisfaction survey. The top 2 box numbers are not very encouraging. Please note the reasons for dissatisfaction and have discussions with your teams”

There is a marked absence of any form of inspirational language that stimulates the senses. There’s no conflict to be resolved and no key characters, and subsequently no drama that captures the audience’s interest and attention. Moreover there is no core or universal message.

What is the difference between a story and a presentation? Generally a presentation is just a business narrative with a load of data and supporting information describing a situation. The examples given below are not stories.

A - The Core Elements of a Story:

➢ Plot: Business storytelling always contains a fleshed-out plot with conflict. The more the conflict and extraordinary situations you have, the more the scope of creating a lasting impression in the minds of the audience. It’s best to use real people in real scenarios for the best impact, avoiding fairy tales or Aesop’s fables. A business story should have at least one key character, however depending on the scenario, as you are using real life experiences, you can use supporting characters such as villains etc. for impact.

➢ Inner and Outer Dialogue: Stories frequently convey both the inner and outer dialogue of their main characters. Get the audience to relate to the internal thought processes in lieu of the situational challenges they face. Integrate this with the actions and verbal interfaces of the characters in achieving their goals.

➢ Drama and Conflict: Stories get the audience interested by providing lots of drama and conflict. Up the ante with out-of-box situations as opposed to run-of-the-mill ones. The more the drama and the conflict, the more captivating the story. The key characters are faced with challenges and obstacles that need to be overcome to attain their ultimate objectives.

➢ Key Message/Layers of Meaning: A well-thought-out story contains a key message and often contains layers of meaning throughout. “Usher” the audience into hearing the deeper message by layering the clues in the story. To avoid sounding preachy or like the “I’m telling you!” types, slip or sneak your message in to your story through multiple subtle layers without being too obvious. The success of the story is to move the audience to relating to the message themselves, rather than presenting it on slide for them to read!

➢ Sensory Details and Emotion: A well-crafted story provides a lot of sensory detail to the audience. It helps invoke their emotional sides and relates their human needs to the concepts of the massage. Stories convey emotion and help the audience feel the ups and downs of the character’s emotions.

B - Describing a situation Vs. telling a Story:

Describing a situation is not the same as telling a story. Here is a description of a situation:

“For nine months I struggled with my office colleague. His way of working didn’t mesh with mine. Then by accident we discovered something that changed our views of each other’s working styles.”

This was just a description but could be changed into an engaging business story with the proper embellishments.

“For nine months I struggled with my office colleague. Our working styles were in stark contrast of the other. While I was more for a dynamic and innovative approach, he was for the data oriented set-piece approach. We were both responsible for the biggest account of our organization. One day we were faced with a very pressing challenge. We had been informed of a very prominent threat of our client shifting business.”

Contd..

“Being thrown together in this manner made us take a closer look at our working relationship and what we could do to change and improve it to save the business. We chose an approach that involved a thorough analysis of data and the using of the resultant picture to back up some radical decision making. This lead to action plans that would revolutionize our approach in dealing with our client’s business. This was a deviation from the status quo and took the clients by surprise, when the results actually improved their business”.

So if we were to examine the second narrative:1. There’s a lot more detail in terms of the “as is” situation and why the

narrator and his colleague didn’t see eye to eye on managing the client’s account.

2. There is the challenge that they faced which the client was considering shifting the business. This adds drama to the conflict in point 1

3. We then have the solution where they pool resources and talent to impress the client.

4. Finally, we have the “is now” situation, where they retain the client.

C - Other Narrative Forms that are Not Stories:

There are 9 different narrative forms that are not stories. These narrative forms are valuable in a business environment, however they are generally not as effective as stories. They provide the basis for a story, and are used to embellish/support the core message. By themselves they lack dialogue, sensory details, and a core message.

What are they? How do they differ from stories? When should you use them?1. Anecdotes2. Case Studies3. Descriptions 4. Examples5. News Reports6. Profiles7. Scenarios8. Testimonials 9. Vignettes

➢ How Do They Differ from Stories: An anecdote differs from a story because it doesn’t provide sensory information, dialogue, context, or a setting. Even though a case study frequently has a beginning, middle, and end, it isn’t a story. Case studies are broken into situations, solutions to problems, a summary of results, and an analysis of results.

➢ When Should You Use Them: Anecdotes can be shared quickly to spark conversations or to underscore a point. However, they are not a good replacement for a fuller and richer storyline. Case studies are good for teaching critical thinking skills and for lending credibility to a process you want to employ in the future. They provide models for business practices.

➢ Definition: An anecdote is a short, personal account. A case study is an analysis of a situation that is used to draw conclusions.

➢ How Do They Differ from Stories: Descriptions and examples are both used when “talking about” a story instead of telling one.

➢ When Should You Use Them: You can use a description of a story to find out whether someone wants to hear the full-blown story. Descriptions are frequently used to provide the executive summary for a more detailed report. Examples work well when there isn’t enough time to tell a story or not enough print space allocated for a more complete story. Examples are a concise way to add validity to the point/s you’re making.

➢ Definition: A description is an explanation of a situation written in third person. An example is focused on an event or incident that illustrates a particular point.

➢ How Do They Differ from Stories: A news report summarizes the ending at the very beginning. Its most important details are front loaded and its ending has the least important details so that editors can cut them. Profiles are descriptions and don’t include conflict resolution or emotional connection. They are short biographies.

➢ When Should You Use: News reports work well when you’re conveying information about current events. They also work well in press releases and annual reports. Profiles are effective as part of internal project proposals or as part of an RFP (Request for Proposal) issued when pitching for new business.

➢ Definition: A news report is an account of recent events. A profile is a concise biographical sketch of a notable person or company.

➢ How Do They Differ: Scenarios are generally descriptions not stories. Testimonials are recommendations and not complete stories. Vignettes are generally episodes within a larger story framework.

➢ When Should You Use Them: Scenarios work for future planning and to stimulate creativity. Testimonials are great for building credibility in print and online. Vignettes are best to capture interest quickly as individual pearls on a longer, more detailed story necklace.

➢ Definition: A scenario is an imagined sequence of events designed to bring forth new ideas. A testimonial is a favorable report from an internal or external customer. A vignette captures a revealing slice of life. Vignettes can sometimes be strung together to create an effective story.

Most salespeople agree that, the real selling doesn’t start until the buyer says no. That’s why there are various methods salespersons use for handling objections. If you don’t use stories along with those methods, or supplementary to them, you’re missing out on a powerful tool. Your buyers’ objections often manifest themselves the form of a story—be it’s shared or just existing in their heads. It’s hard to beat a bad story with a fact, rather, beat it with a better story.

Here’s an example from Tiffany Lopez, a senior executive at DataServ. DataServ helps businesses go paperless and manage all their documents online. The common objection she gets from a new prospect is something like: “I know your system would save us some time, and we’re really busy right now. However I’m not sure whether the return on the time savings would justify the investment.” Here’s how Tiffany responds to that objection. Instead of facts or arguments, she tells a story about one of her recent prospects who had the same objection — a zoo.

She’d say: “On one of the calls with the zoo, I found they were very busy, as you are. They spent a lot of time keying in documents to their internal system, as you do, and shipping off hard copies to off-site storage facilities. Then went searching through a whole warehouse for them later when they were needed.”

Contd...

“I explained that by using our system, they could eliminate that process and would save a remarkably large amount of time. Then, I asked, “How would spend the extra time that you would have saved with automation?” They were taken aback, but they said, “We’d do more research with the time and apply for more grant funds.” So I asked, “Aren’t grant funds how you pay for almost everything in the zoo? Like the new gorilla exhibit or the sprinkler system you’ve been working on for months?” They nodded their heads. So I asked, “Correct me if I’m wrong. All this time consuming, no value paperwork is actually retraining you from pursuing the zoo’s number one revenue source?!” Them: “Yes, we suppose it is.” Me: “Well, then, it’s obviously a no-brainer to me.”

Here’s where Tiffany stops her story and allows for a little silence to do its work. She tells this story, as it’s not easy for people to imagine more profitable ways to spend extra time, money or resources they don’t have yet—because they don’t have it yet.

But post hearing her story, it’s easier for prospects to think of much more valuable work they could have done—either because the story got them to thinking outside the box for a change or because they just didn’t want to look small-minded in comparison to Tiffany’s other prospects.

Contd...

Key Highlights:

➢ Protagonist - Tiffany Lopez, A sales executive.➢ Antagonist - The objections that are raised by the prospects during or after

the initial sales pitch.➢ The Problem - Tiffany realized that it’s difficult for people to think of

profitable ways to spend the extra time, money or resources they don’t have yet—because they don’t have it yet. Her challenge was to get them to broaden their thoughts to realise the potential benefits.

➢ Solution - Tiffany did this by telling then a story about one of her recent prospects who had the same objection — a zoo. This makes it easier for the prospects to think of much higher value work they could be doing.

➢ Result - Mostly Tiffany will over the prospect and they will sign the dotted line.➢ Message - Instead of trying to resolve objections using facts or arguments,

use a story about a recent prospect who had a similar objection. The best way to beat a negative story is to best it with a better one.

“People do not buy goods and services. They buy relationships, stories and magic.” - Seth GodinAuthor & Dot Com Business Executive

Tracking back through Module 3, we define the Key Core Elements of a Good Business Story.

The Core Elements of a story in the previous slide can be integrated together using the “Storytelling Framework”.

A similar framework is described and explained by Kindra Hall in her book “ Stories That Stick”

➢ The Present: This is the situation “AS IS”. It may be what the customer is struggling to deal with. The problem statement. This is where you create the plot and introduce the key characters. Bring in the inner & outer dialogue to present the conflict and emotions.

