Drawing from psychology

From the golden age of Greece on, persuasiveness has absorbed plenty of attention. The philosopher Aristotle described the formula for a great speech as combining ethos (establishing authority), logos (logical argument) and pathos (swaying an audience emotionally). Today, techniques of persuasion obsess marketers, communicators, psychologists, neuroscientists and even economists, who created the field of behavioral economics with breakthrough analysis of how humans make decisions. Their opinions are backed by research that ranges from brain imaging to big data crunching.

Consensus is that Aristotle knew what he was talking about but according to today’s thinkers, the balance of factors — logic, authority and emotion — has shifted toward the last. The key takeaway: While we may believe we make choices based on information and logic, in truth, our decisions are usually driven by emotion and then justified with rationality. Analytic thought consumes enormous amounts of brain energy, so we typically call on it only when we more or less force ourselves to take the trouble.

For business writing, the key lesson is: Whenever possible go for both the heart and the mind. When it’s important that readers respond to your message in a particular way, create an emotional connection. Relate to your audience’s hopes and aspirations, or perhaps feelings like worry and anxiety. Use language that produces positive associations, builds trust and shows empathy. Find ways to capture people’s imagination. Give them a vision. But back it all up with evidence that speaks to your claims and your own authority or expertise.

The emotional connection draws people in and encourages them to stay with you, but most people will look for backup information that justifies trust. Also, some people typically approach decisions more rationally, so the facts, and signals of authority, are dealmakers for them. In short, covering all three elements makes perfect sense.

Drawing on the resource of techniques and strategies that follow can improve all your communication, from emails to proposals, presentations to interviews, websites to speeches to sales pages. I can’t cover every need you encounter to write or speak persuasively. So read this advice with an eye toward adapting it for your use according to the goal and situation.

Communicating with conviction

Every section of this book stresses the importance of identifying and understanding your audience. It is the key to succeeding with every message. But the other side of the equation is you. You must speak and write from a sense of your own value and the value of whatever you’re pitching. When persuasion is in order, your own belief is your best friend.

One corollary of the self-belief principle: When you craft an important message to introduce yourself in person or in writing, remind yourself of your own value and relevance. If you’re pitching a product or service, soliciting a donation or asking for peoples’ votes, take a minute to reinform yourself of why you believe that what you represent is worthy and why (I presume) you’re making it your life’s work.

What drew you to do what you do? Why does it matter to you? Is it a passion? A commitment to solve a problem or help people? Why are you certain that knowing about your service or product or yourself will benefit others and/or their own audiences? Why are you the ideal person for the opportunity?

A popular quote often attributed to Theodore Roosevelt sums it up this way: “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” Enthusiasm is the best convincer. Few will review your facts and figures if you don’t project enthusiasm and generate it in others. If you aspire to a leadership role, few will follow you if they don’t sense your enthusiasm.

To bring confidence to your writing as well as to face-to-face situations, experiment with techniques that actors, presenters and salespeople commonly use to set the stage for a good performance. When you’re about to work on an important message or make an appearance, energize yourself by assuming an assertive but comfortable posture and walk around that way for a few minutes. This technique exploits the mind-body connection, signaling to your mind that you are capable, resourceful and knowledgeable.

Another strategy from the psychologist’s repertoire: Choose a photo or other image that’s associated with a proud moment in your life when you felt on top of the world, and relive that moment as vividly as you can. Perhaps you won an award, were congratulated on something, finished a marathon or celebrated another personal achievement. Employ all your senses to re-create how you felt, stood, held your shoulders, moved. Practice re-creating this glow in your mind and body several times and you’ll be able to trigger your confidence just by calling up the image!

Centering on benefits

Technical specifications and other features do matter, more to some people than others. Certainly, you need them if you’re marketing a gizmo to engineers — but even for technical folks, put the focus on benefits rather than features because they reach everyone on the emotional level. Rather than Gizmo XYZ has 14 ABC connectors, try Gizmo XYZ cuts charging time by three hours. A useful tactic is to connect features with benefits with statements such as, “this feature helps you do X” or “this feature solves Y problem.”

