Storytelling in Sales and Marketing

Discuss how how storytelling in business can drive better results.

Humans have always told stories and they're a vital part of our daily communication, but stories have meaning beyond entertainment value. In fact, storytelling is a strong business skill and when implemented effectively, it can boost a business in a number of ways, such as improving customer loyalty, creating a strong marketing strategy, increasing profit and so on. When you come up with an idea for your business there will be a story behind it - whether it's to do with developing a new product or growing your business. Tell this story and provide the context so your customers and stakeholders understand why your service or product is worth buying/investing in. Your idea has been created to solve a problem so tell the story of how you were affected by this problem and how this led to your product/service. Ensure that you're making the story relatable to the audience by using real-life situations as this makes it easier to see why your goods will add value to their lives. Using storytelling in this way helps the audience to connect with you so they trust you, the human, and therefore they trust the brand. This is especially the case when the story is very relatable, which also has the added benefit of being easier to understand and more memorable as it's personally relevant - the audience can see themselves as the character in the story.

Discuss how to choose the style in which you tell the story.

#1: Set The Parameters

·        Who is telling the story?

·        Why is the story being told?

·        When and where is the story taking place?

·        Who are the people in the story?

·        What are the people trying to achieve?

·        What challenges are faced?

Parameters will help you develop an engaging story that makes sense to your audience. Set the scene so that consumers know exactly what you’re talking about. Most importantly, establish why you’re telling them this story. This will guide the audience through the narrative and hook them all the way to the end.

#2: Be Authentic

Authentic storytelling is key to gaining consumer trust. Don’t try to fool your audience with an over-the-top tale. Customers know when you try to pull a fast one on them, and they don’t appreciate it.

#3: Have A Clear Outcome

A great business story leaves your audience with something. What lesson was learned in the story, and what should consumers learn from hearing it?

Business stories should have a clear outcome. Provide a hopeful, thought-provoking message with actionable points that compel your audience to connect with your brand.

#4: Be Consistent

A disorganized brand story leaves customers confused and uninterested. Make sure your brand is consistent across all communication channels. Use the same colors, logo, and slogan for digital and print marketing materials. The repetition of images and verbiage associated with your business creates brand awareness.

#5: Get Customers Involved

Use business storytelling to strike an emotional connection with customers. Talk about how an event related to your business affected you and what you learned. This creates an immediate response that makes your story memorable and shareable.

Discuss how to use a springboard story to communicate a complex new idea and inspire action.

Storytelling should be incorporated in many of the implementation steps, activities, and components. A springboard story should be used to motivate the senior executive to approve the initiative and provide the 10 Commitments. As described in the two Business Innovation Factory articles, narrative plays an important role in innovation. Communities can be nurtured by having members tell stories of who they are and knowledge-sharing stories about what they have learned. The effectiveness of training and communications will be enhanced by using narratives rather than dry bullet points. For example, instead of creating the usual PowerPoint slides to present the KM program, tell the stories of some typical users and how they apply the components of the KM program to help them do their jobs. As organizations start on their knowledge journey, they inevitably find great difficulties in communicating complicated ideas through abstract forms of communication. This is even more true where this knowledge journey also implies large-scale changes in behavior and understanding of the mission of the organization. Telling stories that build on real knowledge sharing situations, enables individuals to gather in some of the understanding of the storyteller as well as recast the story into their own contextual work environment; hence adding their own understanding to the process. Organizations are finding that the marriage of narrative and abstract communications provides a more powerful tool for sharing knowledge than merely abstract communications.

Discuss when it is appropriate to tell the story of who you are .

Well I think the time to tell stories to our co-workers and peers all the time – to persuade someone to support company project, to explain to an employees how they important for the company or to inspire a team that is facing challenges.