Guilty until proven innocent.

That’s sort of what it feels like when you’re creating a new company, business, product or service—you sort of have to prove yourself to people before they buy in. To do that, you have to promise people a big fat golden ticket to something they’ve never experienced. It is exciting, sure, but it is also your barrier to entry. So, the question is, how will you deliver on that dream? How do you prove yourself just enough so people will tilt from thinking you’re not worth it to, “meh, I’ll give it a go!”? Through storytelling.

Storytelling? But why does storytelling work? Glad you asked.

The first thing to understand is that facts deal with the mind, stories and narrative deal with imagination, and with the idea of what could be. When you are pitching to partners or potential customers, you are attempting to paint an imaginative picture of the future, of what might come true. So stories, especially for early stage companies, are crucial, especially when you don’t have a lot of customers to support your hair-brain idea.

Too, researchers have discovered that stories are a primary trigger for our brains to synthesize oxytocin, a neurochemical in our brain that is responsible for empathy. So, when you hear a story that resonates with you, it creates feelings of empathy, and a sense of “me too!” and “gimme summa dat!” 

Add to that, researchers have also learned that the release of oxytocin allows us to remember things we hear. In fact, research shows that messaging delivered in the form of story were remembered 22x more than facts. Whaaaat? Yup, believe it.

So, here’s the thing: Your primary job when running a company is to architect a story for people to believe in. To do that, you have to understand three fundamental things:

1 | Harness Their Enthusiasm

What is your customer enthusiastic about? What are the things that drive their interests? We often jump to what we want someone to do without understanding what they are excited to do. But to persuade someone to believe what we believe you have to understand their worldview, and what they know to be true. Because, remember this: We are hardwired to recognize ideas that reinforce what we already believe, and reject what we don’t.

2 | Be Their Guide

You have to be extremely conscious about not just your solution, but the journey you are taking your customer on. That means you have to lead people to the answer, to the thing you create—you can’t give it to them without context. In other words, you have to let people arrive at the idea as if it was the next natural thing they were going to ask for; like they came up with the idea themselves. So, your job is to plant the idea in their mind. 

3 | Share Your Epiphany

So, how do you do this? By telling a story that takes people through the emotional experience that got you excited about the thing you’re doing, the product you’ve created, the service you’re all about. Think of it as a new opportunity that you’re offering someone. So, you have to answer: What was the spark? What was the big ah-ha moment? What happened that made you realize something? Remember, you have to convince people emotionally before they will get excited about your logic. 

Ok, buttercup? If you use this, you know we alllllways love hearing about how it goes, so tag us (@rawstrategy all over the place). Or if you have any questions, get in touch! We’d love to whip up some friendly feedback, so tag us (@rawstrategy) if you need some help!