To find benefits, ask the “why” question. Why might someone want a car with twice the power of an ordinary, less expensive one? Perhaps it makes them feel more powerful themselves, or they love the idea of zooming along the highway at a speed few will actually practice. Or they anticipate the thrill of impressing friends with their showpiece. So promote the dream; use the specs as backup.

Try This: Translate your product’s or service’s features into benefits. For example, rather than just saying,

The new Caliber X120: four cylinders and a 360 HP engine.

Try something more like,

Become the fastest animal on land and leave the slow lane world behind.

If you are promoting a service, you might say,

Our training firm is the only one in the tri-state area to employ a psychologist.

But instead of or in addition to this line, complete the sales point for the reader:

Our staff psychologist helps create every New Way seminar so we know exactly how to engage busy professionals and deliver practical strategies.

To return to the engineering gizmo, combining feature with benefit works as well:

Gizmo’s 14 ABC portals cut charging time by three hours.

In a single line, you’ve gone to the heart of the audience’s concern and given a nod to the mind as well.

Creating a friendly and reasonable tone

Especially if you’re advocating for an idea or decision, present your argument with an objective voice. Let your passion for your subject show — but in a controlled way. Aim to communicate enthusiasm and at the same time, a feeling of impartiality.

In fact, rather than offering a one-sided harangue, choose to convey objective open-mindedness to other arguments and preferences. A favorite technique is to figure out the major opposing arguments your reader is likely to come up with and build in the rebuttals in a cheerful, fair-minded spirit. When you take account of opposing ideas rather than ignoring or dismissing them, you are more credible and persuasive. Some examples:

• 1. You might be concerned that the system requires adapting to a whole new technology. With a single half-day workshop, we will train your key people and be on call for a full month should questions arise.
• 2. You may recall that we experimented with this strategy ten years ago, but at that time, we couldn’t tap big data analysis tools to fine-tune each step.

This approach gives you good openings to cite evidence, too.

Yes, you can produce a new website less expensively. But our Second Window site generates twice as many leads for our clients than any of their previous sites. The data shows …

Try This: Use the Talking Points strategy. See “Composing Talking Points for Live Interaction” in Chapter 9, which shows you how to brainstorm for the content you need. Use the process to surface reasons why your reader or listener might resist your ask. Then build those rebuttals into your message. This can be done in subtle rather than overt ways. For example, rather than saying,

Our competitor’s product needs expensive servicing every four months.

You could write,

No expensive servicing! Unlike similar products, our G-machine is designed as a closed system that self-maintains for a full year.

Of course, everything you say must be true. The idea is not to make up facts or describe something you can’t implement, but to present the truth in the best light for your chosen audience. This leads you to frame your message in a way that accomplishes the result you want. As the words on my favorite coffee mug say, in the novelist Jack Kerouac’s words, “It ain’t watcha write, it’s the way atcha write it.”

Giving people time

When you sell a service, product or new way of thinking, it’s wise not to expect overnight miracles. Decisions are grounded on trust. Think “one step at a time.” A good letter can gain you entrée to meet with someone; a well-crafted email pitch draws people to your website; an interesting tweet leads someone to read your blog; a free webinar brings in people ready to pay for a service; effective blogs lead readers to trust you enough to buy your book. The process of capturing readers and channeling them stage by stage to purchase is called funnel marketing.

Good teachers aim for incremental learning. They start where their students are and take them, step by step, toward more knowledge and understanding. Experienced marketers aim to build trust in a similar way. Persuading someone to buy a different product or adopt a new idea takes sustained effort and a consistent message across platforms. That’s what integrated marketing is about: knowing your core message and using it to frame all your communication. I explore that later in this chapter.

Step 1: Clarify your goal to yourself

What is your basic intent? If you’re announcing a company or office reorganization, is your goal simply to deliver cut-and-dried information, like this?

Dear Staff: As of March 21, by Leadership Team directive, our department will be reorganized on a team basis. Reporting systems will be adapted accordingly. Stand by for specific assignments and guidelines. Your cooperation is appreciated.

Realistically, such a message could prompt some employees to start a job search and others to just stay put dispiritedly, expecting their own hammer to fall. Not good outcomes. The writer overlooked the real intent: to deliver news in a way that at least maintains morale and encourages employees to see the change as potentially positive.

