Tell me a story

Imagine that you’ve been tasked with trying to sell a new product or service, or that you’ve been told to try and persuade someone round to a particular point of view on a given topic. How might you go about it?

Chances are you might start by carrying out some background research. This might involve collating some data — dates and facts and statistics and whatnot. You might then go through your notes, cut out some bits, expand on others, and generally try to order your arguments into a logical flow. To finish, perhaps you might then dump it all into a presentation.

Sounds like a reasonable enough approach, doesn’t it? If someone is unsure about something, then surely what they must need is more facts. After all, we’re intelligent, rational beings and the way we make decisions is to assimilate all relevant data, coolly weigh up the pros and the cons, and then make an objective decision.

Right?

Well, I’m not so sure.

You see, like many people, I sit through any number of presentations at work, and in the media I daily see facts and figures on all sorts of topics. Now clearly we need to communicate information, and having accurate and up-to-date data is very useful. But here’s my observation: rarely do these stats and charts alone move me. They might reinforce my existing opinions, but they don’t often seem to challenge my thinking. To put it another way, when I wake in the middle of the night and cannot get back to sleep, it’s seldom graphs and statistics that came back to my mind.

“Tell me a fact and I’ll learn. Tell me a truth and I’ll believe. But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever.” (Indian proverb)

In our modern scientific world I think we sometimes forget that humans are far more complex than machines. Yes we do think, but we also feel. Yes we are rational, but we are also relational.

In this sense, a fact or a statement is only really interesting to me if I can in some way anchor it to something (or someone) that I already care about. One implication of this is that if you really want to impact someone, you need to communicate with them in a way that’s personal and that they can relate to.

And this is where storytelling comes in. Let me give you an example.

I was recently in the supermarket, and one of things I wanted to pick up was some sausages. When I wandered over to the relevant aisle I was met with a huge selection of pork, beef, lamb, and vegetarian sausages. Quickly scanning the options, I narrowed it down to some pork and apple sausages, but even so there were still three potential packets to choose from. Apart from displaying different brand names and logos, the first two packets essentially just conveyed the same basic information, that is: this is a packet of pork and apple sausages. The third packet, on the other hand, offered me something quite different.

On the front of the packet was not a photo of sausages, but a photo of a farmer out in his field, feeding his pigs. The farmer, who looked strong and healthy, was looking not at the camera but at his livestock, while the pigs seemed to be happily snorting around their green space. What’s more, it was clear that this wasn’t just any old photo-of-farmer-and-pigs sourced from a stock photography vault. No, below the photo I learned that this was a certain named farmer, from a certain named farm in Lincolnshire, where the same family have apparently been breeding pigs for three generations.

Some thought had also gone into the wording used on this packet. In an elegant font, terms such as “outdoor-reared” and “quality” were prominently displayed, reinforcing in language some of the messages that the visual imagery had also sought to convey.

My point here is that this third packet of sausages did not merely describe its contents; it had a story to tell me. If I chose to have bangers and mash for dinner, I could do so safe in the knowledge that these sausages were produced by a real person — a person with a name I knew and a face that I’d seen and a backstory that was now (at least in part) known to me. What this packet told me was that these sausages were made from healthy pigs who had been well looked after and given a good life.

Needless to say, it was this packet of pork and apple sausages that ended up in my trolley (and later, my belly).

Storytelling is of course much used in advertising. We all know this, and many of us probably feel a healthy degree of cynicism about adverts in general and the sneaky tricks that advertisers try to pull on us. However, as demonstrated in my trip to the supermarket, a compelling story is still, well, a compelling story.

Sadly, so often when companies market their products and services they focus exclusively on the specifics of what the product or service does without any reference to the value that the product or service delivers to the customer.

While a mediocre home furniture shop might sell comfortable beds, a more inspired retailer will offer their customers the opportunity to buy a good night’s sleep.

If you think about it, buying a life insurance policy is in one sense never really the end goal for anyone; what people are actually after is security and peace of mind. And the insurance company that recognises this is, I suggest, much more likely to be successful in attracting customers.

So the next time you are asked to persuade someone of something, first pause and ask yourself: What is this person already interested in, and how might what I’ve got to offer figure in that story?