Much has been written about storytelling as a business tool. And for good reason. Storytelling can be an extremely powerful way to influence, motivate and inspire others. However, it is common for storytelling trainers to err by disregarding differences between business storytelling and recital storytelling.

Stylistically, business storytelling should be more casual than careful.  Indeed, like recital storytelling, business storytelling is used to engage listeners, facilitate interest, and gain emotional reactions. However, when telling a story in a business setting, you should not try to become the next Mark Twain. As a business tool, storytelling should be more  “informance” than performance.  Otherwise, it will do more harm than good.

There are other differences, as well. For instance, recital storytelling travels from the speaker’s mouth to the listener’s ears.  By contrast, in a business setting,  storytelling can and should be a two-way street.  In fact, one can benefit as much from eliciting as they can from telling stories.

Consider, for instance, the salesperson interviewing a prospect who is considering a change in vendors. Typical questions that the salesperson might ask are, “Why are you considering a change in vendors?” or “What are you looking for that you are not receiving from your current supplier?” Using questions like these will likely yield a direct answer and provide some understanding of what the prospect is looking for.  However, by eliciting a story, additional insights can be gained.

Instead of asking for reasons why, consider what would happen with quesitons like, ” When did you decide to change vendors?” or “ What happened to cause you to reconsider your current arrangement?”  By asking for the event or events leading up to the reason,  a story would be elicited.  And, instead of receiving a direct answer like, “We are looking for someone who can provide faster responses to our requests,” it’s more likely that prospect would say something like,”When we first started working with them they were Johnny-on-the-spot.  But now it takes 5 or 6 phone calls before anyone gets back to us. Last  year, they were acquired by a bigger company.  And following that acquisition, we got lost in the shuffle.  Being one of their smaller accounts, we just didn’t seem as important anymore.”   As the story unfolds, the emotional component of the problem rises to the surface. Besides the directly stated more rational reason why behind the considered switch, we also learn that the prospect has been feeling left out in the cold and wants to feel important regardless of the size of his business.

This is but one example of how eliciting stories can be more helpful than just the fact gathering. It takes some practice.  But here are some things to consider when developing your ability to elicit stories:

1. Go for the “time stamp.”   Stories, by definition describe events that occurred at one time or another.   Be mindful of this as you ask questions.  Always ask for the “when” or  “what happened” instead of asking for a direct reason why.
2. Learn about the setting.    When describing where something happened, you are likely to elicit a story, as well.  i.e “where did the process start falling apart?” or  “where did you first start to see changes occur?”
3. Avoid “why” questions if you can.  Certainly knowing why someone believes the way they do is important.  But, again, “why,” more often than not, will yield opinions or theories that are often rational in natural.  Stories generally reveal the emotions that underly the facts.
4. Be aware of assertion or opinion cues.  Whenever someone says or implies what they think, you should know you are not being told a story.
5. If you get an assertion, go for the underlying story.   Instead of asking, “why do you believe that to be true?” ask, “Did something occur to cause you to feel that way?”   This will inevitably yield far more useful information than the assertion alone. Just remember, a story is not a story unless an event is described.

Learn more about brand storytelling here!

Oral stories told in a business context, make up a unique category within the whole storytelling genre. They fall somewhere between the extremes of your basic TV news story and stories delivered by performance artists. Stories told in business settings are necessarily short, conversational, and only work if they make a relevant point.

Nevertheless, business stories do have one thing in common with all other types of oral stories. If appropriately told, they emotionally engage audiences and have a very good chance of being remembered. Think about it. What’s easier to recall from an oral presentation? 3 bullet points or a story about 3 pain points similar to yours? It is for this reason that oral business storytelling can do the heavy lifting when you need people to engage with what your information.

If you’re wanting to learn the basics of business storytelling, there are plenty of resources available to you, including companies like Anecdote that specialize in business storytelling training (full disclosure/shameless plug: I am an Anecdote Storytelling trainer). But, whether you are a trained business storyteller or not, here are some tools and resources that will further your abilities.