Always consider how the message will make your readers feel. If the potential is negative, brainstorm your content and find ways to counter natural concerns by addressing them through content choices, tone and use of language, all covered in this chapter.

Before you shape an important message — whether a three-paragraph email or 20-page report — remind yourself that your goal is not just to deliver information but to orient your readers to feel a certain way about it. Once you know your intent, the challenge is to know your readers.

Step 2: Characterize your audience

Imagine the readers you want to reach and think about the message you’re delivering, through their eyes. Other than asking people in advance, this is the only way to gauge how they will react to what you write or say. Take the necessary time to relate to their possible fears, worries and concerns regarding your subject. Find the emotional connection by remembering the WIIFM principle (what’s-in-it-for-me). The more you know and understand your audience, the more effective you can be in persuading them to a viewpoint. Scan the extensive rundown of audience characteristics described in Chapter 2 and decide which are relevant to the specific situation.

Step 3: Determine the best content

Step 3 of the planning process is to brainstorm based on your understanding of your goal and audience. To deliver an upbeat message about a staff reorganization, for example, you might list points such as:

• The realignment will promote collaboration which makes work more productive and enjoyable than the current structure.
• The teaming approach will give you more opportunity to use your strengths.
• You will have more autonomy and have a say in which assignments you take on.

When you think in this structured manner, new relatable ideas occur to you — for example, that the department could sweeten the pot by offering more opportunities for growth, with company-sponsored programs to learn or sharpen a skill. Also, it becomes clear that for this level of change, a written message is best viewed as preamble to one or more meetings where everyone can ask questions and perhaps contribute to the planning.

A good planning device is to begin with subheads. Take three pieces of real or virtual paper and label one “heart,” another “mind,” and the third “trust-building.” Start your brainstorming by filling out one category at a time. Once all three lists are done, scan them to identify your lead, which ideally is your strongest most engaging point — it’s probably on the “heart” list. Then juggle the rest to find a logical arrangement. You can interweave the three categories or run the technical backup and/or your credentials in a box or sidebar so they are available but don’t interrupt your main appeal. If you end up keeping all or some of the subheads, readers can quickly see the points that most matter to them and your coverage will be balanced.

Rather than using labels, write action statements in your subheads to make a stronger case. For example:

• Label: The new thingymabob
• Subhead: Our newest thingymabob measures temperature at 40 feet

Step 4: Create action headlines that relate to your audience

Drafting a preliminary headline helps because it leads you to crystallize your main point and orient everything to it. Later you may identify a better headline, or not.

Try This: Review your own response patterns. Whether you’re asking for an appointment, writing a blog or sales page or developing a report, you must fight to get your message read. To get a feel for how quick decisions about whether to read something are made, scan your inbox. In emails, the headline is your subject line, and good ones are essential (as covered in Chapter 6). If you’re like most people, it takes you four seconds to decide to “open” or “delete.” It’s not a lot different for other materials. While you’re checking this out, look carefully at what kind of subject lines draw you in.

Bottom line: Craft a good action-style headline for almost everything you write. Headlines needn’t be catchy, but must be to the point and hone in on how your content relates to your readers. Why should they read this? Can you come up with a must-read angle? What follows the headline must further cement reader attention.

Step 5: Develop a compelling lead that connects content and reader

Focus on what is most interesting, useful or relevant about your subject. What problem will you solve? How will viewers’ lives be better? Why should your target audience care about your product, service or idea? Answer that question yourself to find your best opening. An anecdote might work, an interesting fact, a rhetorical question, an example. Professional writers probably spend 20 percent of their work life on constructing good leads. It’s well worth the time.

Step 6: Draft the rest of the message

Draw on the lists you created for heart, mind and trust to build the body of the message. Don’t forget to call readers to action — be perfectly clear on what you want them to do next. In many selling situations you may want to provide an incentive: Sign up for my newsletter and get my free e-book on how to do X … Order now to receive a 15% discount … Read my blog to discover inside information about your … Send a photo of yourself enjoying our product and we’ll send you a free gift … Take this workshop and become a member of our Advice Whenever community, and so on, according to the nature of your message.