➢ The Change: This is the change in the “AS IS” proposed to combat this situation. The solution. Here is where you bring in the drama and the emotions that will captivate the audience. Weave the characters through the challenges and obstacles faced. How did they react and what actions did they take to get to the “TO BE?”

➢ The Future: This is the new situation - the “TO BE”. It is the ending which will portray the triumphs of the characters. The result. By this stage the audience should have made up their “own” minds about the Key Message.

➢ The layering of the clues and meaning should be done subtly across all phases

Using the storytelling framework, described in the previous slide, we can now take a step-by-step insight into creating your own stories.➢ Finding your stories: Step 1 - Look for potential stories within your

business, the industry or even the web. Customer experiences, objections and queries could be a potential pool for ideas. Collect as many ideas for stories as possible, irrespective of whether they are appropriate or even usable. Unlock possible stories by relating ideas with people, companies, products and services, where the message was implemented. Step 2 - From the pool of ideas, choose which can be woven into a story that is appropriate for the situation at hand. These stories can be categorized as:

✯ Stories used by entrepreneurs to create value for their products and services and drive Sales and Marketing.

✯ Stories used by pioneers and founders to source Investors, Customers or a Talent Pool.

✯ Stories used by business leaders to Inspire Employees and Align Expectations to the purpose.

✯ Stories where customers share their Real Life Experiences about a product or service.

➢ Relating/Telling your stories: This is about how, when and where to tell your stories. Use presentations with your stories as it eases the strain on the audience retaining every spoken detail. Start with a story and have one handy for every eventuality to portray yourself ahead of the competition when the stakes are high. Bridge the gap with your audience by relating your own business stories in an authentic way. Make your stories stick by choosing one that feels right and matches the message.

➢ Crafting your stories: Select the most appropriate ideas and convert them into great stories that are compelling for the audience. Identify a pivotal moment, a challenge or obstacle, that creates conflict and build the story around it by adding details that are familiar to the audience, thus getting the audience to empathise with the situation. Bring out the details about the characters. Support this with lots of drama and emotions, what the audience would feel, think, hope or expect as the scenarios unfold. This leads to the ending where the audience create a compelling pictures of the message in their minds. It’s like going full circle to the start of the story except with the benefit of the knowledge & understanding of the message.

➢ Have a List of Important Themes: Sometimes the key message pops out of your story but often it doesn’t. When it doesn’t, begin by making a list of possible themes so the audience can find their way to the key message.

➢ Pick the Top Themes: Possible themes could range from – creativity, innovation, courage, leadership, assertiveness, bravery, teamwork, persistence or service to others. Once your list of themes is ready - pick the top 2-3 that are the best match and integrate these themes into your raw story.

➢ Believe and Do (Thought and Action): What do you want the audience to believe and what action would you intend for them to take after they hear your story? A well-crafted key message is: a statement in a full sentence; concise and memorable; focused on one vital point; a positive and universal message.

The best key message is one that resonates to everyone in your audience and has universal appeal. The success of the behavioural transformation is based on how effectively the audience is able to grasp the message in the story.

➢ One Key Named Character: Generally form a business perspective it is prudent to have one Key Named Character (Protagonist) in the story, as the Antagonist, may not necessarily be “A” person. For example it could be an inflexible Board of Directors or recession driven economy causing a drop in sales. Add supporting characters required to spice up the plot. It is essential the audience relate to one named character than an unnamed group. Wherever possible create identifiable characters that the audience can associate and connect with. Provide details about your main characters (Protagonist and Antagonist) and a few of the supporting characters.

➢ Don’t Use the Word “Story”: Beginning your story by saying “let me tell you a story” frequently turns people off, the common perception being you are just buying time as you’re not confident. The word “story” can be equated to “fabricated.” It's preferable to just begin with the setting, characters, and sensory details, get them inquisitive, and they will be willing listeners.

Begin your story by introducing the setting and characters. Avoid starting with the backstory or introductory information about yourself.

➢ Don’t Give Away the Ending: The key factor that makes a story engaging is that your audience doesn’t yet have a clue as to how the story pans out. The Ending is a mystery. The suspense is key to the success of the story. Save the key message or take away until the very end of the narrative. It should form the punch line. An ideal scenario would be to move the audience to relating to the message themselves. But it is imperative that you, don’t summarize at the beginning and destroy the suspense. In keeping with the suspense, avoid endings with cliches. For example: “I thought I was the teacher, but ended up being the student” or a person, inevitably, falling in love with someone they intimately dislike!!

➢ What’s the Problem?: Your main character, the protagonist, will encounter a difficult problem, a challenge or an obstacle that requires solving or overcoming. The antagonist or villain can be an individual, a company, extreme weather, or some other force that hinders the progress attempted by protagonist or prevents him/her from solving the problem.

➢ What’s the Plot?: Once you’ve identified the key message and the core conflict, outline the sequence of events that becomes the plot of the story. The plot is essentially a unique but detailed list of events around which the story unfolds and ultimately becomes resolved at the end.

➢ What’s the Story Arc?: Every story should have a clearly defined arc i.e. a clear beginning, middle and end. The middle is mostly the peak of the arc - the highest point of tension in the struggle. The story arc keeps the audience moving through the story until the “a-ha” moment that leads to the resolution of the conflict.

The problem or issue that the main character must face or overcome is the core conflict of your story.

➢ Choose Your Idea: Once you brainstorm some ideas, you’ll select the story idea you feel would be the best vehicle for the key message you want to deliver. Ensure the idea matches the message and would for the appropriate basis for the message.

➢ Gather the Notes and Research: The next step in the process would be to organize your raw story into the form of a transcript, a bulleted list, an image deck, storyboard, a video, or just a loosely written beginning story.

➢ Create a Mock-Up (1st Cut): Create a beginning mock-up by gathering your notes and research and organizing them into the opening scene, the conflict, the obstacles or barriers to the solution, which are overcome with the “a-ha” moment and the resolution along with new insights. The end offers a conclusion and parting message emphasizing the key message that’s been layered or built throughout the story.

To create a well-crafted story, there’s a clearly defined series of steps. You’ll start with a raw story and go through the six steps of this process to refine it into either an oral or written presentation.

➢ Tighten Up Your Story: Re-visit the details of your story and “trim the fat” by eliminating the unnecessary and extraneous details. All details should contribute to either moving the plot line along towards the conclusion or subtly underscoring your key message.

➢ Have a Trial Run (2nd Cut): If you’ve used a bulleted list, storyboard format or image deck, recast the story with the revised outline to see if it works in effectively delivering the message. Based on the trial run, make any necessary alterations to improve the final delivery. Now go for a final “Dry” run, which will give you an idea of what the “Live” run would be.

➢ Save Your Story (By Versions): Make sure to save your work and label your revisions so you can see how the story evolved for future reference. An oral story can have more detail and take longer to present so it’s helpful to know how you’ll communicate the story as you make revisions.

Stories need lots of sensory details, facts and authentic emotion to remain interesting. However, you shouldn’t take side paths that, no matter how inviting, don’t contribute to the main conflict or key message of the story.

Below is a simple grid used to match up the type of story with its intended purpose.

STORY TYPE The SalesStory

The Investment Story

The InspirationStory

The CustomerStory

Reason for the Story

Drive an effective marketing and sales campaign

Build credibility to source funds &

a talent pool

Inspire staff & align aspirations to company goals

New business through excellence

Intended Audience

Prospective Customers

Investors, Stakeholders &

Employees

Employees & Internal

Customers

Prospective Customers

The Presenter Marketing & Sales Manager Entrepreneurs Business Leaders

& Managers Customers &

Organizations

Ideal FormatPresentation(Reports & Statistics)

Presentation(Financials &

Achievements)

Conferences and Meetings

Presentation(Testimonials)

Popular surveys and general beliefs place Abraham Lincoln as the most Popular President of the United States of America. His oratory skills were beyond compare. However it was his ability to relate stories to his staff that gained him their support.

The setting was during the American Civil War. The Union forces under President Lincoln were suffering a string of consecutive defeats and indecisive results. Morale was low and many feared the defeat of the Union forces. Once while awaiting results from the battlefront in the war room, the mood was sombre and subdued as everyone was on edge.

The President decided to tell a story about the American forefathers who fought the British for independence. His words:- “It was right after the revolutionary war, right after peace had been concluded. Ethan Allen went to London to help our new country conduct its business with the King. The English sneered at us, at how rough we were, and rude and simple minded and so on and so forth.” Contd...

“Until one day he was invited to the town house of a great english lord. Dinner was served, beverages imbibed and time passed on until Mr. Allen found that he needed the privy. He was grateful to be directed to this…...relieved you might say.

Mr. Allen, then discovered on entering the water closet, that the only decoration there in was a portrait of George Washington. Ethan Allen done what he came to do and returned to the drawing room. His host and the others were disappointed when he didn’t mention Washington’s portrait, and finally his lordship couldn’t resist and asked Mr. Allen about Washington’s picture in there; what did he about its placement? Was it appropriately located, to Mr. Allen?

Mr. Allen said it did! His lordship was astonished; Appropriate! George Washington’s likeness in a water closet!? YES, said Mr. Allen, where it would do good service. The whole world knows nothing would make an Englishman sh** more quicker than the sight of George Washington!!” Contd...

The entire room exploded with laughter, and the President shouting at the top of his voice - “I love that Ethan Allen story.”

It was this ability to communicate with his staff and followers by way of stories that gained him their attention and trust. It was this interaction with them at their level and understanding, that transformed them into his devoted and loyal supporters who fought on to the very end, against obstacles, losses and despair, but eventually eventually triumphed and ended the Civil War. In doing so saved the US of A.

