Become a Storyteller

So how can you get inside the heads of your customers and potential customers, to find out why they make the decisions they do and even what would encourage them to potentially make different choices? Tell their stories.

Stories are the fundamental way we make sense of the world. It’s generally how we create our identities (“This is where I started from and here’s what happened to me along the way…”). It’s how we communicate values (e.g., Bible stories), entertain ourselves (books, television), and learn new things (“it’s like when …”). I even read an article recently about how our presidential candidates may be competing more on “literary narrative” than anything else.

Stories “catalyze understanding”… they force the listener to participate in figuring out what is being said…”what’s her point in telling me this story?”… which means the listener first has to relate it to their own experience….to put themselves in the story.

Stories also illuminate needs and motivations that might otherwise be hard to articulate, and meeting unarticulated needs can often lead to breakthrough opportunities (think Netflix and iPod). It seems a simple concept, to step into the customers’ shoes, but surprisingly few companies are good at it. According to Patricia Seybold (who has many bright things to say about understanding customers), “[Most companies are] so focused on fine-tuning their own offerings that they’ve failed to see how those products and services fit into the real lives of their customers.“

The idea behind telling the customer story is to put you into their story. If you can relate convincingly to their story… who they are, what motivates them, the context of their daily lives, how they come into contact with your product or service, how they perceive it and why, what they do and why… then you’ve got it. You should be able to predict the outcome of customer-impacting investment scenarios just by checking your gut. Hey, if you can identify so well with Tony Soprano, you can “get” your customers.

A recent company I worked with, a firm that sold consumer software to retail banks, had, before I started, numerous product demos, pro forma arguments, positive research results (even from live pilots) and a good-sized sales team with some impressive credentials. Yet they still hadn’t managed a new client sale in a year and half. After talking with some people both inside and outside the company, I helped them to tell the customer story (through a video demo) that finally created the “I get it” moment for clients and customers alike (and even, to a surprising degree, for the employees!). This simple story led directly to 6 new client sales in the next 6 months, in affect doubling the company’s annual revenues for the year. That’s the power of story.