Using the step-by-step planning process is thoroughly covered in Part 1, including the review, edit and proofing steps, which are the same for all writing so I don’t repeat them here. Let’s look now at language choices to support a persuasive intent, whatever the medium.

Choosing words that persuade

Build sentences on action verbs. Take time to substitute lively verbs for dull passive ones (an online thesaurus helps you do this in an instant). In addition to energizing your language and bringing your ideas to life, basing sentences on active verbs helps you eliminate wordiness and unnecessary phrases that dilute impact.

Use short, common words that are tangible rather than abstract — things you can see, touch, measure. They’re the words we most often use in everyday speech. What if you’re trying to communicate complex, abstract ideas? Then it’s especially important to find concrete ways to express them. Simple one- and two-syllable words connote honesty, reality, transparency and conviction.

Avoid the use of meaningless hyperbole. Exaggerated statements and clichéd words and phrases add nothing and turn readers off (such as, “innovative, cutting-edge, state-of-the-art breakthrough”). Often this means eliminating all or most descriptive words — adjectives and adverbs. Using them as camouflage for empty thoughts doesn’t work.

Skip the wishy-washy. Don’t hedge with qualifying words, such as “maybe” or “perhaps,” and hesitant phrases, such as “I hope you will find this idea of value.” Be positive! Show conviction! Communicate energy! Demonstrate faith in your own product or service — or yourself. Using some exclamation points support this cause, but don’t go overboard and sound childish.

Create comparisons — similes, metaphors and other imaginative devices — to build pictures in readers’ minds. They attract attention and help make complex and abstract concepts more real. There is a fine line between a metaphor and a cliché, however. “To sow the seeds” and “bear fruit” don’t add much to everyday language and may even hurt your cause. Here are two I noticed that livened up two humdrum reports recently:

• Depending solely on the XYZ technology is like standing on one leg.
• We want to grow the economy so the cake is bigger and everyone gets a slice.

Comparisons need not be a sentence. They can take the form of a phrase (“enthusiasm is contagious”), a paragraph or even a whole document. Try experimenting with comparisons — similes are easiest — by writing down something you want to express. For example, to explain what handling a tough project feels like, you might say “X is like …”, and play with what conveys the difficulty of the effort (for example, “Managing Project X is like trying to keep a river from overflowing”).

Here’s one related to our subject: “Write headlines as if they’re flags to wave at passengers speeding by in a train.” And another: “A big vocabulary is like underwear — everyone should have it, but they shouldn’t show it off.”

Avoid words that carry negative feeling. Often, it’s a matter of how you choose to put something. If you’re eliminating a service, “canceling” is negative, “streamlining our operation” is positive. But don’t resort to sugarcoating facts when they must be delivered. If “streamlining” involves laying people off, you must say so because it’s honest, and everyone will find out anyway. But you can say it tactfully and regretfully, and mention how the company is helping those people.

Build in words that evoke positive emotions and associations. For a sales page, words like first ever, guaranteed and reliable, make people feel more secure in making a choice. Youthful, serene and glowing connote happy states. If you want to convey peacefulness, words like carefree, radiant, unhurried and natural may find a place.

For a unique and exhaustive reference guide to words associated with the eight basic emotions, as well as positive and negative sentiments, download one of the free NRC Emotion Lexicons (https://nrc.canada.ca/en/research-development/products-services/technical-advisory-services/sentiment-emotion-lexicons). These lexicons are produced by the National Research Council of Canada and are invaluable to serious marketers.

Employ magic words. When you want to entice your readers to take the next step, whether it’s to click from a landing page to “order now,” or give you permission to use their email address, make them an offer they might be unable to refuse. Some words that resonate with most people: “Free.” “This week only.” “Offer ends today.” “Proven.” “Tested.” “Free returns.” “Free sample.” “Biggest discount of the season.” “Free gift.” “Bonus!” “One left.”

Structuring material to support persuasion

Use mostly short sentences but develop a good rhythm by working in some longer sentences. But not too long — lengthy complicated sentences are hard to follow on first reading and may lose many readers instantly. Hesitate before using more than one clause in your sentences, which usually translates as no more than two commas. Avoid a choppy, stilted cadence and try for one that pulls readers along in a forward motion.

