Sales Concepts and Apps

Story Telling to Story Selling

Story Telling / Story Selling

Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more

meaningful experience. They are the currency of human contact.

—Robert McKee

Story Telling / Story Selling

So how do you create stories that have an impact and ideas that stick with the listener?

In Made to Stick Chip and Dan Heath outline six basic principles

Simplicity

Unexpectedness

Concreteness

Credibility

Emotions

Stories

Story Telling / Story SellingAn example of a story made to stick

The Center for Science in The Public Interest had to convey the message that the 37 grams of saturated fat in a medium bag of movie buttered popcorn is unhealthy – the daily recommended max is 20 grams

The message - "A medium-sized 'butter' popcorn at a typical neighborhood movie theater contains more artery-clogging fat than a bacon-and-eggs breakfast, a Big Mac and fries for lunch, and a steak dinner with all the trimmings - combined!“

The message stuck!

Story Telling / Story SellingBeyond Delivery and Repetition

Often little attention is paid to making ideas stick Most often the focus is on delivery Another concerns knowing your audience so you can tailor your communication Finally there's the most common refrain: use repetition, repetition, repetition.

This set of advice wouldn't have helped to figure out the best way to explain that movie popcorn is really unhealthy.

Story Telling / Story SellingSix principles tend to be at work when ideas stick:

Simplicity - To strip an idea down to its core, we must be masters of exclusion. We must relentlessly prioritize.

Unexpectedness - We need to violate people's expectations. We need to be counterintuitive. We must generate interest and curiosity

Robert McKee, the screenwriting guru, says, "Story works by posing questions and opening situations."

Simple

Compact

Simple

Unexpected

Story Telling / Story SellingSix principles tend to be at work when ideas stick:

Concreteness - We must explain our ideas in terms of human actions, in terms of sensory information e.g. "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush."

Credibility - Sticky ideas have to carry their own credentials. We need ways to help people test our ideas for themselves - a "try before you buy" philosophy.

Simplicity

Unexpectedness

Concreteness

Credibility

Emotions

Stories

Concrete

“A bird in the hand

is worth 2 in the bush”

Proverb

Credible

Story Telling / Story SellingSix principles tend to be at work when ideas stick:

Emotions. How do we get people to care about our ideas? We make them feel something and often the hard part is finding the right emotion to harness

Stories. How do we get people to act on our ideas? We tell stories. Firefighters naturally swap stories after every fire, and by doing so they multiply their experience. After years of hearing stories, they better understand situations they might confront during a fire and the appropriate responses to those situations.

Emotions

Stories

Because there is a natural storytelling urge and ability in all human beings, even just a little nurturing of this impulse can bring about astonishing and delightful results. —Nancy Mellon, The Art of Storytelling

Story Telling / Story SellingThe Curse of Knowledge.

Once we know something, we find it hard to imagine what it's like not to know it.

Our knowledge has "cursed" us - it becomes difficult for us to share our knowledge with others, because we can't readily create our listeners' state of mind.

To beat the Curse of Knowledge, you must take your ideas and transform them so they're sticky for listeners, using the six principles.

Story Telling / Story SellingThe Curse of Knowledge.

THE Low Fare Airline

Southwest

1000’s employees must know it

Informs decision making

The Low Fare Airline = Core

Fun place to work = next circle

Simple and reflect commander’s intent

"Comprehensive community building like in Victorian

Landcare, lends itself to a return on investment rationale that can be

modeled on current best practice"

Curse of Knowledge

“Maximizing shareholder

value” CEO its ok

… Flight attendant its not

Simplicity

Unexpectedness

Concreteness

Credibility

Emotions

Stories

“A healthy 17-year-old heart pumped the gift of life through 34 year-old

Bruce Murray, following a four-hour transplant that doctors said went

without a hitch.”Award Winning

Journalist Lead.

Simple

Depicts 106,000 aluminum cans, the number used in the US every thirty seconds.

Story Boarding

Storyboards are graphic organizers such as a series of illustrations or images displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing a motion picture, animation, motion graphic or interactive media sequence, including website interactivity.

A common misconception is that storyboards are not used in theatre. They are frequently special tools that directors and playwrights use to understand the layout of the scene.

Story Boarding Overview

Storyboards go back to the very beginnings of cinema, with Sergei Eisenstein using the technique. In the world of animation, Walt Disney and his staff developed a Story Board system in 1928

Story Boarding Overview

Story-Boarding is a popular management told to facilitate the creative-thinking process.It is like taking your thoughts spreading them out on a wall as you work on a project.

Story Boarding Overview

When you put ideas up on Story Boards, you begin to see interconnections, how one idea relates to another, and how all the pieces come together.

Story Boarding Overview

Start with a topic card, and under the topic card, place header cards containing general points, categories, considerations, etc that will come up.

Story Boarding Overview

Under the header cards you will put sub-heading cards containing the ideas that fall under each header; they're the details ideas generated in the creative-thinking session, ideas that develop or support the headers

Story Boarding Overview

Story Boarding works well in group sessions.

During a story-boarding session, consider all ideas relevant, no matter how impractical they appear.

Story Boarding Overview

Leonardo da Vinci used to put ideas up on the wall and examine the layout. Story-Boards give total immersion in a problem as you can see how everything fits together.

Story Boarding

Form small working groupsUsing the index cards, start to write your script in story board format.Consider audienceShare collective experiencesIdentify subject matter experts within the room

Story Boarding

Story Boarding

Remember the six principles from Made to Stick

SimplicityUnexpectednessConcretenessCredibilityEmotionsStories