As popular author, lecturer and story consultant Robert McKee so aptly put it ‘Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today.’ The power of storytelling on the human mind starts from childhood and never loses its grip even as people grow older. Stories of courage and valour, love, hope, determination, overcoming the odds and succeeding, humour, disappointment followed by joy etc have had an impact on peoples’ minds and subsequently influenced their lives.
Storytelling in the Business World
Seeing the major impact of storytelling on shaping peoples’ thoughts and actions it is only natural that it has become an important tool in the business world also. Storytelling in any form of business communication either with employees, customers or prospective clients acts as a means to get an organisation’s message across.
Why Storytelling will Work for You
As an entrepreneur looking to grow your business, storytelling is especially important for you. During a sales pitch, you need your prospective client to develop a preference for your product or service, thus giving you an edge over your competitors. To achieve this you need your sales presentation to be engaging enough to capture and retain your prospective client’s attention right from start to finish and as a means to do so nothing works better than storytelling. A genuine engaging story will help establish an environment of trust where your prospective client will be inclined to view your sales pitch in a more favourable light.
Let us start by looking at one of the most common storylines used and then see how you can go about incorporating that storyline into your sales presentations.
Storyline to Adopt
Business stories follow the same storylines as normal stories. One of the oldest and most common storyline is the one where the protagonist encounters numerous challenges and obstacles in their journey to achieve their goal. We, the reader (or audience) root for them as they overcome these challenges and emerge victorious. Usually there is an ally who assists the protagonist in achieving this goal. This is the premise upon which numerous storybooks, movies and plays have been based.
Incorporating this Storyline into Your Presentation
Characters
- The Protagonist – Your Prospective Client
The very reason for your presentation is the prospective client, so make it all about them. Do your homework regarding their growth story till date. Their successes, trials or any particular storm they weathered successfully and frame your storyline around this information. - The Trusty Ally – Your organisation via the product or service you offer
Highlight how your product or service will help the prospective client in achieving their business goals.
The Storyline
It is your prospective client’s growth story and the role you play in it.
While appreciating their strength in overcoming past obstacles and growing successfully, show them how your product or service will aid them in becoming stronger and achieving exponential growth in the future.
So as Robert McKee said use the power of storytelling to put forth your ideas to the client and thereby increase your chance to turn them into a reality.