Read the copy aloud to immediately identify its cadence. The human mind is most responsive to oral arguments, because speech preceded writing by eons. So when the aim is to persuade, think of what you’re writing as a speech. Edit until the read-aloud test shows you a smooth, easy-to-say, hitch-free ride.

Build in plenty of white space. Keep paragraphs short, perhaps three sentences long, each focused on a single idea. But vary their length. Work in occasional single-sentence paragraphs. Material that looks approachable and easy to absorb gets read, understood and more readily accepted.

Use sentence fragments to add punch. But be sure your meaning is completely clear and they cannot be interpreted as mistakes. For example, the first sentence in the following set feels incorrect. But we are used to statements like the second (and sentences starting with “And, “But” or “Or,” like many do in this section):

• Has the Miseramobi ever left anyone stranded in the desert? Has not.
• Has the Miseramobi ever left anyone stranded in the desert? Never.

Single words are useful, such as “Always.” “Ask.” “Problems?” “Questions?”

Edit for correct spelling, punctuation and basic grammar. Yes, you can take liberties in the interest of rhetorical impact, but if it looks like carelessness or a mistake, you’ve shot your credibility.

Employ rhetorical devices. Approaches drawn from speech-making offer powerful options for presenting ideas effectively. Posing rhetorical questions is one such device, and devising comparisons is another, both covered earlier in this chapter. Here are a few more to experiment with (note the Latin names: The Romans were an argumentative people):

• Alliteration: A sentence or phrase that repeats a sound, the initial consonant: The market’s dreary downward dive … .
• Anaphora: A repeating word or phrase. We looked at X … We looked at Y … We looked at Z.
• Onomatopoeia: Words that sound like what they mean: whizzed, plunged, plopped, hooted, drummed, mumbled, shrieked, clumped.
• Rule of Three: Citing three main points, three reasons, three examples, three fragments — this technique resonates with us. We came, we saw, we conquered. We identified the problem, explored the issues and found a solution.

And here’s my own secret sauce for using language effectively:

Pay close attention to all transitions between information points, counterpoints and conclusions. A few examples of these valuable words and phrases:

• Furthermore, besides that, equally important, similarly, however, significantly
• Instead, on the other hand, in spite of, considering that, nevertheless
• In final analysis, in the end, for this reason, on balance, ultimately, in conclusion

It can be helpful to add extra transitions between sentences, paragraphs and sections to help you clarify your own logic and see if you’ve left out anything. It also helps you judge whether you’ve said too little about something or too much. You can always cut some transitions in final editing. When you show clearly how each idea relates to the next, you create a progressive argument that strikes readers as reasonable, logical and unassailable.

The concept of persuasive messaging carries ethical issues that can be complicated. Remember that when you consciously use persuasive techniques, your goal is to find the positive and build on that. A thoughtful writing process helps you do this and may also uncover gaps in strategic thinking.

This situation often occurs for public relations experts when they develop an important communication on behalf of decision-makers. They may see not only gaps in the information, but an inattention to how the messages will make readers feel. Contrary to popular opinion, the PR job is not to cover negatives by fudging the facts with language. Rather, it’s to explain the risks a poor message can create and also suggest actions that will counter or mitigate a negative situation and improve it. Be your own PR specialist and review what you communicate in this big-picture perspective.

Knowing what language to choose and what to avoid

To close this discussion of persuasive techniques, I return to a central idea of this chapter and this book: Remember that practicing empathy will always help you handle difficult situations. Remember that everyone owns a personal history and set of experiences that shaped their attitudes and beliefs. Remember to be kind.

When your goal is to persuade, avoid prejudicial thinking that leads you to undercut your intent with statements that put others on defensive. You are more likely to say things like the following in conversation, but be aware of betraying such sentiments in writing as well:

• “I can’t believe you feel that way.”
• “Frankly …”
• “With all due respect …”
• “How in the world can you think that …”

Choose positive language that tells people they are heard:

• “Tell me more about that.”
• “You make some good points.”
• “Help me understand how you see that.”
• “I wonder if you’ve considered …”
• “Can we agree that …”

And a sentence that’s useful if you reach a stalemate and want to move on in good spirit, at least for the moment:

“You could be right.”

