Have you reached a point where you feel there’s just so much “noise” in your industry there’s no point in marketing anymore? Who’s going to notice you anyway, right?

The thing is, there is still one powerful way to capture a listener, viewer or reader’s attention without having to resort to being part of the push-based “noise” already out there – and that is, through using business storytelling. It’s why it’s important to learn how to craft captivating business stories.

When you hear a story, you put yourself into the picture and “live” that moment – whether you’ve experienced it before or not. So when YOU put your most aligned clients into an emotional moment, it often sticks with them days, weeks and even months later.

In fact, I still picture Tom Cruise every time we have a lamb roast, after the Australian lamb TV advertisement from the ’90s where a woman (a rather young Naomi Watts, incidentally), wins dinner with Tom Cruise via  a radio show.

“Fantastic! When?” she asks.

“Tonight”

“Tonight? Oh sorry, I can’t. Mum’s doing a lamb roast.”

It was great storytelling and put us right there in the story. Guess how many families made jokes about Tom Cruise and lamb roast on Sunday nights?

But HOW do you the right inspiration business storytelling to use and how do you go about crafting it is the question?

How to craft captivating business stories

Having been a journalist for 16 years, one of the struggles I face in sharing why business storytelling is so important in your business is that I don’t really think about the “process” of writing. It kind of happens.

But as more clients continue to want to unlock how to craft captivating stories, I’ve had to really unravel exactly what those steps are that make up stories to captivate audiences or inspire them to take action.

There are many arguments on what a “business story” is – from your brand story to an anecdote, an analogy or a client case study.

For me, they all play a part in getting across your message via stories.

Of course, these apply whether you’re writing a 140-character tweet or a 1500-word blog post.

Watch the mini masterclass here (please excuse the story example given at the end – it’s probably not the strongest. There’s for thinking on your feet!).

Then read on to dive a little deeper into each element.

A Beginning, A Middle and An End

Sounds so basic, right? There’s got to be more to it. And exactly what are those elements anyway?

I hear so many complicated outlines on how a business story should be structured. For most people I’ve worked with, it’s simply thrown them into overwhelm, which then leads to procrastination, which results in no stories being told at all.

I want to distill this down to its simplest form.

Please note, there are a couple of different frameworks you can follow, but I want to share an easy one you can use now.

So pick your story and then determine….

BEGINNING:

What is the problem, conflict, situation or struggle the character in your story is facing? This character is your “hero” and, in all cases, a character your ideal client can relate to.

MIDDLE:

Often a character will experience resistance or have to figure out the steps to overcome that challenge during this part of the story which leads to a turning point. This is the moment where things shift for them.

END:

What is the resolution of your story or the outcome the character experienced?

We will add one more step to this structure in a little minute and that is the

KEY MESSAGE:

This can involved the message you want to get across, a lesson you feel needs to be highlighted or an action step you’d like someone to take after hearing the story.

More on that soon.

Use Drama In Your Story

How can you bring in a bit of drama to really sustain people’s attention within your story?

This drama can happen at any point in the story.

An example is the book I wrote, Shaking The Foundations, about Fairbrother Construction.

The story started right in the midst of a dramatic scene, where son Glen swears at his mother in frustration after he can’t complete a simple task and she is too busy to help.

When his father steps in, the son becomes violent and soon the police are called. This opening dramatic scene ends with their son being admitted to the psychiatric ward, where he would later be diagnosed with schizophrenia.

The couple had always imagined their son would one day take over the business, having invested all they had into it over 21 years. The business started the same year their son was born.

So the chapter ends on the overall message and defining moment of the book, which is that:
“… Glen would never take over the company. Never live up to the potential his early years hinted to. Never be the same boy again. The question was: what were they doing it all for? Why had they poured every fibre of themselves over 21 years into a business that had no future? It would become their most defining moment.”

Many a tear was shed over this chapter, due to the depth of emotions within it.

But without going into the drama and highlighting that moment, it wouldn’t have the same impact and likely wouldn’t have people eager to keep reading to find out the events that led to this moment and what happens afterwards.

Your dramatic moment doesn’t have to be quite so dramatic, but find a moment where you can provide people with an emotional connection to the story. Give them something they can visualise or relate to.

Include Dialogue For Colour

I’ll confess that when I read novels, I sometimes struggle when there’s pages dedicated to the “set up” of the scene and characters. I like to get straight into the action. That also tends to be where I pivot when teaching how to craft captivating business stories.

The action for me, and where the real colour begins in a story, is in the dialogue.

As a journalist, I was always looking for what we called “golden quotes” or, in TV news language, “sound bites”. In the online world they’re “tweetable tweets”. You need to find these same “golden quotes” in your story – the pieces of dialogue that capture people’s attention, hit at the heart or say more succinctly what you want to get across in the story.

The other benefit of dialogue is that it can bring a character to life. It’s hard for us to visualise a character, unless we can hear what they’re saying or thinking.

