Tell Me Your Story — and I’ll Remember Your Business

Once upon a time….

It was a dark and stormy night but I was thrilled to be judging again for the Elite 100 Business Awards so I hunkered down and snuggled up. I spent a large part of the weekend reading about a group of wonderful businesses: how they were set up, what they do, how they support their communities and charities; their ambitions for the future and how they embrace technology and innovate. I came away from reading each application wishing I’d been the brains behind that creative firm.

There’s one thing though that many forget and that’s that a judge like me isn’t an expert in their sector and so may be left wondering and having to do additional research to get to the heart of the business, the problem it’s trying to solve and the entrepreneurial spirit that saw the potential and was prepared to take the risk. I’m not asking you to make things easier for me, just to tell the story in a way that I can’t possibly miss the point.

The best way to tell a story is to talk through an example of how you worked with a customer, what you did for them and what the outcome was. I love knowing that you set them up with the solution to their problem, but I’m often left in the dark about what the problem was that you fised so I have no contect. I need to know the problem, solution and the benefit to the customer of the work you did. Wrap that up in the story, really sell me the benefits rather than describing the features, if there are real people involved so much the better because people should come before processes. If I get all that and can tell from what you’ve written that you care, the project will jump off the page and I’ll see why you get up in the morning. The rest follows from there and I’ll happily read the rest of the application with the story in my head so I can see how all the bits fit and the total is more than the sum of the various parts.

One of my own clients once wrote a wonderful application around their ‘sustainability’ business. The problem was that at that time no one quite ‘got’ sustainability. We re-wrote the whole bid: he described a small business he was working with which build wonderful high end kitchens. We added a picture. He explained that the business was struggling because the energy bills were very high. He told how he had come up with a plan to use the waste materials created by building the kitchens to create an energy supply on the site (another picture_ and told about the thousands of pounds saved in bills as a result. The payoff was simply ‘this is sustainability’.

We learn through stories as children and we go on learing through stories as adults. A picture paints a thousand words and if you can add pictures or create a picture with words so that the story is clear, we’re more likely to understand what you’re trying to get across.

The last thing you want to do in an award application is to leave the judge to interpret what you mean when the judge isn’t the subject matter expert. There’s too big a chance that I’ll get it wrong.

This year’s chosen one told the story well, and I woke up each morning after reading the applications, thinking about that particular business. If you can do that to a hackneyed journalist who has heard from, talked to, broadcast with, small and micro businesses for 30 years and still make an impact, you’ve nailed it.

We aren’t story tellers by default in the main. It’s an art well worth mastering. It will stand you in good stead in pitches and presentations as well as around the dinner table. There are storytelling groups all over the UK. Take the time to go along to one. Even if you only go once it may just do the trick and set your mind on a storytelling path. You’ll be glad you did.

Good luck if you’ve entered this year’s awards. I’ll be looking out for your story.