7 The Story Formula™ Overview and Legend

From the beginning of our lives we are taught through stories. Faith is shared through stories. History starts with cavemen sharing stories through images scrawled on cave walls. We use story pictures to illustrate points. Teachers have students conduct experiments to experience facts as they apply to life—to create images to connect with the facts they learn.

My son is home-schooled, and stories are the most powerful tool we have to help him understand concepts. He understands the facts of history because he has read the stories of the people who lived it. We even explain math to him in the form of a story. He has a hard time learning vocabulary words and definitions until I give him the context (story) of the word as it applies to life. Until I give him a story, they are just random words that don’t make sense because he has never seen an image of them in action. The story helps us learn and remember what the word means.

The concept of using story to teach is nothing new. We just don’t often think of its importance in business as a tool of impact and influence. We think we don’t have time to tell stories—that our clients only care about the facts. Facts are important—very important—but story is the context within which we deliver our facts memorably.

The first key to being able to use story to your advantage, is to understand why it works—that it is a tool. You need to know what the tool is for, before you can use it effectively.

An old Yiddish parable has been passed around for years and quoted by many in different versions. It explains the power of story:

TRUTH, naked and cold, had been turned away from every door in the village. Her nakedness frightened the people. When PARABLE found her she was huddled in a corner, shivering and hungry. Taking pity on her, PARABLE gathered her up and took her home. There, she dressed TRUTH in story, warmed her, and sent her out again. Clothed in story, TRUTH knocked

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again at the doors and was readily welcomed into the villagers’ houses. They invited her to eat at their tables and warm herself by their fires.

Your Product Information (Truth) is uninteresting and unappealing (Naked and Cold) until you wrap it in Story (Parable). Once it’s wrapped in story, your Buyer won’t just accept it; they will invite it in.

CLOTHING TRUTH IN STORY IS THE WAY TO CONNECT WITH YOUR BUYER.

FACTS PUSH. STORIES PULL.

Discussion

1. Can you think of a story you used to teach your child, or one your parent used to teach you? How did story impact behavior? How long have you remembered that story?

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2. What is your Product? Your Truth? Your Lesson? Your Message? Your Service?

The Concept? The Brand? The Cause? The Gift you have to share with the world? Can you identify what that is?

3. Is your Truth naked and cold, or have you wrapped it in Parable?

4. Where are the places and platforms that you have to share your Truth, anywhere you have a touch point with your listener? There may be more than you realize. As salespeople we often think that the place to share our truth is in the sales presentation, but our platform is so much bigger than that.

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Notes

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6

Three Points of Connection

Ispeak at a lot of women’s health events (I’ll pause while you gasp in shock). Yes, it appears I have become the poster child for women’s health. Apparently I’m the cautionary tale. Over the years, I have watched thousands of health presentations and been on the receiving end of many pitches for supplements by the scientists who created them. I learned a lot from these scientists about the art of connection, or lack of it. These scientists were highly respected men and women in their fields. They had worked to find cures and preventions for various health issues. I’m sure they all believed in the products they were telling me about. Some had spent ten years developing and researching their ideas; I imagine they were pretty invested—or at least I assumed they were. But it was hard to tell by their expressions and the absolute lack of excitement in their presentations as they stood in the dark under data-filled screens and read to us—word for word for word for word.

I got a lot of rest at those conferences, and I’m pretty sure the audience did too. I watched people around me checking Facebook, sending emails, chatting with neighbors, writing out grocery lists, digging through purses for food, and even snoring.

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I sat at one conference on a Saturday, listening to scientists pitch products to a room full of buyers and potential sellers. I was scheduled to speak at the end of the day, but decided to come at 8am and listen to the other speakers. By 9am I regretted that decision. In just one hour, I felt like I had landed on another planet filled with people speaking a different language. Seriously. I didn’t understand a word. There were a lot of words—big words—screens full of them. Every presenter’s voice droned on in the same monotone. If the military ever runs out of torture techniques, I have a pretty good suggestion. We were about five presenters in (I’m guessing; I’d lost count) when I woke up and leaned in.

She was an average looking woman dressed in a lab coat like the others, but she was different. She told a joke. She told us about working as an army nurse. In minutes, she became human to me. She had my attention. She, too, had created a solution, but she didn’t start with that. She started with the problem—a problem that many people are experiencing, and the effects it has on their lives. She talked about what this problem meant to her in her life, and why it was so important to her to find a solution. (Remember Mr. Bean and his Healthy Cake?) She showed a slide listing all the symptoms of a gut disease she had spent her life studying.

In that moment I slipped from her story into mine. I had every symptom on her screen. She was telling my story. She had my undivided attention. When her presentation was over, I ran to find her in the hallway and begged her to sell me her product. Within twenty-four hours, I spent three hundred dollars on a solution to my problem. To this day, I can’t tell you one thing that’s in it. I can’t explain to other people how it works. Reading the brochure that explains the product takes me all day; it could be in French considering how little I understand it. Yet this woman impacted and influenced me, in the middle of a crowded market, to pay attention. Why?

• She made this personal. She went from random scientist to someone

I felt I could trust.

• She didn’t sell me the data; she sold me a transformation.

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