Yet one more technique for your persuasion arsenal is your own personal experience. Nothing can be more powerful than explaining why you changed your own mind, came to a belief, decided on your career path or founded a company. Accordingly, I show you next how to crystallize your own experience with a “value proposition” and employ it in telling your own story or that of an enterprise.

Searching for true value

If you run a business of any kind — or a nonprofit, consultancy or government office — you can get in touch with its true value in a variety of ways:

• Ask your customers or clients what you have accomplished for them and what they most value. Try for specifics, especially in bottom-line terms. They may be more prepared to deliver this information than you think; if you’re a repeat or long-term supplier, they may be quite aware of their ROI (return on investment). For ideas on how to frame good questions, see the section, “Questions to ask your clients and customers.”

• Brainstorm with an internal group. Working with your immediate colleagues or representatives from different departments gives you the advantage of advance buy-in from different stakeholders. Or work with a business-savvy person or two whom you trust. The section, “Questions to ask your team and yourself,” gives you material for this process.

  If you choose to use the inside team approach, consider supplementing it with at least a few outside opinions. This gives you a reality check on whether you’re moving in the right direction and staying aligned with your clients. More often than not, organizations are surprised with the disconnect between what they believe their clients value and the actuality.

• Do it yourself. Ask yourself probing questions — or create a small circle of colleagues from other organizations who can also benefit from exploration within a group setting. CEOs from top companies meet this way to share problems and solutions and you can, too. Focus on building a core value statement for each of you, one at a time.
• Work with a business counselor. If you’re an entrepreneur or want to be one, a professional business counselor can save you a lot of trial and error. Free workshops and counseling are available in many U.S. locations from the Small Business Development Center (https://americassbdc.org) and SCORE (https://core.score.org), a national network of volunteer mentors for entrepreneurs. Many colleges offer low-cost courses and programs as well.

Making your case in business terms

Your true value statement must connect with your customers and prospects, and this may take some translation. Reaching businesspeople in their own terms is not really rocket science. It’s often about dollars and cents and time. Use this truth to make your core message more powerful.

Start developing your core message by looking into work you or your company has done that solves problems. Look for ways to show that you can:

• Increase revenue and profitability. For example: Grow market share, retain customers, find new markets, reach a wider audience, make marketing initiatives more productive.
• Cut costs and streamline. For example: Reduce expenses, increase efficiency, cut redundancies, reduce mistakes, redeploy staff, reduce turnover, minimize product returns, cut red tape.
• Improve positioning. For example: Build the client’s or product’s cachet, improve public or customer perception, raise company profile, minimize complaints, increase customer satisfaction.
• Change behavior. For example: Train staff to work in teams or communicate better, promote adoption of organization’s core mission and values, shift unproductive systems and behavior to productive ones.

Important as it is, money isn’t everything. Identify your clients’ pain points and think about how you address those, especially in different ways from your competitors. Perhaps you have evening office hours to accommodate those who work; wash dogs in their homes; train those who buy your equipment; or provide free ten-year warranties. If you’re in business, you probably already offer specific amenities. The idea is to think about value more systematically so you can communicate about what sets you apart and sharpen your own focus.

Every industry is different but all share the same imperatives, though they may take different forms. Increasing revenue for a nonprofit may mean upping donations, sponsorships or grants or recruiting more volunteers. A government agency typically wants a larger share of the tax revenue pie, which requires that it better articulates the need for its service, demonstrates new efficiencies or expands its client base.

A good general rule of thumb for your marketing: Identify your value and then move on to prove it. Your business may be less abstract than my Keystone Messaging example, or your product may lend itself to quantifying results more easily than a service. Whatever your business, your customers may be able to give you real numbers for ways that you helped them. If not, or your venture is new, do some research and cite industry statistics. Or cite one outstanding example of how you helped a customer. Or do all of these things.

