How to know if your business is telling its most effective stories—and what to do if it isn’t

It will take you less than five minutes to answer these questions. No scoresheet is required.

     Your answers will tell you if your business is telling effective stories, or if you are just wasting your breath—and your money.

Do your stories pave the way for your sales force?

Good stories should pave the way for your sales force. Not only should your stories make your company familiar to your prospects, they should attract good leads, presell your product or service, and create an environment where your salespeople are welcomed, not just tolerated.

The right kind of stories can make even the most diligent salesperson better. The best stories reach all the people who influence the decision to buy. Even your best salespeople can’t always do that. If your story doesn’t open the right door for your sales force, then they can’t work as hard as they should.

Are your stories interesting and worth sharing?

It saves you time, money, and effort if you can trust your stories to promote your business through word-of-mouth advertising or social media. Consider Tesla—a company without a formal advertising department—which tells stories about changing the world through innovation. Or Airbnb, whose hosts submit “community stories” to highlight the freedom and sense of belonging that the company wants to foster.

Do your stories use the right kinds of emotion?

In professional settings, it’s easy to restrain emotion for fear of giving the wrong impression. Your stories should be using emotion judiciously, managing the peaks and valleys that are important to engagement in your messaging. It’s important to humanize your company by aligning the kinds of emotions in your stories with the product or service you’re trying to sell.

In the video above, Google tells a longer-form story that beautifully links its many “Search” functions to real-life human connection. The diaper brand Huggies aligns its stories with scientific research on the developmental power of touch on an infant’s development, beginning its stories with the irresistible hook, “What happens next . . . Can change a baby’s life.”

Does your business tell stories internally as well as externally?

Businesses that foster a storytelling culture are more profitable than those that don’t. Their employees are happier, healthier, and more loyal. Enterprise software giant SAP commissioned a study that found if employee engagement went up just 1%, it would mean 45 million euros in additional operating profit. In larger corporations especially, people can feel disconnected from a greater purpose. Organizations with tens of thousands of members, like USPS and IBEW, use stories internally to promote core values from a personal voice. First-person narratives stand out far more than bullet points of goals and objectives.

Do you regularly review and revise your stories?

Some stories—like the “signature stories” of companies like Molson or L.L. Bean—can be perennial favorites, and don’t need to be changed. The best stories have a feeling of timelessness but are also relevant to our era. Often, stories need to be adapted for different situations, or as a reaction to external shocks and shifting cultural tastes. Some companies respond to perceived market desires, like consumer healthcare brands such as Gillette and Dove that embrace stories of social justice. Other stories need tweaking—a single word can make all the difference. Apple revamped its brand messaging by changing its iconic “Think Different” to “Live Different,” a seemingly small change that had a big impact on the kinds of stories it told about the way its customers engage (and overengage) with digital devices.

Are your stories rich with specifics—or bland with generalities?

The best stories are full of meaningful detail. The best storytellers know which details to choose and how to deliver them—and know how to change their delivery based on the audience and what you want that audience to do.

Business often get caught up in telling about “passion” or “quality” when they would be better off showing, through compelling stories, those very same qualities. GoodLife Fitness used #ChangeYourStory to share the real-life transformations achieved by its members, while producing an inspiring video series of outstanding journeys to better health and wellness. The members—and the results—spoke for themselves.

Are your stories based in research and experience?

Your stories should be based on proven strategy and tactics, not guesswork. There are universal triggers for human emotion. These triggers can be learned and put into practice across all the stories in your organization.

The more emotion you feel when you encounter a story, the more absorbed in it you become. More absorption means more behavioral change. You need to be aware of precedents, of what has worked in the past and what hasn’t worked. This article, for instance, borrows its form and tone from a very old ad by Ogilvy & Mather. Why? If you’re still reading, you know why—because it works. The best stories are based on a similar awareness of adapting the past to the present, in knowing what is likely to work now and in the future.

If you’re unsatisfied with your answers to these questions, the right storytelling workshop can help. Click here to get in touch.