With this simple story Lincoln not only kept his staff engaged but also inspired them with the hope that if their forefathers fought and founded the United States of America, they could stay true to the cause and defend it.

Contd...

Key Highlights:

➢ Protagonist - Abraham Lincoln➢ Antagonist - The civil war was at it height and the Union forces were suffering

many defeats against the confederacy. They were short on reserves and news from the battlefront was not inspiring.

➢ The Problem - The President was faced with the situation where the morale of the Union leaders and soldiers was at an all time low. Many had almost given up, considering their cause to be a lost one.

➢ Solution - The President decided to divert everyone’s attention away from the war and he told them a story about one of the American forefathers and how he overcame the British snobbishness, with witty sarcasm.

➢ Result - A boost in morale and hope for better times. Increased loyalty and eventual victory.

➢ Message - Lincoln inspired his staff and supporters with the hope that if their forefathers fought the English, and founded the United States of America, they could stay true and loyal to the cause and defend it. Most importantly - don’t give up hope.

“You can’t sell anything if you can’t tell anything.” - Beth ComstockVice Chair, General Electric

➢ Storytelling is recounting true experiences or actual, live situations which, have a start, a middle, and an end.

➢ Storytelling should not be considered a rant and should not be used to profess unfounded and wild theories. Authentic personal experiences are what define success.

➢ Storytelling is definitely not a substitute for therapy. It is more entertaining and cannot be used as an alternative to psychiatric help.

➢ Storytelling is not a replacement for political propaganda and should not be used as a platform as such. Avoid political speeches as they turn audiences away.

➢ Stand-up comedy cannot be equated to storytelling is not. Humor can be used occasionally when appropriate, but generally, attempts to solicit laughs could be perceived as sounding insincere.

There are some key factors that require to be borne in mind while telling a story. These pointers could be deemed recommended do’s and don'ts.

➢ It would be preferable to follow the a simple delivery flow: Start with a story; Intersperse stories throughout the presentation (but beware of story overload which will divert attention instead of focusing it); Close your presentation with a story.

➢ Keep the story authentic and ensure that there is a universal theme that is relatable to and not too personal or self indulging.

➢ Practice your stories over and over again. There is no alternative to preparation.

➢ Stay connected with your audience and your material. As time passes, and you repeat the story on multiple occasions, the audience and the material in the story will change. If you are not up to date/connected, there the risk of being perceived as inauthentic and scripted.

The centerpiece of every successful presentation is always a good story. You may be speaking to an exclusive audience around a conference room table or a congregation of hundreds of people in an auditorium.

➢ Don’t be overbearing with the message, rather let the story speak for itself.

➢ Be the star in the story, be the underdog. Most importantly, get the audience to relate to you and root for you.

➢ Add nostalgia. The more the drama and sensory details the greater the impact on the emotional quotient of the audience - the greater the influence.

➢ Continually keep the audience on the edge of their seats by throwing in a twist or the unexpected.

➢ Change the names and identifying characteristics of the characters to preserve privacy, and be concise when introducing them during the story.

➢ Energy is an essential but subtle force in presenting that’s hard to put a finger on. It’s part physical, but it also requires a focused mind and emotional intensity.

➢ Be as expressive as possible as it keeps the audiences riveted on you. This means varying the volume of your voice and the expressions on your face.

➢ Make use of body movements. Use your hands to gesture express the passage of time. Also move around from one spot to another and make the audience follow you.

Storytelling and presenting are similar. They both require an appealing and powerful content and an inspired delivery. A great story and an amazing orator!

If either element is not good enough the message will fail as you will either have a good story but an inept narrator or a flimsy story with a talented speaker. Generally the first situation is preferable as if the content is solid, the narrator can still work his way through the story.

1. Write down a draft of your story exactly the way that you would have told it onstage, not as though it was designed to be published. Make sure it is the way you will tell it.

2. After a day or two, ask some friends to listen and offer their inputs and advise. Read it out to them like your telling it, don’t make them read it. As the little quirks in delivery will only be known to you as it is your story. Keep it down to a couple of friends only.

3. After you get the feedback and have taken your notes; make whatever revisions you feel would be warranted based on the response you recieved. Review the story once again and ensure you are satisfied with it.

4. Once this is done review your story from end to end and identify the universal theme. Write this at the top, but keep it to yourself and don’t tell anyone.

When memorizing your story and presenting it to an audience, there are some very basic steps that you can follow to ensure that you have covered everything for you to succeed in your endeavor.

5. Break the entire story into memorable chunks or paragraphs. Each chunk should be identified as ‘part of the story’ when something happens.

6. The next step would be to underline all the key product words in each of the chunks that have been created. These would be the most essential moments to be touched upon in each chunk.

7. For each chunk review the product words and pen down notes in the margins of things to remember while narrating that chunk of the story.

8. Further narrow these notes down into quick words/phrases which enable you to remember the story in the required order. This is a ‘beat sheet’.

9. Familiarize yourself with the ‘beat sheet’ - - AND HIT THE STAGE.

The next few slides in this module deal with various techniques that would be beneficial while delivering or presenting a story.

➢ Begin directly with the Story: Avoid introductory remarks, resulting in a loss in the attention span. Instead, grab your audience’s attention by launching directly into the story.

➢ Powerful Stories: We saw in module 2 how stories impact the brain. Our brains are attuned to listening to stories and its what captivates attention and generates interest. Storytellers have preferred this mode of communication through the ages, since the advent of the earliest civilizations.

➢ Mental Journey: A well-crafted story takes your listeners on a mental journey, into the “world of the story”. It presents an opportunity to impart a lesson or message without preaching.

You’ve got to get your audience’s attention within the first 30 seconds. Failing to do so poses the possibility of their minds wandering and as such losing track of the flow.

➢ Strong Conflict: The stronger the conflict that is shared in your story, the more captivating it will be to your audience. Do not hesitate to throw as much conflict as is appropriate. It will also resonate in the key characters triumph over the conflict.

➢ Get Emotions Involved: When judging the elements of a story ask yourself whether the conflict in the story is strong enough to get your audience engaged. Is the content sufficient engage their emotions in relating to the message? Remember the neurochemicals Oxytocin & Cortisol……...

➢ Conflict Peaks Curiosity: If there is no conflict in a story, then you can’t get your audience curious as to the outcome. In a story with a strong conflict, the audience will continually be on edge, mentally guessing to see what comes next.

The element of conflict in a story is what makes it interesting. The more the conflict, the more the captivation. Don’t be afraid to share personal stories as it boosts your confidence and eliminates the element of “Fabrication”.

➢ Provide Details: Provide details about the characters in the story so that you present the audience a visual picture of each character. These details will allow them to draw their own conclusions about the nature of the characters.

➢ Sensory Information: Provide lots of details about sight, smell, sound, taste, and touch so that audiences can relate to the characters and the story through their senses.

➢ “Show” versus “Tell” - Compare these two descriptions: Tell: Mrs. Flowers didn’t encourage closeness. Show: Her skin was a rich black that would have peeled like a plum if snagged, but then no one would have thought of getting close enough to Mrs. Flowers to ruffle her dress, let along snag her skin. She didn’t encourage familiarity. (from “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou (Bantam, 1993)

You can bring the people in your story alive by providing concise details.

➢ Visual and Auditory: What should your audience see? What should they hear?

➢ Smell, Taste, and Touch: What can the audience smell? What can they taste? What do they feel either emotionally or physically?

➢ Concise and Clear: You need to use details to keep it the story interesting. However be conscious about keeping your descriptions concise and clear. Rambling and ambiguity are key to losing the attention span.

Include as many sensory details as possible in the stories you use for your speeches and presentations. These are important not only for character descriptions but to keep the story alive for your audience.

➢ Specific Details: By saying “she was barely 5 foot 1 inch tall” is more specific than saying “she was short in stature.” Avoid ambiguity - be as precise as possible.

➢ Specificity Equals Credibility: By adding specific dates, percentages, and measurements you add internal credibility to your story and make it more believable for the audience.

➢ Be Consistent: Make sure the details you provide are consistent throughout your stories so that characters, scenes, and dates connect well.

➢ Be Accurate and Truthful: Make sure the details you provide are as factually correct and truthful. Fabrications and inaccurate details kill credibility.

By providing specific details, for example in terms of time, dates and measurements, you add credibility to your story.

“Leanne is a senior sales manager with a reputed conglomerate. Of late, she was struggling to meet the job expectations on account of limited budgetary skills, control and low technical savvy. Sales were stagnant, +- 2% of the 12 month average, customer review scores were at 3 on a scale of 5, the CRM process was not up to its true potential, resulting in low profitability, margins at 5% compared to a historical 15-20%, and low staff morale, 10% attrition rate. Frustration crept in with a feeling of not being appreciated - result job dissatisfaction. Then she attended a training program and started using a new tool - Salesmate, a sales CRM. Now she can effectively review sales and manage the CRM processes, automate tasks, manage her calendar and analyze customer data and view the past and present status of potential pipelinedeals. She is able to achieve all wanted to, and within available budgets. She does not hate her job anymore and is satisfied with her performance in the work environment and with her office colleagues.”

The following story can be used to demonstrate the use of a checklist to ensure that you have covered all the essential requirements for a purposeful story.

Contd...

The bulleted points below can be used effectively as a roadmap or checklist.

✔ The Present: Struggling with her job, limited skills, job dissatisfaction.✔ The Change: Salesmate - sales CRM tool.✔ The Future: Can perform her job to her satisfaction and enjoy doing it.✔ The Plot: A once successful executive struggling to keep up with

modernization and her response to a changing working environment.✔ I/Outer dialogue: Unhappiness and frustration, how and what can i do?✔ Key named character (s): Leanne, senior sales manager.✔ Conflict, drama & emotion: Frustration, feeling unappreciated.✔ The “a-ha” Moment: Got trained and started using Salesmate.✔ Specific details: Leanne’s feeling of underperformance measured with actual

company performance metrics.✔ Message: Understand your skill shortcomings and react by upskilling yourself.