Now, there are two types of dialogue you can be using in your story.

INTERNAL DIALOGUE:

This is getting inside the head of your character and understanding what they’re thinking. When it comes to putting the reader inside the story and fully experiencing the problem, this is where internal dialogue can work best.

When you really understand your ideal client, you’ll know which internal monologues are going to resonate most.

EXTERNAL DIALOGUE:

This is what you say out loud to another character in your story during a conversation… unless you talk out loud to yourself, of course! Although, that can be a little weird.

A reader may feel “they’re” saying the words as they’re reading it.

In written form, you may write exactly like you speak and sound (although, don’t overdo it).

Visualise in your head a character who might say…

“Ain’t she a beauty?”

Compare that to a character who would say:

“Oh my, isn’t she simply glorious?”

I bet you’re not visualising the same person saying those lines or hearing the same voice.

If you’re sharing a story through a public speaking event, this is where you may change your voice so people can “hear” the difference in the characters and connect more fully.

Using Sensory Language in Business Storytelling

Most of us were blessed with five senses when we were born – sight, sound, touch, taste and smell.

By using these elements in your story, someone starts to “experience” your story as if they’re living it as they listen.

Think about how powerful that is for your business. Imagine if someone is able to say they can fully understand what it would be like to work with you, simply because they feel like they’ve lived through that moment before – thanks to your story.

Imagine how many barriers this breaks through to get someone to say “YES”.

One of the best examples is fast food chains describing their burgers.

They describe their burger as having a big slab of genuine Aussie Angus beef, two slices of perfectly aged Swiss cheese, crisp iceburg lettuce, fancy Spanish onions, fresh locally grown Roma tomatoes all on a soft sourdough roll.

Can’t you just taste that?

They could just say it’s a beef patty with some lettuce, cheese, onion and tomatoes… but you can’t taste that, right?

You don’t need to overdo the sensory experience, but highlighting someone’s surroundings so they can see where they are in the story, sharing the noises or the way something sounds….

So move someone from being a “listener” to someone who visualises themselves inside your story.

Finding The Meaning And the Message

We touched on this one during “beginning, middle and end”, but the final piece of your story is:

• the message you want to get across,
• a lesson you feel needs to be highlighted or
• an action step you’d like someone to take.

There is no point telling a story for story’s sake. You need to be able to have a point to your story and have people understand why you’re telling this story.

What is the meaning or message you want to get across?

You may find that when you tell a story you have a couple of different messages within that story. And that’s OK. It often happens to me too.

Your job is to highlight one message you think people most need to hear right now. If you find the message in your story shifts over time, that’s not uncommon. Go with it!

A meaning or message may eventually not be as important to you and, therefore, a story may have to be retired at some point. This is all normal.

Lastly, when it comes to messages, you may START with the message you want to get across and then start looking for a story that would help highlight that message.

This is often the case with my storytelling, where I know what my goal of a piece of content is, I just need to find the perfect story to wrap around it.

A Business Storytelling Example:

Here is an example of a business story (that’s an improvement on the one in the video where I was trying to share how to craft captivating business stories) that highlights why I do what I do.

The meaning of this story may shift and change over time, but for now you’ll see what I’ve pulled out of it and what I think you most need to take from it to move to the next step.

This time last year I was sitting in the hospital’s emergency department wondering if my husband would still be with me by the end of the day.

He had frighteningly high blood pressure and, in a room full of 70-year-olds who looked like “death warmed up”, it was 42-year-old Julian the doctors were most concerned wouldn’t last the day.

Everything they were trying wasn’t working to bring his blood pressure down.

The looks on the nursing staff said it all.

All my husband could do was repeat: “I’m so sorry”.

In that moment, my focus shifted from writing the next blog post to nurture my community, to ensuring my husband lived.

I look back now and realise just how fortunate I was to have systemised my business enough that it kept ticking along without me. I gained the odd digital product sale and had a new client book in a discovery call – all without me needing to be present.

But that period highlighted that there was still work to be done to use storytelling, strategies and systems to further enhance the predictability and consistency within my business, without fear that missing a Facebook status or blog post would result in disaster.

Setting up systems and learning to use storytelling isn’t an overnight thing. It takes time.

And it doesn’t mean you have to be 100% automated. You still want to build real relationships.

But when life happens, your business isn’t going to fall over.

Your income isn’t going to fluctuate from month to month.

And you’ll have crafted stories that ensure your community still feel nurtured and cared for – even when you’re not there.

What about you? How would you business fare under similar circumstances? Or have you experienced something in your life already that meant things had to be dropped?

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And that’s it!

A simple story with a clear message and then… the final step… a call to action.

Now you know how to craft captivating business stories, download a copy of the Storytelling Map to start crafting more stories you can use throughout your marketing to ensure you can consistently attract the right people to you.

Download your copy here

What do you think? Could you have a go at crafting business stories to use through your marketing?