The power of storytelling is nearly infinite. It’s not merely about driving leads and sales, but can also play a prominent role in your brand building efforts. After all, storytelling is designed to stick with the consumer, and that’s what you want for your brand.
In order to maximize your brand building capabilities and awareness, there are three key things you need to know.
First, you must understand the major advantages that mastering storytelling affords you as a business owner (and as a person in general).
Secondly, you’ll need to know exactly how to embrace storytelling to share your vision for your brand.
And finally, how to combine them both by teaching storytelling to your colleagues, so your brand is properly (and carefully) represented at all times.
Those Who Master Storytelling Have a Clear Advantage Over Those Who Don’t
If you’ve attended a variety of ceremonies or speeches that involved people telling stories, you’ve no doubt been able to notice when someone could tell a story very effectively, in a way that entranced you.
While you might not have been consciously thinking about it, some people tell stories in a way that’s very boring while others tell them in a way that keeps you locked into what they’re saying, and you leave there remembering that story for years to come.
Until you realize that storytelling is an actual skill that you can hone, you might just chalk this up to random chance. However, you too can reap the advantages that masterful storytellers have if you work on your craft.
There are so many advantages to being able to tell a story well. First and foremost, it helps you build a connection with your audience, and an effective connection at that. This is helpful in both business and social situations.
Good storytelling allows you to form that connection by showing them real and honest parts of your life, and telling it in such a way that they become genuinely interested in what you’re saying as well as your life as a whole.
This connection can be the foundation of so many things, from business deals to friendships and even relationships. By mastering this skill, you have an easy way to form a real bond with someone.
Masterful storytellers can also use their skills to help be more persuasive, particularly in business environments. If you’re able to make your company seem more appealing than a competitor by telling success stories, you’ll be in a great spot.
Someone who doesn’t know how to tell stories well will have to rely on having exceptionally good conversational skills and hoping that they’re able to use facts or the like alone to persuade someone.
If they’re not among the best conversationalists, someone who doesn’t know how to tell a good story will have a hard time leaving a great impression on strangers or people they’re meeting for the first time.
By taking the time to learn and develop your skills as a storyteller, you’ll be able to do so much more when it comes to social and professional development. You’re going to be able to leave a greater impact on people and ensure that they remember you for years.
How To Share Your Vision By Embracing and Utilizing Storytelling
In both business and personal situations, being able to clearly share your vision is crucial. Whether you’re making plans for the future with your family or trying to explain a certain business decision, storytelling can help paint a complete picture.
This is so important because if you and someone else are collaborating on something and you both have different ideas of where you want to take it, you might end up working against each other without enough communication.
When everyone on a team has the same exact goal in mind, all their efforts will be directed towards that one thing, increasing efficiency and ensuring that nobody is going to be lost, since they’ll have a clear goal to work towards.
Even when you explain something in great detail to somebody, they can still miss the point without being provided proper context. This could be due to either person’s inability to communicate or listen effectively, but either way, storytelling can help.
Storytelling allows you to put everything into proper context with a great deal of information around it. It paints a mental picture unlike any lengthy explanation, especially if you’re an effective storyteller.
Being able to properly share your vision isn’t just important for business. If you and your significant other were planning your wedding together, you’d want to be able to tell stories of ones you’d been to before, and talk about what you liked in it.
The same thing would apply to talking to your partner about a vacation. Rather than giving some weak sales pitch, you can recount a story of one of your friends, and the great time that they had there.
Sharing your vision is really a great way of being persuasive in general. Some people are generally against new ideas, simply because they don’t understand how they’re being explained, and they end up getting the wrong idea.
With storytelling, you can get around that issue with ease. You can go into greater depth in less time, and clearly explain and give a great mental visual to the person you’re trying to convince. With a better idea of what you’re talking about, they’ll be more open.
Once you master storytelling, you’ll rarely ever have to deal with someone who simply doesn’t understand what you’re trying to say, which is certainly one of the most frustrating experiences you can have in a professional or social setting.
Teaching Storytelling Skills to Your Colleagues for Proper Brand Representation
Given how important storytelling is as a business skill, it’s something that you ought to teach to your colleagues and coworkers so that everyone in your business will be representing the company well, and benefiting from the advantages of storytelling.
If your company is typically represented by multiple individuals, they all need to know the ins and outs of good storytelling so that they can represent your company well and leave a lasting impression on any client.
Storytelling allows you to build a personal relationship between your company and the individual you’re doing business with. If only one person knows how to do that well at the company, the client won’t feel as welcome with the other representatives.
By teaching all your coworkers that interact directly with customers how to do this, you can ensure a consistent standard of service, so that no matter who the client goes to, they can be sure to feel welcomed and comfortable.
This is very important because if you were to have a great interaction with a client and told them some great stories, they would be a bit put off if they came around again and talked to someone else who was stiff and boring.
There are a few different ways to go about teaching this skill to your coworkers. Depending on your dynamic with them, you will want to either teach them directly via seminars, teach them one-on-one, or have them view online resources.
One-on-one teaching is beneficial if you’re a smaller company, in particular. If you try to teach directly to dozens of employees, you’re going to get burnt out pretty quickly. However, if there’s only five other representatives, you can get away with doing it.
This method is likely going to be the most effective, since one-on-one teaching can quickly carry over to direct interactions with clients, since those are typically one-on-one interactions.
For larger companies, if people are consistently interested in your ability to sway clients with great stories, you can arrange seminars which allows you to teach a greater amount of people at once and also answer any questions they might have.
Using online resources can also help if your coworkers are spread out and work from a variety of locations, as it would be difficult for you to arrange an in-person seminar with them. A group video call can also work if they’re willing to do so.
