Sales pitches alienate. Stories activate.
What’s more convincing: If I told you how many times I’ve helped a client out of given problem, or if I told you a story about the person I helped yesterday?
What’s more believable: If I promise to deliver world-class service, or if I share an anecdote about the time I got out of bed close to midnight to fix some copy on a presentation a client had procrastinated to complete, due the next morning?
What’s more compelling: A list of the products and services I’m selling, or a narrative about how a client overcame an obstacle to achieve an outcome they previously thought to be unattainable?
What’s more moving: A statistic or a tragedy?
Your facts and figures can’t make me care.
There is an old quote, often misattributed, that is taken from a work of fiction: “The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.” What this is conveying is that people relate to stories, in a way they never will with a product claim, or a number, or the typical marketing language most companies use to convince people to buy from them.
Too often, we litter our marketing copy with statistics—facts, figures, bullet points, specs, product lists, empty promises—when we should be telling stories. Stories are magical tools that convince people that what you claim to be true is actually rooted in reality. Stories make people feel. They make people care.
Stories have the ability to make the reader reimagine the narrative with he or she as the hero of the journey. If you can accomplish that with your messaging, you will facilitate the critical first step in convincing people to trust you, to understand how you can help them, and ultimately to consider you the solution to their problem or their catalyst to their ambition.
To make your prospect the hero of the journey, you must first construct a narrative that makes the reader care about the journey in the first place. Show me, don’t tell me.
Tell me a story. Don’t sell me a story.
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