“Marketing is no longer about the stuff you make but the stories you tell.” - Seth Godin

Author & Dot Com Business Executive

➢ Hollywood Influences Storytelling: There are three basic types of Hollywood stories:

✯ Stories of transformation where the character gets into trouble but is better off at the end;

✯ Stories of gain and loss where the character has his/her dreams come to fruition, loses it all, and then gets it back;

✯ Stories like Cinderella where the main character is in a bad place until someone helps. Even though things seem to be improving, the main character has a setback. Eventually conditions change and the main character achieves “happily ever after.”

Almost every story has four distinct pieces. The plot identifies the problem and gives the sequence of events. The story arc is the motivation and meaning behind the story. The elements of the story include the way the story is crafted to use emotions, drama, contrast, and sensory details. The structure of the story is the order in which you connect all these different pieces.

✯ Begin with setting, then explain the obstacle/s, describe the action, the results of that action, evaluate what happened, and suggest future actions.

✯ Begin with the problem, then describe the action that was taken, the results, what was learned, and how that learning can be applied in other situations.

✯ Begin with the context for the situation or problem that’s faced, then describe the challenge, the action, and then show the result using quantifiable numbers or information, wrap up with suggested actions.

✯ Begin with the context, describe the challenge, actions, results, but then make a departure from (structure 3) by providing a universal lesson that can offer guidance for suggested future actions.

➢ Business Focused Storytelling: Business stories may not have the more dramatic contrast of Hollywood. There are four popular story structures in business:

➢ Label the sections of your story: By labelling the sections of your story with “context, challenge, action, result, lesson, and suggested future actions” you can see whether your story follows one of the four structures described in the previous slide. It will also give you ideas on whether there are missing elements to your story, how to tighten your story, or how to make it more effective.

➢ Characters: There are many ways you can paint a picture of your characters. Describe their features and gestures or their speech patterns. Explain what drives or motivates them and they are apprehensive about. Portray their aspirations, values and goals. Adding dialogue helps your audience connect with the characters.

➢ Sensory Details and Contrast: By offering sensory details and contrast, you’re giving the audience something they can relate to and remember with relative ease. What do you want your audience to taste, see, smell, hear, or feel? What contrasts can you add, such as temperature (hot/cold), behavioral contrasts (peaceful/violent)? Where can you add irony (such as a balanced breakfast meal of pizza and root beer)?

To get a story to pop you need to provide interesting characters, provide sensory details and contrast, and use figures of speech to enhance the picture you’re painting.

➢ Figures of Speech: You can use a variety of figures of speech to spice up the story and give the audience something they would not expect. They can be used to fire up the audience’s imagination. These figures of speech can help you provide memorable images that will stick. They can be used to boost understanding and retention.

✯ Oxymoron: a figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction (beautiful mess)

✯ Metaphors: a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another (light of my life)

✯ Similes: a figure of speech involving the comparison of one thing with another thing of a different kind (like a flowing river)

✯ Analogies: a comparison between one thing and another, typically for the purpose of explanation or clarification (hand is to glove as head is to hat)

✯ Aphorisms: a concise, terse, laconic, or memorable expression of a general truth or principle (birds of a feather flock together)

➢ Analogies and Metaphors: Metaphors are impactful tools of influence, which transform abstract ideas into simpler and more relatable representations. Metaphors are like a universal shorthand for communicating ideas - (a shaky argument is a house of cards). Analogies play a similar role. Analogies are designed to bring clarity to abstract concepts - (rocket power equals 10,000 cars with the accelerators on the floor).

➢ Comparisons: Large numbers can be hard for most people to grasp and comparisons are used to simplify these numbers. They provide some sort of scale by comparing these numbers to everyday touchpoints. It’s about giving abstract numbers a human scale - (Wildfires described as destroying thousands of acres of forest is quite abstract as opposed to wildfires destroying forests “the size of Manhattan”)

Importance of an Analogy/Metaphor and Comparison: Analogies, metaphors and comparisons are tools that can be used to influence, clarify and simplify. Even though they fall short of story requirements, they are as impactful as stories on audience understanding, retention, and buy-in.

➢ Emotion: What can you do to strengthen the emotions in the story and where can you add emotion to keep the audience interested in the story? Emotions can be introduced at any stage.

➢ Tension: What drama or tension can you add that masks the resolution of the story so you can keep the audience engaged until they hear and retain your core message? Drama is mostly introduced in the middle.

➢ Surprise or Humor: What unexpected element/s can you add to your story to give it a unique twist or wake up the audience with a surprise? Is humor appropriate and where can it be added to engage your audience? Surprise is generally introduced in the middle or end, and humor mostly in the middle.

To keep the attention of your audience, your story must have emotion, drama, and surprise. For some stories, humor is a welcome touch as well.The primary focus would be to intersperse these factors throughout the story so as to work the audience’s emotions, curiosity, amazement and humor to keep them captivated and interested.

➢ Who Will Deliver the Message?: Will the narrator of the story deliver the key message or will one of your characters deliver the message? This would depend on the plot and the structure of the story and thought should be given to which would be most effective, in terms of the profile of the current audience.

➢ What Question Can You Pose?: Is there a question you can ask that will boost your audience engagement and bring power to your key message? Get them to identify with the message and how it impacts them. For example, “what can you do each day to make your department work more efficiently”?

➢ What Quotations and Personal Reflections can you use?: Quotations or personal reflections that emphasize the key message can help to make it more understandable, thus more memorable.

When the story is over, you want to ensure retention, as the audience that retains the core message will be the best ambassadors of that message. be sure that your audience retains your core message. Ask yourself:-

➢ Add a Tagline: Create a tagline that enables your audience to remember your story without giving away the core message yet. That ensures better retention.

➢ Check the Length: Ensure the story is neither too long or short for the presentation you’re planning. If it’s too long, label the structure again to identify places where you’ve wandered from the main points. If it’s too short, embellish it where you can to further underline the core message.

➢ Review the Flow and Contrast: Ensure a seamless flow from phase to phase so as to keep the audience attentive and avoid distraction. Make sure there enough tension and contrast. Incorporate sufficient unique and surprising elements to keep your audience engaged throughout the presentation.

Add the final polish to your story by re-reading it several times. Time yourself to see how long it takes and do a final run with close friends or associates to get their feedback. Remember the “mock-up”, “trial run” and “dry run” discussed earlier. Ensure you record all changes to the story by version.

As a small business owner, someone with an entrepreneurial mind, who some day aspires to launch a business, there’s a huge value in joining the small business community and analysing the stories of those who have succeeded against the odds and had positive results. An example:

“I, Elaine, am an entrepreneur. I started an engineering and construction consulting firm in 1992. Back then, starting out in an industry, where the ownership was male dominated, wasn’t easy, neither was finding enough money to support the quality services I intended to provide my prospective clients. Business was slow and I sort of plodded along for years with moderate success. There were times when I almost gave up, but something inside me said that I must keep pushing forward.

I had exhausted almost all possible lines of credit available to me, to keep the company in business for almost a decade. Then one day I received a visit from a prospective client, Ted. He was upset as the firm he had engaged to design and construct his country house had failed miserably, and as he saw my name among the firms offering their services, he decided to check it out. He said my advert caught his eye as it was the only one that was not boastful!!” Contd...

“Ted outlined his requirements and showed me the previous plans that had been drawn up. I reviewed these with my team and after a couple of days presented and submitted a completely revised version for his approval. Ted was taken aback with the level at which my team had related to his requirements and built the plans around them. He also liked the innovative themes and designs which I customized to suit him.

The project was a success and on completion my ‘satisfied’ client asked me why I didn’t upscale my company, as my team and I were ‘brilliant’ at what we did. I told him - ‘Funds, the reluctance to invest in a business run by a woman in a male dominated industry’……. He laughed out loud and said ‘hold on in there, Elaine.’

As it panned out, Ted turned out to be a wealthy businessman, and a week later, offered me a partnership and a￡250,000 loan. I would run the business and he would remain a silent investor. I jumped at the opportunity and the gamble paid off. I repaid the loan with interest and now have a thriving business and a satisfied and loyal investor.”

Contd...

“The company revenues tripled, and I was able to attract more clientele as I had an advertising budget handy. I hired 23 new employees and acquired two new sites in other cities. It was a major change for our company, which exuded lots of hard work and dedication.”

When asked what her biggest piece of advice to budding entrepreneurs would be would be, Elaine said, ‘Keep your faith and be patient. Don’t give up…Don’t quit!’ This may sound cliché, but coming from someone like Elaine, who while being patient, is the best proof of all that she stands for - they ring truer than ever. Elaine pilotted her story and made it memorable, one that other small business wannabes would remember.

Contd...

The Key Highlights

✔ The Present: Struggling to keep her business alive due to lack of funds.✔ The Change: The Client Ted, the Investor and his loan.✔ The Future: Running a thriving business that has expanded in terms of clients,

employees and offices. ✔ The Plot: A hard working and dedicated entrepreneur, struggling to survive with

meagre funding. How she bided her time and waited until the opportunity presented itself, and what she did to make the best of it.

✔ I/Outer dialogue: Thoughts of giving up but yet persevering on. Conversations with Ted.

✔ Key named character (s): Elaine, an entrepreneur & Ted, an investor.✔ Conflict, drama & emotion: Frustration, despair but also patience.✔ The “a-ha” Moment: Getting the much needed loan and also an offer at a

partnership and stability.✔ Specific details: The challenges that Elaine faced, and her solution for Ted. Also

transition in the company performance post the loan.✔ Message: Be patient, don’t give up and above all work hard and be dedicated.

