Stories That Stick

How Storytelling Can Captivate Customers, Influence Audiences, and Transform Your Business

Kindra Hall

• Publisher: HarperCollins Leadership
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781400211944
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Sales
• Index: Business

What stories do you need to tell, and how do you tell them?

Stories That Stick provides a clear framework of ideals and a concise set of actions for you to take complete control of your own story, utilizing the principles behind the world's most effective business storytelling strategies.

Professional storyteller and nationally-known speaker Kindra Hall reveals the four unique stories you can use to differentiate, captivate, and elevate:

• The Value Story —convince customers they need what you provide.
• The Founder Story —persuade investors and customers your organization is worth the investment.
• The Purpose Story —align and inspire your employees and internal customers.
• The Customer Story —allow those who use your product or service to share their authentic experiences with others.

Telling these stories well is a simple, accessible skill anyone can develop. With case studies, company profiles, and anecdotes backed with original research, Hall presents storytelling as the underutilized talent that separates the good from the best in business.

Stories That Stick offers specific, actionable steps readers can take to find, craft, and leverage the stories they already have and simply aren't telling. Every person, every organization has at least four stories at their disposal. Will you tell yours?

PART ONE

The Irresistible Power of Storytelling

CHAPTER ONE

The Gaps in Business and the Bridges That Close (and Don’t Close) Them

The shortest distance between a human being and the truth is a story.

—ANTHONY DE MELLO

The cutest boy in my high school was Andy K. Truthfully, he’d been the cutest boy since third grade. No one was really sure why. Maybe because he was born in May, but his parents waited to put him in school until the following fall, so he was the oldest. Or maybe it was because he was an incredible athlete. Or simply because he just seemed slightly indifferent about everything.

Whatever it was, it meant the fall afternoon of my freshman year, when Andy offered to share a can of Welch’s grape soda with me, my high school fate was sealed. Andy thought I was okay, which meant everyone else had to as well.

That was 1994. Social acceptance was measured that way, by the things you shared with others. Best friend heart necklaces split down the middle, cans of soda, and the other standout: packs of Extra gum.

I remember never leaving home without a pack of neon green Extra gum (thirty individually foil-wrapped pieces held loosely together with a strip of white paper). You could slip the pieces one by one from the pack, leaving a slight trace of where each had been. It was perfect for sharing with friends and boys who were slightly out of your league. Each empty pack was a symbol of social currency.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who swore by Extra gum. For years, this Wrigley brand sat at the top of the chewable breath-freshening totem pole. Checking out at the grocery store? Grab a pack of Extra. Upcoming dentist appointment? Don’t forget the Extra. It was the go-to brand and dominated the market until suddenly . . . it didn’t.

By 2013, almost twenty years after my freshman year of high school when I’d never have considered buying anything but Extra gum, the iconic brand had slid to third position. Even as I, once a brand loyalist, glanced at the rows of gum options, Extra didn’t even register with me.

Before you start feeling bad for Extra, and especially before you start thinking this was of their own doing—that they must have made an outrageously obvious, foolishly unfortunate, inevitable mistake—let’s be clear: this is a fundamental problem in business. Not just for Extra. Not just for products that sit on a shelf. It’s a problem in all business.

Ultimately, what Extra was struggling with, what all businesses struggle with, was bridging a gap.

The Gap in Your Business

The goal of a business is to profitably deliver value to people, to get a product or service from point A (the business) to point B (the people who will use it). That’s it. There are an infinite number of ways to achieve these goals, of course, but the overall goal itself is pretty simple.

Simple but not easy. No goal worth attaining comes without obstacles, and in business there are plenty of those. How do you get people to buy? To invest? How do you attract talent? Retain it? How do you convince one department to act in a timely manner regarding an issue that is only relevant to another department? How do you convince a higher-up to buy in on an idea? Rally direct reports around a particular initiative? How do you get suppliers to deliver on time?

No matter where you turn, behind every corner and from every angle, there are always obstacles. In fact, getting past them is what defines successful business.

I find it more helpful, however, to think of those obstacles in business not as daunting, immovable blockages but rather as gaps. It is the space between what you want and where you are. The gap.

The most obvious gap in business is the void between the customer and the company. How does a company get its product or service into the hands of the people who need it? When you’re standing in line at the grocery checkout and faced with twenty different gum options, how does Extra get you to choose Extra?

But while the sales gap is important, there are other gaps everywhere in business. There are gaps between entrepreneurs and potential investors, between recruiters and prospective employees, between managers and employees, between leaders and executives.

To make a business work, you need to bridge the gaps.

More importantly, those who bridge the gaps best, win. If you can sell better, pitch better, recruit better, build better, create better, connect better—you win.

Bridge the gaps, win the game.

Of course, in order to do that, you need to build the bridge.

Which is where it all starts to fall apart.

Bad Materials, Weak Bridges

Regardless of the type of gap you face in business, you must master three main elements to have any hope of building a bridge strong enough to get your intended audience—potential customers, key team members, investors, etc.—across the great divide: attention, influence, and transformation.

First and foremost, the best bridges must capture attention and captivate the audience, so they know the bridge is there in the first place. The second element, influence, is the means by which you’re able to compel the audience to take the action you desire. And third, if you don’t want to have to keep bridging the same gaps over and over again, the best bridges transform the audience, creating a lasting impact and leaving the audience changed, so they never even consider returning to the other side of the bridge, thereby closing the gap forever.

