The Power of Stories

Grant Leboff: So Michael, one of the things that you talk about in your book, which is very important from the marketing point of view as well, is the power of stories when you’re answering questions. Tell me a bit more about how that works.

Michael Dodd: Well people like stories, you know? Kids like fairy tales when they’re young, and all through our life, really, we do like the idea of hearing stories, and in the context of a great answer, a story is typically a real-life example that you can actually picture in your head. Often you want to end your great answers on little stories so that you’re not just saying, “This is the case,” you’re actually showing, rather than telling.

The story, when you’re actually spelling the details about this particular client had a particular problem and we invented the XYZ package for him, and it solved his problem, and now he’s making five times more money than ever before.

When you’re actually spelling it out, and putting in more details than I have there, it sticks in the brain, and people remember it, and they’re more likely to tell other people as well, which in the marketing context, is what you want.

Grant Leboff: Absolutely. If you’re a business owner, and you’re going to be interviewed, how does one, if they’re not used to this kind of thing, how does one go about identifying what those good stories might be?

Michael Dodd: Well you actually want to be thinking, surely our company has done some good things for people. Let’s hope that those watching this have actually had that experience, and you want to be picking out those treasures. I actually say, you want to be building up a treasure chest of great examples.

You want to be particularly making sure you’re often throwing out the older ones and bringing in the newer ones, and then when you’re asked a question, you can just dip straight into that treasure chest.

When you’re under pressure, which people often feel when they’re in front of a live audience, or when they’re on television, it’s often really gratifying to know, “Ah, they’ve asked me that question. I’ve got just the right example to illustrate my point.”

If you actually make a point of having a box on your desk which you stick little details of examples in, or open a file on your computer, then you’ve got a great treasure chest to dip into, and that will fuel and make your great answers really memorable.

Grant Leboff: Is there any technique? Let’s say you’ve got your stories, you know, your business owner’s got their nuggets of information and their case studies and experiences. Is there any good techniques to telling a story well? You’ve got the bones of information, but how do you put that together to make it really work?

Michael Dodd: What you often want to do is like a lot of novels do, really, although obviously you need to tell only exact truths, but you want to be outlining what the problem is. When you get really good at it, often it’s a matter of this was the problem and here our company XYZ created the ABC solution, ta-da! and this had this effect on the client.

That’s good, but often just like a real-life story where things go wrong, you actually don’t want to make it sound too easy or too good. And often, if you actually look at those cases where you have done something really good for your clients, or sold something that proved really useful to a customer, often the journey wasn’t perfectly smooth.

Within that story, it is good to give perhaps one or two highs and lows along the way so that you are, like a really good fairy tale, taking them down and building them up before you reach the live happily ever after part.

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