This post continues on the topic of what gets in the way of great corporate storytelling and hones in on the importance of making your stories as relatable as possible with your audiences and that includes your colleagues.
Ask yourself, why do businesses and companies exist, really? It’s surely not just to make money, because every company does that. It isn’t just what you sell that’s important to customers, but the values you hold – and share with them, the valued customer. Today, 89 percent of companies compete on the basis of customer experience, not products. As John Kotter and James Heskett show in Corporate Culture & Performance, companies that convey purpose and value can outperform their counterparts in stock price by a factor of 12. Customers want a more personal relationship with brands and that means engaging in corporate storytelling highlighting why you’re in business.
When you touch on the human, emotional side of the benefits your product can bring, the result will be an increase in sales. The top 10 companies on the Global Empathy Index generated 50 per cent more earnings and increased in value more than twice than those in the bottom 10, showing that there is a strong link between empathy and commercial success. Stories are an excellent way for people to connect with one another, and for customers that can mean with you and your company, but also with others like themselves.
- 89% of componies compete on the basis of customer experience, not products. 89%
- The top 10 companies on the Global Empathy Index generated 50% more earnings than those in the bottom 10. 50%
Integrity, determination and courage
It almost always helps to make the characters in your stories relatable to your audience. Your customers want to identify with what is going on in the story and what is happening to the character(s). These people typically embody traits such as integrity, determination and courage. Perhaps the main character is your customer and it is your company that is going to help them reach their goals. And relating back for a moment to a previous point, it’s always important to show not tell: that is, make sure the story isn’t packed with facts and figures, but is instead deeply and charmingly descriptive.
Ideally, with the messages and audiences in mind, each story should follow a set pattern. For corporate storytelling, the best way to structure a story is to remember four key points.
Firstly, the setting. This is a moment in time, a place or an event. It immediately establishes a relatable context for your message. Then there are the characters. These are the people affected by the current situation, whether it be your customers or employees. With the setting and characters firmly established, now is the moment to reveal the conflict. This provides the tension that gives your audience a reason to care and see the conflict resolved. Finally, comes the resolution. With all the other elements established, the audience and customers will now be fully emotionally engaged in what is happening. They will be willing on your resolution – which, in the context of corporate storytelling is a solution or product.
Connecting with customers AND colleagues
Furthermore, corporate storytelling allows you to simultaneously connect with two very important but distinct groups of people: your colleagues and your customers. Stories can persuade, inform or entertain – sometimes all three at the same time – and it is likely that you will need to do all of these things with corporate storytelling. A compelling narrative helps you align what you do with the company’s overall mission.
But that isn’t all. The company needs to promote itself as well as selling its products (though of course the two go hand-in-hand), and a clearer narrative about the company’s activities and achievements leads both to greater internal cohesion and staff morale.
After all, employees are the heart of any organisation. They are the organisation’s best asset and an organisation only succeeds when its employees do. There are indications, however, that there is widespread non-engagement. For example, Gallup research suggests that 70 per cent of US employees are not engaged or are actively disengaged from work. The right culture at work can be cultivated by storytelling.
Share the company’s struggles, values and aims
This goes beyond sharing a successful vision. As well as the vision, stories about the company’s history should be shared, along with its struggles, values and aims. Share what’s important with your colleagues and explain what this means for them. This will give them something to believe in and consequently they will believe more in the organisation.
You can ask colleagues to share personal stories in a business context. This is an excellent way of strengthening connections with customers. You can even deploy aspects of your own story to explain why you’ve been making certain decisions. Your customers want to see the real you, as do your colleagues. Put simply, more and better storytelling can mean greater staff engagement.
Expanding your reputational reach
This point is closely linked to the final one – that good corporate storytelling helps to expand reputational reach. Storytelling ensures that the change your work brings to real-life situations is seen to be making a difference. Companies should aim to be seen as an industry or brand leader, and corporate storytelling, crafted in the right way, does exactly that.
This and the previous post are designed to help you, above all. Good corporate storytelling may sound daunting, but it isn’t really – it’s just important to get right. It can and does make all the difference, and now you know why and how.
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