1. The Metaphor

I’ve lumped similes and analogies into this category. Each has its own structure, but these three forms of speech have the same purpose. They all provide new information within a known frame of reference. As such, they create mental pictures that foster more involvement than plain descriptions.

“The boardroom turned out to be a heavy artillery of egos” paints a more interesting picture than “the members of the board all had strong egos.”

“His desk was as big as a tennis court,” may be an exaggeration, but it will say something more than “He had a big desk.”

If you’re challenged with coming up with metaphors, there’s plenty of help available. For starters, I recommend two books:

Metaphors Dictionary by Dorris Weiss and Elyse Sommers. It contains 6500 comparative phrases, and a complete bibliography of sources.

The other is The Tall Lady and the Iceberg: The Power of Metaphor to Sell, Persuade & Explain Anything to Anyone. In addition to containing a number of great metaphors that can be used for business storytelling, the author provides a number of techniques that will help you come up with your own unique metaphorical phrases.

2. The “Then, Now and How” Formula.

The “Then, Now and How” formula is something I learned while working with the highly acclaimed speaking coach, Craig Valentine. He writes more about this formula and other storytelling techniques in his bestselling book, World Class Speaking, co-authored by Mitch Meyerson. Here’s the gist of how to apply this formula:

First, talk about the way things used to be. Then, talk about what has changed. Finally, explain how the change came about. Here’s an example:

Then: “We used to have a problem with employee turnover (really embellish the problem by talking about the setbacks and the frustrations this caused).

Now: ” Today, however, we have substantially reduced turnover to _____.”(fill in the blank and embellish).

How: “The reason for this change is all due to the system I want to talk to you about today. ”

This formula has many applications for selling or presenting case histories.

Click here to learn all there is to know about telling your brand’s story.

3. Humorous Dialogue

Too often, speakers try to get audiences to laugh by telling jokes or delivering overly rehearsed one-liners. And they fail. This is because audiences get turned off by speakers who try too hard to make them laugh.

Witness Senator Rubio’s first debate when, during his introductory remarks, he held up a bottle of water while saying that he’s made sure to bring water this time. This was a call-back to the time when a dry-mouthed Rubio embarrassed himself by reaching off camera for water during a nationally televised rebuttal to the State of the Union speech. I’m not sure what was harder to watch, the reach for water or the joke that didn’t get a laugh.

If you’re looking for humor, find it instead within the stories you tell. More specifically, find it within dialogue used to tell a story. Consider this example for instance:

“I started out working for a pretty tough boss. He watched over everything I did and was quick to criticize. One day, he told me that he’d love to stop correcting me. “You have my full permission,” I said.

This may not generate a guffaw, but it’s easier to deliver and will be appreciated more than a canned joke or witticism.

4. Your Story Journal

A relevant business story isn’t something that most of us can come up with spontaneously. For that reason, it’s important to keep a journal of some sort that will trigger stories most appropriate for any given situation. You needn’t write out the whole story. A headline and a one or two-line gist will suffice.

Two sources can help you with this. The first is Evernote. Create a category called “My Stories’ in Evernote and tag each story you add to it with words that help you find them, as needed. You might have a story about a challenge about a weird problem you once encountered, for instance. Simply write a couple sentences that will help jog your memory. Tag them with words that will help you call them up when they are needed – tags like, #weird problem, #unusual challenges, or #creative solutions.

Another source is Day One. Day One is a daily journaling program that also allows you to categorize and tag stories of the days they occur. However, Day One will send you timed notifications with questions like, “What are the best, worse memories from your childhood?” I use this by providing short, taggable answers similar to the way I use Evernote. Additionally, Day One provides a way to diary events, emails, photos or anything else that you’d like to keep track of.

