Tell a Persuasive Story
Consider these two facts:
Fact #1: A good story makes a point far more memorable and
persuades an audience far more effectively than any statistical
chart.
Fact #2: Roughly half of all presenters do not use stories in their
presentations, and most who do use them do so for entertainment
value, not to persuade.
Josh Gordon, president of Gordon Communication Strategies in New
York City, grappled with this dichotomy when researching his book
Presentations That Change Minds: Strategies to Persuade, Convince
and Get Results (McGraw-Hill, 2006). He finally concluded that the
reason 50 percent of presenters don't include persuasive stories in their
presentations is that they don't know how to tell them and don't want to
risk doing it wrong. With that in mind, Gordon devoted an entire chapter
in his book to presentations that include persuasive stories. Here are
some of his tips:
1. What feeling do you want to bring out? Before you think about an
appropriate story to include in your presentation, think about the
emotional response you want from your audience. "Do you want to elicit
pride in going along with your program, anxiety at the possibility of going
with a competitor, excitement about choosing a groundbreaking course
of action?" asks Gordon. "A well-told story can bring out any one of these
feelings, but not all of them. You need to choose one emotion that will
help your persuasive objective."
2. Look around you. Things happen to us every day that have the
makings of a persuasive story. We just need to keep our eyes open. A
few years ago Gordon lost a deal to a competitor who significantly
undercut his price. Later the competitor went bankrupt and started
having major delivery problems that wound up costing Gordon's former
prospect his five biggest clients. Gordon recognized the opportunity to
use this story. He spent some time structuring it so he could tell it
succinctly and when another prospective client said they'd been offered a
huge discount by one of Gordon's competitors, he responded by telling
his story. When he was done, "no one in that room was enthusiastic
about taking a chance on another risky discounter." You don't need to
have climbed Mt. Everest, won the Olympics or trekked across the
Sahara to tell a great story. Everyday incidents can be just as – or more
– instructive, because everyone can relate to them.
3. Boil it down. Most stories are too long. You'll have greater impact if
you boil down your story to just its essentials. First, write out the whole
story. Next, underline the essential parts that must stay in and delete
everything else; rewrite the story using just the essentials. Third, write
out the "punch" line – the last line of the story that delivers the meaning
or laugh. "Find the wisdom, twist, surprise, zinger, moral, deeper truth,
heartfelt moment, or piece of absurdity that makes your story funny or
meaningful," says Gordon. "Now condense and write it into a single
sentence." Finally, go back and expand and clarify parts of the setup –
the main body of the story leading up to that final line – to make the
punch stronger, funnier or more meaningful when it comes. Delete parts
of the setup that do not add to the impact of the punch.
4. Launch right in. When you tell your story, don"t introduce it. Just start
right in. You can lose steam before you ever get started if you begin by
saying, "I'd like to tell you a story about something that happened to me
when I was just starting my business." Instead, begin with: "Three years
ago I walked into the downtown courthouse and filed for bankruptcy."
5. Close and persuade. After you finish your story by delivering the
punch line, you need to do two things quickly to turn the story’s
emotional response into a persuasive event. First, you need to get
collective agreement on the emotion your audience is feeling. Gordon
says you can usually do this with a single sentence that starts with, "I
think we all agree that...," "Don't we all feel that...," or "Aren't we all
excited about..." Second, once your audience has agreed on a group
feeling, ask for action. When he told the story about losing the sale to the
soon-to-be-bankrupt discounter, Gordon handled this two-part closing by
saying, "I think we all agree that buying from a low-cost supplier has big
risks." As everyone in his audience nodded their heads, he asked for a
specific behavior – not to buy from another low-cost, high-risk
competitor.
"If your goal is persuasion, and not just throwing information at an
audience, then stories need to be a part of your presentation," Gordon
concludes. "And the key to using a story as a persuasive tool is to use it
to bring out a strong emotion, and then use the rest of your presentation
to channel that feeling into a change of behavior."
For more information, visit www.joshgordon.com
(From Selling Power.com)