“Marketing is the art of telling a story that moves people to act. ” - Bernadette Jiwa

Author & Global Authority on Marketing and Brand Storytelling

Say you have to conduct a meeting with your sales team, with an aim to boosting morale. You do an online search, entering - “stories about building team morale,” and you end up with one of the following:

➢ You find something that everyone’s heard before. Yawns ensue!! ➢ The story isn’t quite right or appropriate and feels doctored in. Guess what,

it is!! ➢ You deliver the story in a lifeless and lacklustre manner devoid of

enthusiasm, as you’re not connected to it. It's just some words off the internet!!

The key is to build your repertoire of stories, having a clear picture of who and what you are. Then focus your efforts on looking for stories on those topics.

There are many ways in which you can gather material for your stories. There are many scenarios which play out on a seemingly regular basis, that unconsciously present great stories. You just need to be attentive/alert for the opportunity, and catalog that experience in your mind, until you can document and save it.

A few points to be kept in mind about where to look for potential stories:

➢ Goals and Priorities should be used as filters. Everyday life will offer a veritable avalanche of material, so much so that you may be inundated with stories. Filters are the handful of things that constitute your focus - it could be targets, strategies, priorities, values, culture, brand, selling points, messages, core strengths, etc.

➢ Be alert to any possible opportunities that may occur. Keep the radar up for situations in daily life that might make a good story. Change your routine, saying “yes” to more experiences that you may be unfamiliar with.

➢ Read and explore, “anything and everything”. It may sound a bit far fetched, but essentially it means try out and explore new topics and don’t restrict yourself. Try business books, trade journals, non-business books, like biographies and memoirs, magazines you’ve never read or blogs on new subjects. The options are endless - look outside your industry or profession.

➢ Draw from personal experiences as these are some of the best stories you can source. A personal story means you connect more with the material, hence, the delivery will be authentic and the audience will find the content more relevant and so connect better.

➢ Find a system for storing your library of stories. As you collect your stories, you would need retrieval process for as and when you need them. Ensure you organize them somewhere. There are a lot of free apps you can use for notes etc, or even a spreadsheet to store, organize, and tag stories. Caution: Don’t rely on too heavily on your brain. Few things are more lamentable than having a brilliant idea and forgetting what it was!!

➢ Set up and conduct interviews with employees, peers, colleagues, volunteers, customers, shareholders, stakeholders and investors. Some stories come to you, others need to be hunted for. That’s where the interview process comes in. Example: employees like to hear about satisfied customers, so interview customers about their experience with the product or service.

Stories that discuss the start-up of an organization or the turning point in an individual’s career apply to the launches of new companies, new products, and new careers. Stories that present the mission or core values of a company help new employees and potential customers understand the motivation behind the products and services a company offers.

➢ Finding Start-Up Stories: Interview the founders to find out more about the genesis of an organization. What motivated them to start? Was it a problem that needed to be solved or was it a unique experience that led them to think in new ways? Stories about how companies survived challenges and transformed into offering completely different products and services are useful to spur on creative problem solving and innovation.

➢ Finding Stand-For Stories: A tagline or description is not enough to communicate your company’s core values. A powerful story, one that depicts (shows not tells) how your company’s values and principles are embodied in your workplace is what you need to influence the behavior of others.

➢ Finding Turning-Point Stories: Interview inspirational CEOs, Managers, and Employees to find out what gave them the motivation for the line of work they are in. These stories renew interest and joy in work and help employees understand the value they contribute.

➢ Finding What-We-Do Stories About Individuals: To discover these stories, ask a colleague or yourself these questions:

✯ Who has influenced you as a mentor or coach and why?

✯ What was the most memorable moment of your career?

✯ What event, personal or business, has had the most impact on your life and how does it influence your work?

✯ What personal legacy are you leaving with your work?

Stories that focus on what an individual does in his/her daily work or what an organization does that brings value to their products/services are inspiring to potential business partners, investors, and future customers.

✯ What can you tell me about the “why” behind the work you do?

✯ Can you tell me about a customer challenge your organization solved?

✯ Is there a moment or event that encapsulates the importance of the work the organization does?

➢ Finding What-We-Do Stories About Companies: To discover these stories, ask influential members of the organization these questions:

✯ The innermost circle is the “why” you do what you do.

✯ The middle circle tells “how” you do it.

✯ The outermost circle tells “what” you do.

Caution: Many companies begin with the “what” when they should begin with the “why.” Profit is a byproduct. People want to do business with organizations that have a core belief or mission that drives what they do. A well-crafted “what-we-do” story communicates these core values to the audience and inspires them to invest, associate with, or buy from your company.

The Structure for a What-We-Do Story about a Company: In Simon Sinek’s 2009 TED talk he makes a persuasive presentation that organizations should construct their “What-We-Do” stories based on three concentric circles.

➢ Finding Personal Future or Situational Stories: To uncover or create these stories ask these questions:

✯ What will you be doing in the next five years? The next ten?

✯ What will be the most exciting thing you’ll do in your lifetime?

✯ What will be your lasting legacy?

Situational stories can sometimes help you think through complex upcoming decisions. Brainstorm options and write a story with three different endings. Then step back and look at your creation. Which ending best suits the situation and why?

Stories that forecast the future and discuss an individual’s or organization’s role in enhancing the quality of life for others can inspire others to action. Success stories help us to realize that millions of other people have overcome obstacles on their path to success. We can do the same.

➢ Finding Success Stories: Success stories are all around but individuals are sometimes hesitant to discuss their successes. To discover individual and organizational success stories ask customers and employees these questions:

✯ As a customer, what success were you able to achieve by using our product/service? Can you provide data that shows that success?

✯ As a salesperson, what successful sales have you made? How did you turn a reluctant prospect into a return buyer?

✯ Can you tell me about yourself or another rock star employee that brought in business or publicity for the company?

➢ Finding Organization’s Future Stories: Work together with other team members to craft a future story for your company. By sharing this story, you can help others imagine a better future that’s achievable through their collective effort.

➢ Finding Personal Stories About Overcoming Obstacles: To discover these personal stories ask these questions:

✯ Can you remember a time when you overcame a major life hurdle?✯ Can you tell me about a time when you were surrounded by so many

challenges that you never thought you would dig your way out?✯ Have you ever consciously decided to become successful at something

despite overwhelming odds?

Important Customer Stories

Stories of perseverance, both personal and organizational, inspire us with courage and hope. Important and memorable customer stories help us understand our roles both as buyers and sellers.

➢ Finding Organizational Stories About Overcoming Obstacles: To discover these company stories ask these questions:✯ Can you tell me about a big, unexpected challenge and how

members of the organization worked to solve it?✯ Can you tell me a story about an employee or group of employees

who went the extra mile to help a customer?✯ Can you tell me a story about an employee who saved the day?

➢ Finding Important Customer Stories: To discover these stories talk to your customers. Ask them these questions:✯ Has our product or service helped you to overcome a significant

obstacle?✯ Has our product or service helped you gain success in your personal

or business life?✯ Has our product or service enhanced your life and if so in what way?

Don’t Badmouth Customers: ✯ Everyone has these stories but it’s best not to repeat them.

Don’t Badmouth Your Competition: ✯ Remember today’s competitor is tomorrow’s investor or ally.

Don’t Guilt Potential Customers into Making a Purchase: ✯ If you do, you’ll be sorry because customers will feel bad about their

purchase afterwards.

Your stories are your authentic voice. Stay away from stories that show you as arrogant or self-serving. Perfection has no place in stories. No one is perfect. A perfect person or story isn’t authentic. Stay away from negative stories. They won’t move your positive agenda forward.

Contd...

This story has been taken from Rebecca Bonneteau’s facebook page.

“Hello everyone, my name is Rebecca Bonneteau. I am a Naturopath and I specialize in Eczema, its causes and symptoms and how to deal with it. Eczema is a medical condition in which patches of skin become rough and inflamed with blisters which cause itching and bleeding.

As someone born with chronic eczema I know first-hand how debilitating this is and also how detrimental the suppression of this condition can be. I try to focus my efforts to support parents of children with eczema because it just lights me up to be able to make sure kids don't have to go down the same road I did.

It was to this purpose that I went back to school and examined my condition in detail and actually understood the characteristics of eczema. From what I discovered and learned I was able to create this online course - ‘The Eczema Expert’, with the aim of sharing my personal perspective of growing up with this condition and linking that with the educational content, referenced where possible.

Eczema has many root causes, thus there are many treatment options that work. What works for one, won't work for another. There were things that helped a bit but there also were things that made it a whole lot worse.”

“It wasn’t until I accepted the fact that my eczema was not just a skin condition that could be suppressed, that I began to look deeper into what was causing it. Only then did I get the results I wanted, the knowledge and confidence to manage the eczema and my body using natural therapeutic strategies.

Many parents spend their time chasing that illusive cream, or wonder potion, or the one thing that will “fit it”. I'm here to tell you that being covered in cream isn't fun as a kid. We don't want to live this way, day in day out, for the rest of our lives. I want to turn parents into eczema experts, to give you the knowledge to get to the root of the problem, to turn you into your kids hero. Getting to the root is possible, it takes time and understanding but in the long term it's magical to have a life free from the shackles of eczema.

How to use the facebook group: Take a look in the "Units" section, it will help you navigate through the content. Enrol onto the free mini course that I have created to get you started. Visit https://www.eczemaexpert.co.uk/courses/eczema-evolution to sign up to the free preview. If you find a video you think others could benefit from, invite them to join the group. Like my business page to make sure you see updates in the future. Finally if you find this useful, you can subscribe to my full course - ‘The Eczema Expert.” Contd...

