Phillip Swan

#474: How to Create a Customer-Centric, Go-To-Market Strategy With Your Brand Storytelling

#474: How to Create a Customer-Centric, Go-To-Market Strategy With Your Brand Storytelling

You’ve heard me say this often, “You, your brand, and your product or service are NOT the center of your business story. Your customer is. Always.”

This is the drumbeat of customer-centric brand storytelling.

Story Truth #2 is that your brand story is not about what you make, but what you make happen in your customer’s life.

Outcomes trump offerings everytime in your business storytelling.

But what if your sales and marketing team are at odds on how to tell your story?

Marketing leans into hyperbole with messages all about your wonder widget.

Sales, on the other hand, push features and benefits selling when what your prospects really want is the emotional pull of a solution story.

Phillip Swan, Managing Partner at Pi Partners and supporting the family business as the Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) at LingoAid, shares how to create gripping go-to-market strategies using customer-centric storytelling that builds affinity moving your audience to action.

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Dr. Jessica Vogelsang

#473: Why Building Trust With Your Storytelling is the Best Medicine

#473: Why Building Trust With Your Storytelling is the Best Medicine

When you see a loved one in the hospital, is your first inclination to race to their echocardiogram and review their charts?

Or do you spring to their bedside, clasp their hand, and ask how they’re feeling?

We all naturally gravitate to their story, not their data. We leave that up to the docs to translate and explain their findings later.

But first, their story.

Our guest today, Dr. Jessica Vogelsang, is a veterinarian and Chief Medical Officer of the American Animal Hospital Association (AAHA). She’s also an international speaker and bestselling author of All Dogs Go to Kevin.

As you will hear, Dr. Vogelsang is a huge proponent of storytelling in evidenced-based practices like pet and human healthcare.

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Francisco Mahfuz

#472: What’s the Point in Telling Your Story?

#472: What’s the Point in Telling Your Story?

I was sitting in a Tucson hotel conference room watching his PowerPoint presentation when I thought a 3D pterodactyl would leap from his deck and chomp off my head.

The “He” I am referring to was a brilliant social scientist from Phoenix presenting to a group of nonprofits about nutrition deserts in, well, the desert.

At least that’s what I think his big idea was because he was so obtuse about the needs of his audience that he never got to his point.

His slides were so crammed with numbers, charts, lines, and scribbles that it occurred to me that they were busier than an Autosterogram.

That’s a big word for those two-dimensional images that when you stare at them they create an optical illusion revealing a three-dimensional image.

That’s when my exhausted brain chuckled at the idea of a 3D dinosaur emerging from his intricate maze of detailed data.

Maybe he was the dinosaur in the room rendering his message extinct by the meteor of metrics he projected on us.

Another brilliant mind mired in his message. So sad.

“What IS HIS POINT?” I still wonder.

Francisco Mahfuz, a National Champion Speaker and Storytelling Coach joins us today to ensure this doesn’t happen to you or me.

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Randy Olson

#471: How to Make Your Stories Stronger by Calculating Your “But-to-And” Ratio

#471: How to Make Your Stories Stronger by Calculating Your “But-to-And” Ratio

Leonardo da Vinci said, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

Albert Einstein said, “The definition of genius is taking the complex and making it simple,’”

But in the business world, we tend to over-complicate everything.

Especially our communications.

We find ourselves in “And Land.” And, and, and’ing our audiences to death-by-boredom.

Now you can test how clear, concise and compelling your communication is by using a tool developed by today’s guest, Dr. Randy Olson, my co-author of The Narrative Gym for Business.

If you don’t know Randy, he is a Harvard Evolutionary Biologist turned filmmaker, author and teacher of the ABT (And, But, Therefores) narrative framework.

For the past eight years, Randy has been using a tool called The Narrative Index to quantify the power of a particular communication by measuring the “But-to-And” ratio in its content.

He developed it to prove the power of the ABT in speeches dating back decades.

The higher the score (meaning replacing “ands” with “buts” and “therefore” to propel the narrative forward) the more compelling the communication is compared to thousands of competing speeches, articles, and presentations.

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Pleasant Middelhof

#470: How to Make Your Complex Sales Simple by Exploding the View

#470: How to Make Your Complex Sales Simple by Exploding the View

Have you read The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck?

I loved it. Talking about a new refreshing take on stoicism.

One of my favorite takeaways from Mark Manson’s book is that we all should aspire to manage good problems versus tackling bad ones.

But we often get overwhelmed by the bad problems that suck our energy because we wrestle with them in all of their complexity.

Today’s guest, Pleasant Middelhof, shares how to simplify complexity by exploding the view, especially in sales.

She uses the analogy of her six-year-old son, who is a huge fan of Legos, assembling a 10,296-piece Titanic set in just seven days by exploding the project to its component parts.

Pleasant explains how you can do the same thing to simplify your complex sales for both you and the buyer.

