WHY YOUR BUSINESS NEEDS A STORY LIBRARY

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Seven Stories Every Salesperson Must Tell is available on Amazon

Your business needs a story library! I know you don't have one and you may not know what it means . What it means is a set of stories that your business can build around for SHARED PURPOSE and FASTER EXECUTION and winning more business - allow me to explain.

Have a look over my shoulder.

Here's a representation of your company and today there are already many stories told -

I called them low level stories stories -between your leaders and your staff - stories that your staff tell each other about your company - stories that you tell your clients - stories that they tell about you - stories that they tell about you internally - and hopefully you have many clients

So there are many stories but there are also low-level stories that your partners tell about you and that you tell about your partners. So what do I mean? What's low-level story and what's a high-level story?

Let's start with a central story about your company - let's start with VALUES stories. I'm sure your company has some values - are you an ethical company? do you behave honestly? Is reliability and delivery an important value of your company? Maybe low price is an important value of you company? I'm sure you have values but how do you communicate those values?

If I go to your website will I read a story? or will I read assertions about how honest you are and how well you deliver? And if I go to your competitor's website will I read the same assertions?

Hewlett-Packard has an incredible history in the information technology industry. They were founded in 1939 in what is now known as Silicon Valley. It's fair to say they are one of the founding companies of Silicon Valley.

Early in the company's history Bill Hewlett, one of the founders, went into work on the weekend with some colleagues and he found that the the room that had all the equipment in it - the tool room - was locked. So he took a fire axe and smashed the door down and then he put a note on the door and it said "this door will never be locked again because we trust our people"

That story and stories like it percolated through Hewlett Packard and became known as a way of behaving in Hewlett Packard it was called "The HP way. And that way of behaving I think it's fair to say created the powerhouse of Silicon Valley. Steve Jobs got his first job as a teenager in Hewlett Packard, in HP.

So that's a VALUES story. Let me explain a little bit more about what a story is and what a high value story is as opposed to a low-grade story fundamentally a story is - a sequence of events - I'm going to use these circles (draws ...) to denote an event there are a minimum of four events in a simple oral story it starts off with a setting - a time in a place, Hewlett-Packard was founded in 1939 in Silicon Valley. There is a surprise - an unexpected complication out of that complication - there is a turning point and then we make a business point we have to resolve the story to make a point.

I draw what I call a narrative arc - like this (Draws ...) - to indicate the suspense of the story the suspense rises it's resolved and then we make a business point it's not a business story unless we make a business point. We could tell a joke or a funny story in the pub or a barbecue but a business story makes a business point.

And the point of the Hewlett-Packard story is to its staff - that we trust our people and we trust you to do your work and that trust extends to their clients and to their partners and it moulds the values of the company.

Okay what are the other stories? Well of course there's your there's your COMPANY'S story - only your company has a story like your company's story. Every company truly is unique when it comes to their history. Why did your company succeed? Why didn't it fail? Most companies do fail - what was the turning point that made it obvious that your company was going to succeed? Can you tell that story?

When I go into companies consulting - working with sales teams - it's very common that the salespeople are not able to tell the company's story - well that's a very interesting story it's truly unique it's not like the assertions that you make that your competitors make - the same as your company it's completely different it's a unique story - so why not tell that story?

And then you can exchange it for your client's story - your client will also have a company story so why not use your company's story to exchange and to get information about your client's story. That's an important story.

On the issue of clients, if you've been in business for any length of time you will have had some success - you'll have had success with your partners and you'll have had success with your clients. Can you tell the story of that success? The success story is a story about your client as the central character - that was in a situation that they needed to get out of - they needed to transform and with your help as their guide - they were able to transform themselves with your products and services and with your company to be a better company to be a better person - that's a success story.

By telling that story from the perspective of your client you will really engage with your client and those success stories influence your own staff your partners and your competitors and these stories need to be in your story library well you might say my business is very new I don't really have any success stories - well you don't have a business at all if you don't have insight. If you don't have market insight - commercial insight into the market that you're selling into and information that your potential clients don't know about their business - something they do need to know then that should be put into an insight story.

It's not assertions about what you know that your client doesn't know - that will come across as arrogant - it's the story about how you learnt that insight .I call it the 'researcher's story' it's the story that says how you went from how my client currently thinks about their business or their business problem to how they could think about it in a narrative we call that an insight story. 

And the last type of story that needs to be in your story library is the story of the key people in your company. That might be your CE or your COO, or maybe you're head of customer service - the narrative that says this is the history of this person, this is why they do what they do this is the journey they've had and consequently this is how they will serve you, my customer or my partner - that narrative is really interesting and it's an opportunity to share a story with a client or a partner.

When you tell your CEO's story or the the journey of your head of customer service you have an opportunity to ask for the stories of the people in your client organization and that makes for a connection.

So key staff stories should be in your story library. All of these stories should be in your story library - so here it is this is the story library.

Exactly what are those stories? The best way to collect them is short one to two minute videos - just record them on an smartphone put them somewhere where everyone can access the stories.

Let's talk about the benefits of the story library the first thing is there are there are many benefits but the first benefit is SHARED PURPOSE. When we have high-level that are well crafted that have tension - these stories serve a purpose - they they help everybody understand the purpose of your company, your ideal clients, your insights what the people are like that work in your company.

That gets everyone together and it gets them operating together. Many businesses that I come across (and in fact, in my history working in corporations) many businesses work at cross-purposes - marketing doesn't get on with sales customer service doesn't get on withengineering - the stories are what brings your company together to a common purpose.

The Hewlett-Packard stories got everybody behaving the same way and that's the power of a purposeful story and the second key benefit of a story library and curating these special purpose stories is FAST EXECUTION - it's really a consequence of the first thing - when your staff understand these stories when they share these stories they know what they're doing and they know that what they're trying to achieve and they'll do it more effectively.

Let me give you a simple example from my consulting work it's not uncommon when I go into a client, I often find that it takes between 9 months and 18 months for a new salesperson to get up to speed and one of the big reasons it takes so long is they have to find these stories - by accident either there are just low-level stories around or they have to go and actually hunt down the stories.

Really good salespeople do that unconsciously they know they need these stories but the vast majority of salespeople can't get those stories, if you don't help them. And having these stories prepared for them in a story library - that's like rocket fuel for a new salesperson that launches them into the your business and it gets them selling effectively far more quickly.

Imagine the difference the difference between taking 9 months or 18 months to start hitting target, versus 3 months to 9 months we're talking about 6 to 9 months of difference. Well salespeople have targets- half a million dollars, a million dollars, two and a half, three, five million dollars - if you've got a five million dollar targeted sales person that can get selling six months quicker that is two and a half million dollars to your top line - it's massively important.

So the stories are what sales people need to operate effectively but more than that your entire staff they will tell stories there are low-level stories your competitors are telling stories your clients are telling stories if you don't curate these stories find the best ones the success stories the value stories your insight stories your company story and your key staff stories if you don't curate those have them somewhere accessible for everybody to access - particularly new employees then your miss out on and fast execution.

That's why you need a story library. Thanks very much for listening.

I'm Mike Adams

Ask me about storytelling and a story library for you sales team.

About the author

Best-selling author, engineer, sales management specialist and sales coach at The Story Leader, Mike has managed sales teams in the United Kingdom, Russia, India, China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and Australia across a range of industries, including IT & Software, Telecommunications, Oil and Gas, Mining, Facilities Services and Industrial Products.

Mike consults for and coaches revenue growth teams mainly in tech industries throughout Australia and internationally.

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