The Key Highlights

✔ The Present: Patients suffering from eczema use all forms medication which in most cases does not end the eczema or offer a lasting cure.

✔ The Change: The Eczema Expert, An online course on how to manage eczema.✔ The Future: Patients can control of the eczema and their health via natural

strategies and working with the body, rather than suppressing the eczema.✔ The Plot: Born with chronic eczema, the narrator tells of her own challenges in

dealing tithe the disease and how she learned to manage it and overcomes its debilitating effect.

✔ I/Outer dialogue: The narrator reflects on what needs to be done and how.✔ Key named character (s): Rebecca Bonneteau, the narrator.✔ Conflict, drama & emotion: Frustration, helplessness, discomfort, agony but

finally relief and exhilaration.✔ The “a-ha” Moment: Creating ‘The Eczema Expert’ post lots of research.✔ Specific details: The descriptions of the skin condition and the causes for

these conditions.✔ Message: Relate to your audience by sharing an authentic personal story. This

will captivate and influence them to subscribe for your product.

“THE KEY IS NO, MATTER WHAT STORY YOU TELL, MAKE THE BUYER THE HERO.” - Chris Brogan

Author, Journalist & Marketing Consultant

➢ Shareable Stories: To find shareable stories, ones that customers will repeat to other potential customers, ask yourself the question:

✯ What information about my company is worthy of talk and buzz? ✯ What story can I share that consumers will want to talk about? ✯ We all need meaning in our lives so stories that talk about the why

of your business are meaningful and thus more shareable.

In the past, companies pushed marketing messages to their potential customers. Stories are a very effective marketing tool since they pull consumers in. It’s the difference between a tagline that explains the taste of a cinnamon roll and the enticing aroma that brings the customers into the store.

➢ Insider Stories:

✯ Do you remember when you first saw the Wizard of Oz behind his curtain?

✯ Consumers love to hear stories about the inside culture or inner workings of your organization.

➢ Bring the Outside In and the Inside Out:

✯ No matter the size of your organization, you have to live your stories in order to make your communication with the outside world authentic.

✯ In other words, an organization that presents itself as humanitarian must also have an internal culture that displays that same core value.

✯ Employees should feel just as comfortable relaying their company’s stories as the CEO.

Tell Your Unique Story: To discover stories you can tell about your products and services, ask yourself these questions:

✯ What idea created this product? ✯ What need or issue motivated you to bring this product to the

market? ✯ Which consumers are using this product? ✯ How do they use it and how does it impact their lives?

Consumers don’t want to hear exclusively about the features and benefits of your product. Instead they want to hear the story behind your product or a story about the people behind your product or a story about the people using your product. Even products that are considered commodities can be sold with the special magic of the people and events attached to them.

The Why is the Core: When you focus on features and benefits you sometimes lose sight of the why. An exercise that really helps you get to the root of the why is to continue to ask yourself the why question until you get deeper and deeper. For example: What problem does your product or service help?

✯ Why 1: Why is that important?✯ Why 2: Why is Why #1 important?✯ Why 3: Why is Why #2 important? And so on until you have 5 or 6

whys.

Then you can summarize the ‘Why’s’ to get your core story message.

Workmanship is Important: Consumers love to understand the work that gets put into a product. The process of workmanship and the quality that is put into the final product adds value to the consumer if he/she is made aware of or becomes a part of that process.

➢ Unique Personalities and Archetypes: In order to craft marketing stories with unique personalities and archetypes you need to start by understanding your character’s deepest motivations.

✯ Are they craving security or do they long for adventure? ✯ Do they value respect and reverence or do they more highly value

connection and enlightenment? ✯ Do they value personal development and their ability to make a

contribution or do they value leisure more?

If you know your market segments, you can further refine your picture of your end consumer by getting feedback on stories you put into the market.

There are two ways to develop stories that talk about your end consumer or customer: One way is to develop possible personalities and archetypes and get feedback from the marketplace. Another way is to uncover the stories about heroes, heroines, and underdogs in the market segments you’ve already identified.

➢ The Customer is the Hero or Heroine: Your company and its products are not the hero or heroine of the consumer story. Instead, the hero or heroine is the consumer who has used your product/service and has changed as a result. To uncover this type of powerful consumer story, find out about the challenges your customers face. Listen to and learn about the effects of using your product/service. Tell the story of how their lives have changed. Remember that the story is focused on your consumer, not on you or your company.

➢ The Underdog: An underdog story has a specific structure. The underdog has experienced significant struggles throughout his or her life. Somebody shows up with a product or service that may help. The underdog is delivered from the struggle. The product/service has had a significant impact on his/her life.

➢ Use the Community to Mine Stories: You can request customer stories if you are strategic about how you do it. Give people a common situation or problem that’s universal and then follow that with a story prompt. This method is a lot more effective than just asking for them to submit stories. You can reach out to people who are active on your social media pages or online communities to see if they will share their stories. Seed online communities, such as quora.com, with story prompts and then mine the responses for stories you can craft or uncover.

➢ Integrate Stories into Websites and EMail: Share well-crafted stories on your website and in your marketing email in order to increase consumer engagement. Your brand, your consumer hero and heroine, your identified market segments, and your storytelling narrative must all work together to achieve the best effect.

If you want consumers to share their stories, begin by providing an interesting story and then “listen” to the responses from your customers and potential customers.

➢ Inspire and Engage Consumers with Stories: In the past, a lot of traditional marketing supported products that were status related…the big car, fancy house, fine clothes. Today’s storytelling concentrates more on the things that people can achieve with the help of the product or service.

➢ It can help land the right job, get a promotion, or achieve the recognition you deserve. More importantly, It makes you a more credible and effective representative for your company, cause, or team.

➢ The brand isn’t what you say it is, it’s what others say it is. There is only so much that can be controlled. Your brand will happen, whether you know it or not and whether you like it or not.

➢ Brand storytelling is important as rather than throwing facts, statistics, and testimonials at the audience, it focuses on making the brand thoughtful, memorable, and real.

➢ Your brand is what you’re known for — Its the unique combination of qualities you possess that makes people want to work or do business with you. A personal brand can be a practical tool that sets you apart in the workplace or the marketplace.

➢ Brand storytelling is a strategy used in marketing to increase awareness. Employing brand storytelling can open doors to expanding the targeted audience, as the key to brand storytelling lies in the ability to evoke emotions within the audience to establish a relationship.

➢ The benefits of brand storytelling are: 1} Storytelling is the perfect platform to convey your brand's personality across to the customers. 2} Bringing your Brand in front as the Lead, will ensure the brand is intrinsically linked to the story’s message. 3} Storytelling in itself, is perhaps the best way to hit that emotional quotient with your customers. Be genuine; Be honest; Be real. 4} Storytelling is the best way to keep customers and prospects for that matter, coming back for more.

➢ Brand Storytelling is “Using a narrative to connect your brand to customers, with a focus on linking what you stand for to the values you share with your customers.”

➢ Using Storytelling with Social Media: Stories don’t always have to be long. A story can be told in less than 140 characters (twitter size) if thought through. On LinkedIn, Google+, Quora, and Facebook, mini-stories can be offered instead of the usual marketing anecdotes. The idea is to offer stories that create an ongoing dialogue with your customers or potential customers. Visual media, such as Pinterest and Instagram, can be effective for storytelling as well.

➢ Brand with Storytelling: No one story can encompass everything your company stands for. Instead it’s best to connect the dots on numerous stories to create a unified story that will stand the test of time.

A carefully-thought-out brand strategy can be integrated throughout all forms of media and reinforce your unique company brand and message.

➢ Build a Storytelling Strategy: Instead of duplicating your key stories across platforms, present the main story on one platform, accompanying consumer stories on another platform, and employee stories on yet a third. All the pieces must work together to effectively tell the larger story of your organization and its products.

Abigail, a young successful businesswoman in the garment industry, would face any challenge, to prove she could run her business as well as anyone else in the market. Initially, all was well, and she built a huge empire based on her marketing capabilities.

In time things began to change for the worse. Sales were dropping, customer ratings were down, profitability was stagnant, employee morale was low and marketing costs were on the rise. But she never quit as she was confident she could overcome the obstacles of a changing business environment or a general slump in the economy.

Abi began to introspect over her situation. What was going wrong; what was she missing; what to do now? Should she hire an external General Manager to manage the running of her company? She finally acknowledged that she required assistance; a set of fresh eyes to look at the situation. Abi, put out a job requirement for an assistant, and found someone with lots of experience, maybe a little outdated, but still valid. It took time for her to realize the potential that Robert could afford her, however she was drawn to his sincere, honest, down to earth personality, the same as the day she interviewed him. Contd...

Robert was a retired sales manager, who was a US army veteran. One day, he walked up to her told her he may know why her organization was suffering.

Robert :- “I’ll cut to the chase, I have been looking over the past marketing plans, the sales figures and customer ratings and have noticed a trend I've seen before elsewhere. We went through similar situations in the jungles of Vietnam. Surprised? Don’t be…. I’ll explain. We were sent on daily patrols in to the jungles, but hardly ever saw the enemy. When we eventually did, the casualties were very high. We found we were sending the bulk of troops, based on faulty intel, looking for the enemy where he wasn’t!! In our case, the company is spending way too much time and resources pursuing wealthy people who don’t spend that much on our products, as opposed to middle class people who actually spend much more on our products and constitute the bulk of our sales. Also our “intel” is coming from the wrong sector, from the ones who only talk but don’t buy! We need to listen to the needs of the customers loyal to us, and meet those needs first….”

It hit Abi immediately, and she made changes accordingly. The rest is history. Contd...

