StoryQuest Blog

If you seek a way to efficiently and effectively communicate a business proposition to a skeptical staff, client, or partner (and aren’t we all)– then tell a story. Forget about children’s stories, fiction, or the campfire story–good business stories deliver the context, content and ultimately the credibility you need to educate, motivate and drive action. There are lots of reasons to share business stories, but they have such power for three reasons.

Stories Are Efficient
A business narrative makes it possible to express complex ideas in simple and concrete examples. Explaining concepts like solution selling, relationship building and value propositions in abstract terms can be a lengthy endeavor. A story provides context for these ideas, and an example, in the form of a life experience.

Tim Keelan, founder and CEO of StoryQuest, states, “Most of what people are selling in business is not a piece of hardware that can be measured. Today, everybody is selling a ’solution.’ In order to articulate the effectiveness of your solution, you’ve got to put it in a context. Story puts business in a context that makes it real.”

Stories Are Effective
Stories also work for business because they are effective at connecting with people on many levels – including logical, personal, and emotional levels. Facts and figures are certainly necessary, but at the end of the day, decisions are made with the gut. Do you believe a product or service will help you? Can you trust the vendor? Will it provide the value you expect? These are the questions we ask ourselves before we buy. Marketing slicks and spread sheets provide selected slices of information, but stories put that information in context, in action and into the emotions of your audience. Story speaks to the emotional component of decision making.

In addition, a story that precedes factual statements influences interpretation. You can have a multitude of facts and statistics, but it isn’t guaranteed that your listener will interpret those facts in your favor. Story gives a direction to the facts you present.

Stories Establish Credibility
Before you attempt to influence anyone you need to establish enough trust to successfully deliver your message. Hearing your story is as close as clients can get to first-hand experience of watching you “walk the walk.” It is the stories we tell, face to face, that create credibility.

Anne Simmons, author of The Story Factor, states “People don’t want more information. They are up to their eyeballs in information. They want faith-faith in you, your goals, your success, in the story you tell. It is faith that moves mountains, not facts… Story is your path to creating faith.”

The Magic is in the Telling
There is the story, and the telling of the story and they are very different things. A good story told poorly is a poor experience for your listener. A poor story told well can still connect and drive action.

The key to telling a good story is knowing it. Sales and business people tell stories every day. All too often they tell them poorly. They tell partial stories, dispassionate stories, or simply the wrong story for the moment. Most of the time, it is because they lack the real information that drives their own understanding and belief in the story. How can you expect your sales people to share powerful stories when they don’t know or believe them?

You can share both your stories and the telling of those stories so that sales people and customers will understand, believe and take action.

Whether spoken in person or on an audio file, the actual telling of the story yields dynamic results. According to Keelan, “The telling of the story allows you to convey conviction and confidence. It allows listeners to use their own judgment, not just of the facts but also the storyteller. Your first judgment of any piece of information is not the content, it’s the source. When spoken, storytelling allows the listener to judge whether the speaker is credible or believable. Minus that judgment, its value as a communication tool drops substantially.” What makes junk mail junk? It’s not merely the content. What makes it junk is that the source is unknown or untrustworthy.

Audio storytelling has another practical advantage. According to neurologists, it takes the average reader approximately 28 percent longer to understand the written word than to understand the same word when spoken. Spoken narratives grant easier access to your business content.

To get to the heart of your value propositions, consider your business stories. When shared with confidence and passion, those stories can invoke a power far greater than the sum of the facts presented. Use your stories and allow your audience (internal and external audiences) to judge, assign credibility, and ultimately believe and participate in your story.

Learn more about how StoryQuest harvests business narratives

Tim Keelan is the founder of StoryQuest, Inc. a Chicago-based firm that produces peer-based mobile audio learning and communication tools. You can reach Tim at tkeelan@storyquest.us or by calling StoryQuest at 312-258-0111