Pretty straightforward, right?

The problem—the tragedy really—is that despite our best efforts and intentions, we are really bad at building bridges. We focus on just one of the elements, maybe two, but rarely all three. We talk at people instead of engaging with them. We default to what’s easiest or flashiest, and as a result, our bridges are flimsy, fleeting, and sometimes downright ridiculous. But because these substandard solutions are so prevalent, we’ve convinced ourselves they are sufficient.

Think of all the real estate agents’ faces you’ve seen on bus stops or all the pop-up ads you’ve instinctually x-ed out of or the hours of commercials you’ve scrolled past. For a while, back in 2016, when the Star Wars craze was in full swing again, there was a guy who stood outside a hair salon in my neighborhood dressed like Darth Vader and holding a blow dryer as a way to lure people in for a haircut. What does Darth Vader have to do with a hair salon? It’s hard to guess, since the guy always wears a helmet, and yet there he stood.

Or consider the salesperson in front of a group of decision makers who launches into her pitch, equipped with a clicker that doubles as a laser pointer. The salesperson feels pretty confident. After all, she spent no fewer than six hours cramming every last feature, benefit, percentage, and decimal point onto the deck of eighty-nine slides for a twenty-minute presentation. I mean, the people in the room won’t be able to read any of it on the screen—it’s too small and cluttered—but that doesn’t matter because the salesperson is planning to read it to them off the screen. Who could possibly say no to that?!

Please. This bridge is no good, and anyone who tells you it is is a liar.

Let’s consider the bridges we try to build internally—the ones meant to create a healthy company culture. Perhaps you work for a company that is committed to its mission and culture, which is great. The culture is taught via a handbook. And leaders within the company often send out emails or newsletters or speak from podiums using the wording from the mission statement. Maybe it’s printed on mugs. But does anyone feel anything about it? They know the words, but do they feel it in their bones? Does it shape their decisions and create a deep sense of commitment?

It could. But, sadly, most companies and leaders have accepted the lie that repeating the mission statement is a sufficient bridge for connecting and motivating teams. The truth is, one slight breeze—one small salary increase or perk promised by another company—and, like it says in the nursery rhyme about a certain span in London, that bridge is falling down.

That being said, I feel it’s only fair to mention that, yes, it is possible to bridge a gap without all three essential elements—attention, influence, and transformation. And it is possible to use materials that are cheap and blueprints designed for instant gratification versus lasting growth. For example, I confess, I am a sucker for Instagram ads that are photos of cute workout clothes. I’ll usually click on the ad and even sometimes buy it. But when people ask me about my hobbies, I have to mention taking things to the UPS Store to be returned, because I return 90 percent of my Insta-ad buys.

I doubt that’s what you’re going for.

I doubt you’re investing in marketing only to have your products returned or forgotten. Or that you enjoy creating constant price cuts for random holidays. Or giving pitches that don’t close. Or talking to employees who tune you out. Or creating social media posts no one will click on. Or implementing random contests to achieve arbitrary goals. I doubt you hire, train, and incentivize top talent just to have them look elsewhere the second you take the carrot away or offer a slightly smaller carrot.

If gaps have emerged in your business or on your path to success that you just can’t seem to close, there’s a good chance the problem starts with the elements you’re using, or not using, to build your bridges.

The question is, what works? If none of these tactics get the job done, what does? Is there a way to simultaneously capture attention, influence, and transform audiences? How do you build bridges that last and close the gaps once and for all?

That is the very question Extra gum was desperate to answer.

The Gap-Bridging Solution

With sales in a steady slide and their once effortless title as king of the gum mountain no longer on firm footing, Extra had to do something. At first, they did what any of us would do: they went back to the basics. They went back to what worked during the Extra glory days. They doubled down on the feature Extra was known for: long-lasting flavor. You couldn’t watch a sitcom in the eighties without seeing a commercial of smiling people living their best lives, while chewing the same piece of flavor-filled gum for what one could only imagine was weeks at a time.

Long-lasting flavor! That was obviously the answer. So the team at Extra created more messages about how extra Extra really was. The result was abysmal. First, it gained little if any attention (a search on YouTube for any of these commercials will leave you empty-handed) and even less influence. Sales still slid.

The gap reality remained. When it came to that critical, less-than-two-second moment in the grocery aisle when consumers might choose Extra, they didn’t. Determined, Extra sought answers. They hired a research firm to determine why people buy gum in the first place and when the gum-buying decision was actually made.

The results were fascinating. It turns out 95 percent of gum decisions are made unconsciously, without the consumer even knowing it.¹ This meant, in order to be the gap winner when the zombie buyer reached for a breath-freshening solution, Extra had to somehow burrow itself into the depths of the human psyche. They had to exist in that special place where logic doesn’t really matter. A place where gum buying was about more than just buying gum; it was connected to the human experience.

Essentially, Extra needed to get consumers across the bridge.

But how? And was it even possible with something as commoditized as chewing gum?

The answer that worked for Extra is the same answer that will work for you. No matter the scenario. No matter the gap. No matter the product or the audience. The easiest, most effective way to build bridges that capture attention, influence behavior, and transform those who cross them, resulting in gaps that stay closed and bridges that last, is with storytelling.

In the end, stories are what stick.

Storytelling and Building Bridges That Last

Before we continue, let me clarify something. While this book is about storytelling in business, that is not where my exp...