The Key Highlights

✔ The Present: Dealing with low sales, revenue, customer ratings and profits.✔ The Change: Changes to the marketing strategy suggested by Robert.✔ The Future: Improved sales and revenue. Better understanding of what the

core customers want.✔ The Plot: A successful executive wondering why the business was dipping and

how she realized what was going wrong, and what she had to do to deal with it.✔ I/Outer dialogue: Introspection over the current situation.✔ Key named character (s): Abigail, The entrepreneur; Robert, The assistant✔ Conflict, drama & emotion: Feeling of helplessness and depression. Clueless

about why marketing strategies were not working. Almost giving up and making the mistake of recruiting an external General Manager.

✔ The “a-ha” Moment: Robert’s analysis of the current situation.✔ Specific details: The details about the company’s below average performance

on sales, revenue, profitability etc.✔ Message: Believe in yourself. Ensure you have relevant and accurate data to

base your strategies on, and always be open to a fresh perspective on things.

“Storytelling is as old as the campfire, and as new as a tweet. What moves people is someone who is credible.” - Richard Branson

Business Magnate & Founder of The Virgin Group

•

➢ Storytelling is what helps build the Brand Credibility. It also is key in portraying you as a credible champion for the organization, employees, products or services. It requires all the basic elements of a story: characters, plot, challenges, resolution, conflict, stakes, and emotional investment. The solution lies in thinking first about what the audience wants, then establish a theme that’s tied to the organization’s goals or brand promise.

➢ The opposite of a story is the corporate timeline. This is because the timeline uses data points which do not stick. Stories and characters do stick. If you must create a timeline, be a little discriminating about the events you feature. Think about the purpose of your timeline.

➢ A business needs an “origin” story, that explains how and why it was founded, traces its history, communicates its purpose, and offers a glimpse of the people behind the brand. It makes the business more human to potential customers, employees, and other key audiences. Score One - as most of us prefer to deal with other humans, not institutions.

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➢ In today’s marketplace the consumer journey is a long one, which begins with awareness of your company and its products. They have heard your story on the media by word of mouth. They’ve considered a purchase with your company by looking at ads, reading reviews, or through email that they subscribe to. They could go to a retail store or purchase your product online through an e-commerce platform or website.

➢ If you do your job right, they might participate in your community or read the knowledge base of FAQs on your site. If they become loyal customers, they might even advocate for you and your products through their own blog, social networks, or newsletter.

➢ Think about the last big or mid-sized purchase you made. How much did you know about the company and its products/services before you had a face to face meeting with a sales person? How much credibility did the company have in your eyes before you even thought about approaching them for a purchase?

➢ Know Your Market Segments: If you know your market segments and the greatest pain points of that particular demographic, it will help you craft effective stories for those segments.

➢ Create Customer Chemistry: Your marketing stories should have set the stage to create chemistry and affinity within the mind of your buyer. Now your job as the salesperson will be to prompt your potential customer to tell you how he or she is feeling during the sales cycle…not thinking, but feeling. Connecting with your customer is a key part of creating the bond that will make this possible.

➢ Not aware: This consumer doesn’t know anything about your company but has landed on your website. Here you will have a story about what you offer. This story should educate and also entertain.

➢ Aware of a problem: This consumer comes to you with a burning problem and will benefit from a story that shows how other customers have had this same problem and have overcome it through the use of your product.

➢ Aware of a solution: This consumer wants a customized solution for his/her problem and will benefit from a similar story.

➢ Aware of your product/service: This consumer is already inclined to buy your product and will benefit from stories that show the superiority of your product through the eyes of others who have used it.

➢ Educated and aware: This consumer looks for stories that demonstrate how the product/service has made a difference in the lives of others.

What is the Awareness Level?: Since consumers may already have had a lot of exposure to you and your brand in the marketplace already, it’s important to know where they fall on the awareness continuum before you open a sales discussion. There are different levels of consumer awareness:

➢ Use Stories Face to Face: If someone asks you what you do, it’s a great opportunity for you to tell them a story. You can always begin the story and see if there’s interest before telling the entire, more detailed story. If you wear a unique item, you can use that for a story springboard and tie it back to work.

➢ Get Them to Tell You Their Story: When you’re first introduced to someone, your job is to get them to tell you their story. Use the event, their name, something they’re wearing, anything of interest that you can use as a story prompt to get them talking. To reconnect with someone you haven’t talked to in awhile, bring up something you know about them so they will tell you their current stories.

The best salespeople are effective at finding comfortable ways to use storytelling during the process of prospecting.

➢ Use Stories Online: When a prospect contacts you online, ask them what or why they reached out to uncover a story. When communicating online, offer a story that shows information in a new light. When writing blogs or sending out newsletters, use a teaser with a link to a more detailed story.

➢ Uncover Customer Needs: Begin by using story prompts to get the customer to reveal his/her needs and desires. Tell me about: the moment you were spurred to call; the situation that made you start your business; something in your industry that alarms you; the biggest change in your business since last year; what wish you would grant your business if you had a magic wand.

➢ Active Listening: Here are the steps to actively listening for clues from your customer: Ask a story prompt to get your customer telling his/her story, the customer tells a story, you listen without interruption and then ask relevant questions and express appreciation. Then you respond with a story that is appropriate to the needs the customer expressed.

Every sales training handbook will tell you to ask probing questions. However, if you really want to close the sale, you need to get your customer to tell you stories.

➢ Overcome Objections: The four most common types of objections are: Lack of money, Lack of trust in your company or in you, Lack of urgency for a decision, Lack of need for the product. All of these objections can be addressed with well-crafted stories that help your customer shift his or her point of view.

The ultimate sales presentation is when you pitch your ideas or your company to get funding.

➢ Spark Emotions: When trying to get funding or action from others, it’s sometimes better to start with the opportunity they have to make a difference. If you present a story in the standard order, your audience may feel that you’re presenting another problem to them, which feels heavy on their already full plates. Instead, provide a story that shows the opportunity, small actionable steps they can take to have an impact, and a transformational story arc that shows the change in the main character’s life as a result of their actions. Well-crafted stories bring the audience positive emotions.

➢ Spotlight the Challenge: When raising money or requesting resources, focus on the obstacles but make sure it’s clear that with the help of the funder, sponsor, or donor the obstacles will soon be removed. People want their influence to be felt.

➢ Help Supporters Tell Their Stories: Once your cause or organization has supporters and donors, you should incorporate their stories into your story repertoire. Venture capitalists frequently discuss their success stories within the investment community, which will be very helpful to you as a company if their investment has netted returns.

In addition to the business plan and the data you provide to a potential investor, there are four key stories you should offer:

The story of the pain points and opportunities, The story of the future picture if specific action is taken, The story of why you and your company are passionate about your proposed products/services, The story of what you and the funder can accomplish together.

Get People on Board: Sometimes getting a budget within an organization requires that you pitch your story to groups within the organization to get the needed commitments and resources. Such a pitch can be structured similarly to the way you would pitch an outside investor.

➢ Venture Capital: When structuring a presentation to Venture Capitalists include these steps:

✯ memorable introduction, problem/opportunity with your snapshot of the current environment, share the solution you offer and the passion you have for offering it, provide a vision of your company’s future, discuss the story of how their funding will make the vision possible, deliver the proper business plan, data, and action steps, close with an upbeat, inspiring ending that connects with their emotions.

➢ Stories Transform as Your Company Transforms: As your company transforms, your stories will transform as well. The stories you present for your 2nd and 3rd rounds of fund sourcing will differ from your 1st round.

“My name is Deborah Benson. I am a doctor who specializes in the research of Alzheimer’s disease and to finding a way to arrest further progression of the disease and then finding a cure. Even though I work with a reputed hospital, one with its own research wing, funds are always a major roadblock. Especially for a disease like Alzheimer's, about which so little is known even today. Investors are just plain apprehensive and reluctant.

The hospital board recently informed me that they would not be able to fully fund the level of in-depth research that I was doing, in spite of far reaching benefits that the results would yield. I had to start prospecting for potential investors. I began my quest by approaching leading industrialists and presenting my work and targeted objectives to them, seeking their financial support.

As my previous research had already yielded some hopeful results that needed to be tested and approved by the national health ministry, they were sold over the returns on investments. But they still needed some convincing and a final push to commit.” Contd...

“So I decided to share a personal story with them during the pitch, which incidentally, was a key driving factor behind my passion and my mission to find a solution to Alzheimer’s.

My Story as told to them:- My mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, when she was 55. It began with small incidents like her seemingly being disconnected and unable to follow a conversation. It really hit us when, she once forgot her way home from work, a route she followed daily for the past 30 odd years. We visited a specialist at the hospital where I currently work, and learned the news that my mum was in the second stage of Alzheimer's. It struck with devastating force.

The coming years were increasingly difficult. Some things were expected. But some things completely surprised me, like how she lost the ability to get dressed but could still pack her purse. A huge impact of Alzheimer's disease was the effect on mum’s speech and her loss of words. Many a time I felt she could recognize me, but the words to connect fell painfully short of reach. I could see it in her eyes…….

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“Living with a loved one who has Alzheimer's is very challenging, and all you can do is to practice patience and affection. You can scarcely bear it when you see a once vibrant and active personality broken down in such a way. Just stay calm, as what’s the point in getting hyper? They can’t understand and in reality they are helpless to do anything about it.

I lost my mum 7 years after her diagnosis, due to complications with Alzheimer's. Though the pain of finally losing her was intense, what was excruciating were the times I kept losing her with each progressive stage of the disease. I saw the impact it had on my father, her soul mate of 38 years. It was during this period that I was pursuing my medical degree, and it was then that I set my mission to finding a way to combat Alzheimer’s. I owe it to my mother’s memory, that I will do all I can to ease the pain and suffering that my family went through for other who are in similar situations.”