Don’t overlook the “good citizen” part of your organization’s message. Most people today, especially the younger generations, value enterprises that support and contribute to good causes in the community and beyond. Are you helping people? Making the world better in even a small way? Nurturing your own employees? These may be important elements of how you do business and deserve to play a role in your communication. Research shows that a company’s association with a cause such as saving the environment, promoting social justice and fighting poverty may not provably impact the bottom line. But it does demonstrably attract employees of the Millennial generation and younger who will work longer, more enthusiastically and more capably for such employers.

Equipped with your own core message, you are prepared to experiment with one of the most persuasive techniques of all: storytelling.

Finding your business story

If you’re in business for yourself, the lodestar story — one that epitomizes your business and guides how you think and communicate about it — often evolves over time and must embody the core value idea, explained in the previous section of this chapter.

Stories can take many shapes, but it’s helpful to think about four basic types that work for many organizations:

• Discovery: How I discovered my talent or passion, found my mission, developed a way to match my values to my work, started my business.
• Bumpy road: Obstacles I faced, mistakes I made, weaknesses I encountered, my turning point, how I overcame challenges and grew the business.
• Success story: How I used my skills, product or service to help someone else, or an enterprise, achieve what they wanted or solve a major problem.
• Big vision: How much better things will be, the benefits resulting from accepting my idea or product or service.

For any business-oriented purpose, your story must relate to the specific people you want as your audience. If you’re explaining why you’re passionate about your work, it must be work that relates to your readers. A bumpy-road story must have a message your audience cares about — perhaps how you equipped yourself to solve their problems. A success story is best centered on somebody just like your audience so those people can relate. A big vision should connect with your audience’s needs — perhaps by promising a solution to an important perceived problem.

Framing your experience and practicing selective memory is legitimate when you build a story, but never tell a story that is not fundamentally true. First of all, you’re unlikely to tell it well, and moreover, you kill your own authenticity at the outset. Trust that the materials are there.

A good way to develop a story is to start with the point you want to make. Then methodically scan your experience for a piece of history that illustrates that point. If nothing presents itself immediately, think your way back in life year by year and notice when something stops you. There is usually a reason something grabs your attention, so explore this memory. Does it lend itself to one of the story formats mentioned in the preceding sections, or another that speaks to you?

Building your story

For fiction writers and playwrights, just as for journalists, the hard part is the lead: where to start. Don’t be surprised if your story presents the same challenge.

A good beginning is not usually a chronological one. That generally produces a narrative, which is quite different from a story, and will probably wander all over the place and bore your audience. When you start at the first event and proceed forward in time, a story lacks suspense and doesn’t provoke the curiosity that keeps people reading or listening.

Look for an interesting “in.” A surprise or a built-in contradiction is a good way to start. The fact that Steve Jobs dropped out of college and built Apple fascinates. Similarly, the story of how Facebook was born in a college dorm and how a 17-year-old sold his software for $37 million grab people’s attention. Of course, such stories are only interesting because the people have already hit the big time. You don’t have to blow away your audience. Discovery and turning points in your own life or career make good lead material, too.

Try the tell-it-to-someone technique. I often find that people will naturally deliver the heart of their message orally but then turn it into a dull abstract statement and/or bury it in a mountain of claims that make them sound just like their competitors. For example, I heard a restaurant owner and chef tell a group, “I worked in three different Latino restaurants for ten years but was always unhappy that none of them served the real Salvadoran food I grew up with and cook at home. So we saved up to open our own family restaurant and we serve things that people never ate before!” Yet on the business’s website, this was expressed as “offering authentic Latino cuisine.”

Similarly, the owner of a local wellness business told me that in her extensive experience as a master physical therapist, she was constantly frustrated by having to send patients all over the city for other services, knowing the hardships this presented them. So she determined to build a practice that brought many specialists together working under one roof, and has done so very successfully. Calling this approach “integrated services” loses the story.

So, see what happens when you tell your story informally and out loud. A single sentence may do it. J. K. Rowling wrote her first Harry Potter book after looking out the window of a train and thinking, “Boy doesn’t know he’s a wizard, goes off to wizard school.”

