How You Say Matters As Much As What You Say

The art of business storytelling

During my Internship my mentor told me that he is assigning me a very important task. That I would learn a lot from it if I paid attention while working on it. I got super excited, after all it had been only two months since I had joined the firm and I was already receiving important tasks. I did the task with all the focus and attention.

During the lunch break I realized I had been scammed into doing something I would otherwise have hated doing. My task was to print around 50 documents, punch it and file it in a certain order.

If my mentor had just told me that I was to print, punch and file sheets of papers I would not have shown the excitement I did show. But he did not tell me that. Instead he told me that I was being assigned to be a auditor and document supportings for a tax scrutiny case. And that sounded exciting.

I was reminded of this experience when I heard an hour long Google Talk by Ameen Haque’s on the art of business storytelling. He is a evocative storyteller himself and his talk was engaging enough to make me watch it till the end. Here is the gist of his talk and some truly inspiring lessons from it.

Good stories are truth well told.

The Blind man who gets a marketing makeover

The Story of a Sign has a strong message on power of words.

In the video a blind man is sitting by the road requesting people for money. The message on the cardboard reads “I’m blind please help”. People pass by the man paying little or no attention to him or the message on the cardboard. Some drop pennies but some ignore him like he doesn’t exist.

Then a lady who is passing by goes to the blind man picks up the cardboard and changes the message. Suddenly the blind man is flooded with people who are pouring in money in his bowl.

So what changed? What were the words that made people care enough to stop by and put the money in the mans bowl?

The lady had changed the message to

“It is a beautiful day and I can’t see it”

And this worked because it was a truth well told. Which is all business storytelling is about. Saying things in a way that makes a difference.

• Empathy not sympathy. Both the messages tried to appeal to peoples’ emotion but the first one invoked sympathy while the latter one invoked empathy. Empathy doesn’t aim at making people feel guilty, it aims at making people feel grateful. Gratefulness trumps guilt.
• Truth well told. Good stories are truth well told. Both the messages in the above story told the truth. The second one just said it better.
• Build a common ground. When stories are all about you, when most of the thing is about the “I” it is difficult for people to relate. Figure out a way to build a common ground that makes your story relatable.
• Call to Action(CTA) need not be obvious. Both the messages in the story involve a CTA. It is explicit in the first one but implied in the second. This makes a profound difference by making people comfortable.
• Enhance your vocabulary. Richer vocabulary is a powerful instrument for expression. Make an effort to widen your vocabulary. A great example of this is the scrabble advertisement where one kid gets punished because he says he was late because he slept late and the other kid gets an exemption because he says he has clinomania(An excessive desire to remain in bed).
• Work on visual vocabulary. There is an interesting story about how Ratan Tata the former chairman of Tata sons showed his team about the product he wants in a single slide. He drew a roof over the a family of four travelling on a scooter. In just one image he conveyed the target group, the price constraints of that target group and even the budget of the target group.
• Your product is an entry into a future world. If you are building a new product you are creating a new world for its users. A world where your product will solve the problem that exists in the current world. It is necessary that your product story depicts that. You need to make the user imagine a world where their life would be better because your product exists.

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