How do you share your story?

When people start talking about brand voice or brand story, it often seems like it’s just for new brands. New businesses. New products.

But it’s not. We should always be looking at the way we tell our stories to make them better, simpler, more effective and shareable.

Looking at how you tell your tale, may be even more important to established brands and products.

How do your customers understand the value you bring to them?

You tell them.

If you don’t, no one else will.

So how do you tell them? How do you spin the story?

Does your team understand the value of what you bring to your customers? How do they tell them? How do they communicate value to your customers?

Can they communicate that to anyone who asks simply in just a few words?

Do they?

How do they learn how? Do you teach them? Train them? Do you give them a set of tools to do that? Do you give them the words you’d like them to use to communicate your value?

Should you? Ya think?

Do you have an easy way of doing that?

Should you?

How about your sales team?

Do they have a common set of language? Not just talking points, but a real, common, compelling story to tell their contacts?

I believe…

when you give people a tool that helps them achieve success, they’ll use it.

when you can repeat a simple, compelling idea, people will absorb it, remember it, and more important, share it with other people.

when you can connect the value of something to a story about why that value matters, you’ve created something very powerful indeed.

John Adams famously said “facts are stubborn things,” but research into the subject published out of Stanford shows that stories are remembered up to 22 times more than facts alone.

At the University of Chicago, they found that when two people watch a movie together, their brains can actually become similar, as if synchronized, and help each other predict the events of the story.

Edgar Dale, educator and creator of the learning pyramid said we remember 10% of what we hear, 20% of what we read, 30% of what we see, but 95% of what we teach others.

When we hear a story we find compelling, it gives us an opportunity, sometimes even a compulsion to share it with someone else. To teach someone else what we know and care about.

So when you cast your value in terms of a story that your whole team can repeat and share with others, you’re tapping into a deep human need and connecting it with your measurable business objectives.

Don’t miss out on the power built into your story.