If you’re an entrepreneur, I know you can find your storyline, because if you didn’t have a “eureka” moment of some kind, you wouldn’t be in business. It can be a quiet one. A colleague who teaches presentation skills opens by sharing her first day of teaching. She felt awkward and uncomfortable, and she knew she was not connecting with her students. At the first break, one young woman approached and quietly gave her the magic clue she needed — “just be yourself.” She then briefly recounts how she gradually learned to become a strong speaker and is now equipped to help other people become their own best selves as presenters.

Story-writing tips

The following ideas come from the fiction writer’s side of the writing spectrum, but they can help the business storyteller, too. Use these approaches with both written and oral communication:

• Show, don’t tell. Rather than sticking to straight narrative or piling on the descriptive adjectives, pull readers right into your scene so they can draw their own conclusions. Paint a detailed picture of the situation, event, place or person.
• Engage the senses. Use vivid, graphic language to activate readers’ sense of smell, hearing, sound, touch and sight and make them feel as if they are there themselves. Research shows that specific areas of the brain light up if you say a surface is “splintery,” for example, rather than “rough.”
• Try telling the story in present tense. Instead of writing in the past tense, the present tense brings it more immediate and alive for you as well as the reader or listener. Immerse yourself in the detail and speak from inside the re-created experience.
• Use dialogue and first-hand quotes. Rather than, “My sixth-grade teacher told me I could be a success,” try, “One day, I’m sitting at my desk thinking about my new video game, and suddenly there’s Mrs. Dime, my sixth-grade teacher, staring down at me. She says, ‘Jeremy, I know you have a lot to contribute but I ever hear your voice. I want to hear what you have to say. Will you do that?’ From that moment … .”
• Be concrete and specific. Take time to pin down details and the right words. Abstractions don’t resonate with people. “I teach people to improve their writing” accomplishes less than “I show entrepreneurs how to create messages that win more hearts, minds and contracts.”
• Use simple, say-able language. Rely on short words, short sentences and plain structures. This especially applies to written stories because you’re tapping into an oral tradition that generates its own expectations. Who doesn’t listen up when you hear, “Once upon a time …”? Think about that natural story cadence and try echoing it. Or try using the words to spark your brainstorming, and perhaps even keep them in your delivered message: “Once upon a time I put on my first tie and went out on my first sales call … .”
• Stay positive. Highlighting your mistakes and setbacks along the way is effective; people relate to this sharing and even mentally cheer you on toward success. Jokes you tell on yourself are usually well received. But be sure your story has a happy ending — one that leaves the audience with a good impression of you. Think carefully about sharing ironic jokes that undermine how you want to be perceived.
• Connect your point. Be sure you know why you’re telling your story and that this moral aligns with the point you want to get across. In fact, many experienced business storytellers write the ending first and then build the rest of the story toward it. You might bring the point home, as in “I know now that following those side roads is what prepared me to set you on the right track.” A big-vision story might end, “I see a world where no one has to struggle for clean air and all children are healthy” or “My idea will solve the industry’s data storage problem and save millions of dollars, millions of trees.” Or you may decide to let the story make the point on its own.

Another way to explore story ideas and close in on a promising one is to identify something that has stuck in your mind, whether an experience or small incident any time in your life, and then tell that story to someone orally and record it. You may find you can immerse yourself in a specific place and time and relive what happened to a surprisingly detailed degree. See where the story takes you. It may shed more meaning than you expect on your career or a particular decision, action or idea. Then create a written version. (A useful app that records and quickly produces a transcript, keyed to the oral version for easy editing, is https://otter.ai.)

You can also showcase yourself by telling someone else’s success story — for example, a customer or client who benefited from your help or product. In addition to supplementing your own story, these are useful case histories for your website or sales materials.

Stories are everywhere around us. Develop your awareness of good storytelling techniques in presentations you attend, what you read and what you listen to. NPR and the BBC both have storytelling programs, and it’s especially illuminating to hear well-crafted stories read aloud well. On a more down-to-earth level, take a look at Quora, “the best answer to any question,” at www.quora.com. On this site, anyone can pose a question and have it answered by interested people ranging from “ordinary” to celebrities in their fields. You may be surprised at how effective popular answers are in setting the stage with a line or two, drawing thousands to click on the rest.