Low Tech, High Impact: The Power of Story

About ten years ago, a local storytelling league invited me to step on stage in Washington, DC. My true tale had the right elements, if by “right elements” you mean that I’m stuck being stark naked at the Embassy of Finland, in a room full of women publishing professionals, all of whom had gotten the memo to wear a towel or three. I’d already written about this experience for a magazine; converting an essay to a five-minute monologue should be easy, right?

Not easy. Telling a story is very different from reading something off the page. You must find reliable rhythms of intonation and gesture, without seeming over-rehearsed. You must provide the necessary orientation, without stopping half-way through to add, “Oh, wait, I forgot something you need to know.” You gotta land a punch line or two and land a takeaway that complicates those punch lines. Whatever you do, you cannot go over time. 

I exited the stage after a relatively painless performance and paused in appreciation of the rest of the line-up. These were semi-professional storytellers with repertoires of a dozen or more stories, who traveled all around town and up to New York City for competitions, and who recorded for NPR and other outlets. Then I headed straight to the cash bar for a scotch, because I couldn’t imagine having the bravery to join their ranks week in, week out. 

Paul Smith, who previously spent 20 years as an executive at Procter & Gamble, specializes in business storytelling. In Sell With a Story: How to Capture Attention, Build Trust, and Close the Sale, Smith attempts—and largely succeeds—at pinning down the technical elements of what makes a sales story, the strategy of why and when we reach for stories, and tactics that ensure we keep our audience engaged. (A cash bar can help, but not on a 10 AM discovery call.)

BECAUSE THE HOOK BRINGS YOU BACK

Smith, drawing on the work of storytelling consultant Shawn Callahan, begins by framing a story as a set of “attributes”: time, place, main character, obstacle, goal, and events. Locating these attributes in the text is what differentiates a genuine story from a charismatic spiel. From there, think about how the story is structured. Smith articulates the structure of the “main story body” as context, challenge, conflict, and resolution, bookended by rhetorical transitions in (the “hook”) and out (sometimes followed by a “lesson” or call to action). 

In our “Fiction in Sales” series, we explored what Smith calls the “main story body” using Freytag’s triangle, a literary model that uses a different set of terms: exposition, inciting incident, rising action, climax, and falling action. The two systems are comparable. An advantage of Freytag’s triangle is that you’re prompted to picture a shape that corresponds to mapping narrative momentum. A disadvantage is that you’ll have to learn how to pronounce “Freytag.”

Smith’s definition of attributes in tandem with structure helps us unpack “context” (what Freytag would call “exposition”) and prompt storytelling students to slow down and name the when (time), where (place), who (main character), and what (goal). You’d be surprised how often we take these key elements for granted as part of our lived experiences. If you don’t learn to include these details up front in your story, you’ll have to interrupt yourself to backtrack and clarify, which is a vibe-killer—no matter how good your triangle looked on paper. 

I’LL SEE YOUR TRIANGLE, AND RAISE YOU A TWO-ROADS

Procurement professionals interviewed by Smith helped him identify the big stories every salesperson should feel comfortable telling: company founding, illustrations of core values, and case studies of signature products and services at work. Though the book does a good job with these kinds of tentpole stories, Smith’s real gift is for stories quirkier in both purpose and pathway, such as the “I’m not who you think I am” story or the “two-roads” story. Epic fails make for good stories, as in the “unwelcome business card” story. 

Some stories are premised in a hypothetical space, such as the “take the stress out of the call” story, or a “coaching the break-up” story that helps a prospect terminate their previous vendor relationship. If a story is grounded in experience, how factual does it have to be?  “Accuracy is important,” Smith asserts, “Precision is not.” Sometimes data needs to tell the story, Smith says, meaning that your job is to resist providing key attributes so that the audience feels compelled to figure out the story, and joins you in a conclusion that spurs further action.  

These alt-stories are all satisfying inclusions—even if they make Smith’s larger efforts to taxonomize “what makes a good story” feel a bit like constructing sandcastles as the tide comes in. And is that such a bad thing? As the author notes several times, world cultures vary in what they consider effective storytelling, particularly in terms of digression and emotion. In the literary world, contemporary scholars such as Matthew Salesses and Jane Alison are making the case for mapping narrative spirals and wavelets alongside Freytag’s triangles.

BARING IT ALL ON STAGE

In the late 1980s and through 1990s, I regularly watched and re-watched the Comic Relief specials that would play on HBO cable. (To be fully accurate, I convinced my parents to buy the used VHS tapes discarded by the local video store.) Cohosted by Robin Williams, Billy Crystal, and Whoopi Goldberg, these showcases of stand-up and skits raised money to support unhoused populations. Though setting and cause were identical, the differences in style between Williams, Crystal, and Goldberg could be used in a masterclass on dramatic presence.  

These were three comics at the topic of their game. But were they playing by the same rules? Or on the same board? Williams was all unfettered energy and free association. Crystal dealt out jokes and characters like a card shark. Goldberg offered grounded, cutting truths from the margins. I admired how they could bare all on stage. (Not to be confused with what I did, years later, which was stand on stage and talk about baring all in a Finnish sauna.) If you’d given these three people the exact same life experience, they’d have made three different stories out of it. 

I’m not suggesting a salesperson could or should tell a story in the style of Comic Relief. What I am suggesting is that individual persona matters more than is acknowledged here, not just in terms of delivery style but in terms of what gets privileged or chosen to be part of your tale in the first place. Smith overstuffs these pages with self-teaching tools such as charts, templates, exercises, story clinics, and indices. What he can’t do is offer live workshop and practice opportunities, and that will always be a critical component to learning to sell with a story. 

This is a satisfying read. Smith cites relevant studies and uses pithy, straightforward syntax. Did I learn things? I did. Did I disagree with some of his advice? I did. That’s a good thing, because it shows his suggestions have heft; this is not anodyne prose. For example, I don’t agree with declaring, “Avoid using the inverted pyramid.” But he does an excellent job teaching us what the inverted pyramid is (before he tells you not to use it in sales stories). His practical checklist of 25 stories you need to have, going forward, is worth the cost of the paperback right there.  

Are those old yarns you tell as part of your sales pitch starting to feel…threadbare? Reach out at mastery@maestrogroup.co for information on our trainings, assessments, and more.