The Key Highlights

✔ The Present: The challenges faced in sourcing funds for Alzheimer’s research.✔ The Change: Making a pitch to potential investors with a personal story.✔ The Future: Securing the funding required to continue the research.✔ The Plot: A doctor who lost her mother to Alzheimer’s makes it her mission to

find a cure and her subsequent struggle to secure the funding.✔ I/Outer dialogue: The narrator's thoughts and her story to the investors?✔ Key named character (s): The narrator, Dr. Deborah Benson.✔ Conflict, drama & emotion: Frustration, pain, personal loss, empathy with

others in similar situations.✔ The “a-ha” Moment: Getting the investors to relate and empathise with her

experience, thus relating to her mission. This increased her credibility with them as they understood driving force behind her dedication and resolve.

✔ Specific details: The progressive deterioration in the narrator’s mother condition and the symptoms.

✔ Message: Be genuine; be authentic; share personal experiences as this will increase empathy and enhance credibility by eliminating ‘fabrication’.

“Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today.” - Robert McKee

Author, Lecturer & Story Consultant

You can use stories to create an inspiring and dynamic vision of the future, which can be used to encourage target audiences to take prompt actions.

➢ Build Meaning: Convince the audience that they are not just laying tracks on the ground, but are building a transcontinental railroad. Look for the analogy that applies to the lesson or message you’re trying to convey.

➢ Present Your Vision: Present your vision in a story that allows the audience to see themselves in it. “A Day in the Life of ” stories and framing your story like a newspaper article on future trends are two ways to achieve this.

➢ Achievable Results: Relate to them, by way of a story, how others have been faced with similar challenges and have stood up to the occasion, to overcome them. You want build your audience’s confidence to the extent that they believe they too can achieve the goals presented to them.

➢ Demonstrate the Culture: You can use stories about other organizations or your own stellar employees to demonstrate the culture that you want to attain in your own organization.

➢ Defining Values and Principles: Use stories to introduce and reinforce values and principles that you set as part of your organizational culture. Examples such as integrity, hard work, persistence, tenacity, and putting the customer first.

➢ Get Personal: Don’t hesitate or shy away from sharing personal stories across the organization. Personal stories help you to build closer working relationships with your colleagues at work, thus strengthening collaboration and team spirit with seniors, juniors and peers.

You can effectively use stories to create a winning corporate culture. This will facilitate your employees or customers to relate to the organizational values and culture.

➢ Good Times and Bad: There are endless distractions that keep employees from performing at their best level. If economic times are bad, it’s even more difficult to keep employees focused. You can use inspirational stories to motivate employees or others in your audience to stay motivated and give a specific goal or cause their best efforts.

➢ Perseverance: Perseverance after repeated failures is critical to the success of every great endeavor. Use the stories from other organizations or your own organization to motivate others and give them the desire and the power to persevere despite great obstacles.

➢ Passion and Purpose: You can’t force people to love their jobs, so,

alternatively but try to find out what motivates your colleagues at work. Use their stories about why they love their jobs to inspire others. Customer stories about the meaning your products and services have had for them also make powerful stories.

You can use stories to energize and provide people with the boost to tackle difficult endeavors.

➢ Failure Stories: None of us wants to use our failures as fuel. However failure stories and the eventual outcomes can be extremely helpful for others understand key risks that can impede success.

➢ Feedback and Coaching: It’s difficult for any of us to accept negative or corrective feedback. Stories about others in similar situations can take the sting out of offering constructive feedback. It will also contribute to the audience being more receptive and the feedback and lesson much easy to remember.

➢ Problem Solving: Complex problems are easier to solve when they are broken down into bite-sized pieces. Use stories to provide problem-solving techniques that can be applied to many different life and business situations.

You can use stories to inform and educate others on how they can improve their lives. This could be through everyday incidents, learning from other’s mistakes experiences and providing them with universal tools of the trade for them to adopt for their requirements.

➢ Outside the Box Stories: Outside-the-box stories provide inspiration for creativity and innovation as well as for problem solving.

➢ Look with New Eyes: Sometimes innovation is not just creating something that hasn’t been conceived or invented before. It may just involve looking at something old with a new perspective and thinking of ways to improve and make it better. Stories about such inventions can inspire others to look at how the everyday items around them can be transformed.

➢ Fueling Creativity: Passion fuels innovation and creativity. Ignite the passion that your audience has for the dreams they have yet to create, with the application of stories. Inside everyone are hidden desires to dream bigger and create more. Ignite that passion with inspirational stories about leaders who have created new inventions and processes or inspired others to achieve their dreams and what they feel passionately about.

You can use stories to inspire creativity and foster a spirit of innovation.

Jim Corbett was a British hunter, tracker, naturalist, and author, born in India, who was frequently called upon by the government to hunt man-eating tigers and leopards in India. He held the rank of colonel in the Indian Army. He was fascinated by the forests and wildlife in India. Through frequent excursions, he learned to identify most animals and birds by their calls, and became a good tracker and hunter. Though he was one of the most recognized hunters in the world, in the end he was the animals greatest defender. No one else could be a greater ambassador for wildlife than Jim Corbett.

Corbett was one of the pioneers in the fight to against poaching and trophy hunting. His primary mission, towards the latter part of his life, was to champion the conservation of wildlife in India. He started out with a rifle in hand, but as time passed, irrespective of his accomplishments, he set down the rifle for a camera. That was what a ‘shot’ meant to him from then on. He was key in lobbying the Government of India to take measures to preserve the wildlife of India from extinction. In this endeavor he used storytelling to gain support from the citizens of India to pressure the authorities into action.

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His stories were authentic and realistic in their portrayal of an India that very few were privy to. They transported the audience/readers to a world of jungles teeming with a plethora of wildlife, adventure and thrills. He captivated the audience’s interest in the wildlife and got them to appreciate the wonders of the natural world, and relate to the plight of the animals. This is an example of his stories during a conference:-

“This incident played out a couple of years ago when I was spending some time with the authorities of a national park trying to figure out ways by which we could prevent the poaching of the Bengal tiger, which was heading towards becoming an endangered species. We were in a meeting when we received news that local rangers had found the carcass of a recently shot tigress. On arriving at the scene we found that the appearance of the rangers had scared the poachers away before they could skin the tigress. While examining the carcass, we heard faint cries coming from the neighbouring bushes. On inspection, we realised the tigress was a mother and in the bush were three of her tiny, now orphaned, cubs. Had the rangers not arrived in time, not only would the poachers have skinned the tigress, but may have planned a similar fate for her tiny cubs as well. Even now, if they were not cared for by humans, they would not survive the next two days” Contd...

“As we were experienced trackers, we followed the trail of the poachers and tracked them down to their village. Here, the authorities found a hut filled with the skins and bones of almost 30-odd tigers. It was a pitiful sight to see what these majestic creatures were reduced to in the pursuit of profit. Skins for trophies, bones and other body parts for foolish and unfounded medicinal beliefs like boosting and increasing libido!! What was even more heart-rending was the fact that it was uncertain how many other tigers were impacted by the slaughter of each one of these tigers. An example being the three tiny cubs who would have perished had they not been found due to the killing of the tigress.”

It was these stories along with the pictures he had taken, that often left the audience in tears. Corbett tapped into the emotional quotient of the audiences. By getting them to empathise with the plight of these majestic creatures, he had already almost won them over to his cause. His undivided perseverance finally won over the public support of the citizens of India. It pressured the Indian Government to put many species on the critically endangered list and to put in place measures to ensure the conservation and continuation of the species.

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The Key Highlights

✔ The Present: The struggle against poaching and the challenges involved in securing government support for conservation.

✔ The Change: Corbett’s publication of his omnibus’ - Over 50 authentic stories.✔ The Future: Got the Indian government to act based on pressure from the

Indian public.✔ The Plot: A world famous hunter laying down his rifle in pursuit of wildlife

conservation and his struggles to garner public and government support for his cause.

✔ I/Outer dialogue: Introspection by Corbett on the non-essential hunting of animals (man-eaters were the exception to this).

✔ Key named character (s): Jim Corbett.✔ Conflict, drama & emotion: Frustration, anger, helplessness, pity and

sadness.✔ The “a-ha” Moment: Corbett’s transformation from hunter to conservationist.✔ Specific details: Description of the cubs and the contents of the hut.✔ Message: Understand the impact of your actions and how they would

adversely impact the world around you.

“YOU HAVE TO TELL A STORY BEFORE YOU CAN SELL A STORY.” - Beth Comstock

Author, Lecturer & Story Consultant

Stories That Stick: How Storytelling Can Captivate Customers, Influence Audiences, and Transform Your Business - Kindra Hall

Unleash the Power of Storytelling: Win Hearts, Change Minds, Get Results – Rob Biesenbach

Long Story Short: The Only Storytelling Guide You'll Ever Need - Margot Leitman

Pixar Storytelling: Rules for Effective Storytelling Based on Pixar's Greatest Films – Dean Movshovitz

Wired for Story: Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence – Lisa Cron

Business Storytelling For Dummies – Karen Dietz & Lori Silverman

Stories at Work: Unlock the Secret to Business Storytelling – Indranil Chakraborty

Seven Stories Every Salesperson Must Tell – Mike Adams

Putting Stories to Work: Mastering Business Storytelling – Shawn Callahan

The Definitive Guide to Storytelling in Business: A how-to guide in rising above the noise and making an impact – Matthew Woodget

The Storytelling Method: Steps To Maximize a Simple Story and Make It Powerful, Inspiring, and Unforgettable (An Easy Way To Make Your Human-Data Story Worthy to Teach, Engage & Persuade) – Matt Morris