5. The 2+2 Formula.

This is a formula I learned from a Ted talk, entitled, The Clues To A Great Story, given by Pixar’s Andrew Stanton, the creator of Finding Nemo and Wall-E. During this talk, Stanton explains that audiences don’t like to be told that 2+2 equals 4. “We like to figure things out for ourselves,” he goes on to say.

The 2+2 Formula really underscores one of the fundamental reasons we are drawn to stories. It’s why comedians don’t explain the punch lines to their jokes.

Practice using these 5 tools and you’ll add to your ability to capitalize on the power of story as a business tool. For more information, on storytelling training for business, go to http://www.story-lab.net.

I recently heard Ellen Degeneress describe people who talk too much.

“Being with people like this,” she said, “is like being on a highway without exit signs when you have to pee.”

Back in the day, when I used to wear ties to work, a colleague once asked me, “Why do all of yours look like Walt Disney sneezed on your shirt?”

I have a friend who is a whiz at Trival Pursuit and describes herself as “the Imelda Marcos of facts nobody cares about.”

Metaphors, analogies and similes (herein they will all be lumped together as metaphors for the sake of simplicity), are very powerful tools for turning an ordinary expression into something extraordinary.  Like stories, they can simplfy the complex, wrap a fact in something that generates an emotional reaction and help us visualize abstractions.  Above all, they plant concepts firmly into our brain and help us remember things we might otherwise forget.

For these reasons, metaphors can be very powerful tools for leaders, sales people and marketers. Here are just some quick examples of how you can use metaphors to tell brand stories:

The Elevator Speech:

Instead of telling someone you’re in quality control, you might be like the guy who looks for the penny in the pile of dimes.  If you’re in R&D, you might be the company’s taste tester.  If you’re in sales, you might think of your job as the GPS that helps companies finds a better route.

For Framing Product Benefits:

Instead of talking about time-savings, you might say that your product allows a company to run longer distances without getting winded. If you’re selling improved ROI potential, it might be that your product finds profits hiding behind big rocks.  Perhaps your product controls spending. But what if you said it was like using LoJack to find lost savings?

For Technical Explanations:

You might define RAM as the number of a computer’s brain cells.  Using your data base  could be compared to a well-trained scent hound that sniffs out potential buyers. I once heard content marketing described as gifts that keeps on giving.

Whether or not these are the right metaphors to use for the specific purposes I’ve identified,  it should be clear that metaphors have unlimited potential expressing ideas simply, memorably and in wasy that engage audiences.

Coming up with metaphors

Metaphors fall into two piles. First, there are the “ stand by’s, sometimes called cliches. These are metaphors that have lost meaning from overuse,   i.e. “His head was spinning when I gave him the bad news,’ “they shot down my proposal,”  they “lit up like a Christmas tree when she talked about the bonus program.”  These may help you to clarify what you are talking about, but they hardly do much to engage listeners or wake them up to new, more identifiable perspectives.

The opposite of the stand-by metaphor is one that stands out.  If you were to think of information in terms of waves coming at you, the highest, most forceful waves are the one’s that stand out metaphors create.  You know you’ve heard one when a wave hits you with a perfect and original connection to something else with which you are familiar.

Coming up with stand out metaphors can be challenging. However, there are any number of techniques you can employ that are not within the scope of this article. For more information you can turn to Mind Tools, or you can Google metaphor lists for inspiration.  One of the simplest techniques that I have found useful is to write down on the left side of a  sheet of paper all the things you or your product does. Then on the other side write down people, places or things that do something similar. Don’t edit anything. Just free associate as many comparative actions as you can with specific actions that you or your product performs.  Sooner or later you are bound to find a stand out metaphor that is original and one you believe fits.   Once you’ve found one that you think works, test it out on different people to gauge reactions.  If you see eyebrows go up and/or a smiles coming across faces, you’ll know you have a winner.

However you arrive at them, stand-out metaphors are well worth the effort that goes into creating them.