Telling stories

Passionate entrepreneurs and business leaders are usually very good at talking about their product, its features, technical specifications and how its performance is better than of others in the market. They become much more effective when they grab and hold their audience’s attention and let them feel an emotional connection with what they are saying.

One sure-fire way to draw your listeners in is to tell them a story. Remember that people love stories; we are perhaps hardwired to listen to stories. The tale does not have to be long; it can be a short anecdote too.

Here are some of the things to keep in mind when telling a story:

• Select from your personal experiences – this approach has several advantages: your audience will almost certainly not have heard it before, you will remember all the details and your own emotional reactions to the story as you tell it will be authentic.
• Talk about something that others can easily relate to, for example, the first day at a company, or the time you dealt with an irate customer, or the time you received empathy and support from a colleague, or a day when everything went bad. Can your story take your audience on a short journey? Can you let them walk in your shoes for a bit?
• There don’t have to be heroes or villains in your story. It is enough if your story is about a time when you (or your team) set out to do something, the challenges you faced and what you did to overcome them. A story is interesting only when there is an obstacle and something new happens.
• Are the stakes in the story high enough for the audience to care? While your story may not feature a life-or-death decision, a scenario that required you to make a consequential choice will arouse the audience’s emotions, focus their attention on you and make them wonder, “what will happen next?”
• Time permitting, can you show, not tell? By giving multiple examples of how your team faced challenges, you will be showing your audience how resilient or creative your team is. By talking about how your product helped multiple customers deal with their needs, you will be showing how versatile your product is.
• Make sure your story is connected to the agenda of the meeting. If your stories are entertaining but are not relevant to your meeting’s agenda, you risk offending people who value their time. They will wonder if you really mean business.

The phrase for ‘telling stories’ in Tamil carries with it a whiff of disapproval; it suggests that the talker is glib, that the tales are tall and that we should perhaps be on guard. And yet, if we tell our personal stories straight, with clear language, in an active voice and with simple descriptions of our emotions and actions, we will connect with our audience. Long after the meeting, they will remember how you made them feel more than the facts and figures you gave them. They will see us more clearly, beyond what our company’s ‘About Us’ page holds. They will see what went into the creation of our product or service. They will even understand why we do what we do. This can be the first step to building interest in us, our company and our offerings.

What have you done to hold your audience’s attention? What do you do to inject life into your presentations? I would like to hear from you.