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Samantha Hardcastle

#469: Story-Doing: How to Blow Away Your Customers with a Multi-Sensory Journey

#469: Story-Doing: How to Blow Away Your Customers with a Multi-Sensory Journey

Michele and I visited Sir Richard Branson’s Necker Island in the British Virgin Islands in March 2021.

He hosted automotive dealers from around the nation and I was invited to provide a Business of Story mastery course.

Given that Sir Richard is a business storytelling icon, I was tickled to be asked.

But what really blew me away was the Fantasy Island-like experience we were treated to.

His remarkable staff anticipated every conceivable guest request. It was one of the most magical moments we had ever experienced.

But you don’t need to be an international billionaire to design these same kinds of peak moments for your customers.

Samantha Hardcastle, founder and creative director of The Storied Experience, will show you how a little creativity and ingenuity go a long way to pull off multi-sensory journeys for your customers that they will not soon forget.

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Traci DeForge

#468: How to Create Powerful Testimonials Using Audio Storytelling

#468: How to Deliver More Powerful Testimonials Using Audio Storytelling

Imagine a flying pink elephant bumbling into an Amazon drone knocking open a box of assorted rubber clown noses being delivered from ACME Circus Supply.

The humorous prostheses rain down on a dog park with a red nose lodging on the snout of a feral black cat.

The spectacle wrestles a mime away from his fake wind fighting and he chuckles at the irony; the first time he has been heard from in nine years.

The airborne pachyderm trumpets from her extended proboscis and glides off.

How much would it cost to produce that TV spot?

And yet it costs you nothing to deliver that picture to the theater of the mind in your audiences when you describe the scenario.

Did you picture it?

Maybe that’s why I still do an audio-only podcast.

Because nobody wants to see me sitting there while an interesting guest is sharing their insights.

I’d rather have you picture those insights. Become part of our storytelling.

To me, that’s the power of audio storytelling. It’s much more participatory and compelling than simply delivering images via video.

I’m excited to have Traci DeForge on today’s show to share how she uses audio storytelling to create powerful testimonials and produce amazing podcasts.

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Barry LaBov

#467: How to Find and Share Your Brand’s Unique Qualities in Your Storytelling

#467: How to Find and Share Your Brand’s Unique Qualities in Your Storytelling

You work to deliver your product or service and grow your brand.

But it feels like scaling your business is a real pain.

I know I’ve experienced this with The Business of Story.

Then one day someone shows up and points out a differentiating quality in you that provides a remarkable competitive edge, but you have been so busy in the trenches, in the fog of war of business, that you overlooked it?

We’ve all been there. I mean my Endodontist doesn’t perform her own root canals on herself. She brings in an expert. 

And that’s why I’m excited to have Barry LaBov, Founder & CEO of LABOV Marketing and author of The Power of Differentiation: Win Hearts, Minds and Market Share, on the show.

He will show you how to find the unique qualities that make you stand out.

The process can sometimes feel like a root canal, but oh what a relief it is when you bring your brand’s endearing attributes to life.

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Rain Bennett

#466: The Secret to Six-Second Video Storytelling

#466: The Secret to Six-Second Video Storytelling

I have taken a number on the internal sales teams at The Home Depot through The Business of Story mastery course.

If you have ever taken it then you know I always start by showing them how to use the ABT (And, But, Therefore) narrative framework as the foundation to grow their storytelling skill.

In a virtual training session, one guy asked me, “What is the shortest ABT you know, Park?”

Now I realize that my answer was basically a six-second story. I told him that the shortest ABT goes like this…

“You communicate and care but bore, so tell a story.”

Ten short words that actually come in at about four seconds in the telling.

It works because it uses the three forces of story of agreement, contradiction and consequence that the primal pattern-seeking, problem-solving, decision-making buying limbic brain adores.

The ABT framework is ideal for your six-second video storytelling.

That’s why I’m excited to have Rain Bennett, author of Six Second Stories and host of the popular The Storytelling Lab podcast with us today sharing how to craft your short video stories.

It’s one thing to make your storytelling clear, concise and compelling using the ABT, but where do you find your stories?  Rain Bennet is here to show you how.

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Celisa Steele

#465: The 3 Keys to Engaging Your Audience With Your Learning Content

#465: The 3 Keys to Engaging Your Audience With Your Learning Content

When you reflect on some of your favorite teachers, I bet you remember how they taught you through the stories they told.

Leroy Ashby comes to my mind. He was a remarkable history teacher at Washington State University who had students lining up to take his class because he was an incredible storyteller.

But corporate training and executive development often miss the mark because it’s dry, logic-driven drivel.

You’d rather take a meeting with your most difficult client than sit through another mundane course.

If you’re in learning development or just want to teach something important to someone, then you’re in luck because we have a brilliant training professional for you.

Celisa Steele is the co-founder and managing director of Tagoras.

Tagoras partners with professional and trade associations, continuing education units, training firms, and other learning businesses to help them to understand market realities and potential, to connect better with existing customers and find new ones, and to make smart investment decisions around product development and portfolio management.

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