Business story telling

Business storytelling is all about how to pitch an idea, how to sell a project effectively in a company. It is not about informing or presenting, but convincing and influence through the presentation. In an era of digital information and written content, telling a story gives life to the information. It is more powerful than just sharing it. The key is being able to be clear, concise with high impact communication.

The goal
The first thing to focus on is the goal of the presentation. What are you trying to achieve? Try to get a clear and defined desired outcome. The goal should also provide the audience with a clear benefit.

The audience
To understand how you can benefit to your audience, you need to understand who is your audience. We want to look at the demographic and sociologic factors but we also want to find out how much they know about the subject and what are their expectations. Good questions to start the process is to ask yourself how the audience will feel about the subject, about the presenter, what form of presentation do they expect. We can also look at the size of the audience on top of the classic gender, education, origins, etc.

The need of the audience should be at the heart of the presentation. Every pitch should have an intended audience and be tailormade for it. If you know the culture of the audience, you may be able to figure effective ways of presenting by building on top of their existing schema. Additionally, you should focus on pitching just what they need to know and as much as they need. Making sure they have all the necessary pieces of information without overloading them with points they already know or do not care about. As much as possible, focus on presenting the benefits of your solution rather than just a list of features.

Schema

As the communicator, you are the one choosing when the audience is listenning and when the audience is watching. You are in controle.

We usualy assume that the audience can understand us without obstacle, that there is a direct pipeline between our brain and their brains. In reallity we all different schemas that help us organise the information we are receiving. If tou and your audience have a common schema, use it. If your audience has no previous knowledge of the subject, they probably have no schema. You'll have to create it or relate to past one.

Time
Figure out how much time you have or you need. Then prepare for, roughly, 85% of the time you have. Less content means that you will not be stressed by time management, will have more opportunities for powerful pauses, and time to breath.

Research
The research phase focuses mainly on finding all the relevant information for your pitch. There are two main ways of collecting information: meeting people and published studies. Both of them should be used.

To gain efficiency, a list of questions to be answered can be created. The questions can be based on what your audience will be asking. Once you have questions, it is easier to look for sources that are more likely to answer them.

Ideas
See Efficient problem solving for more information.

idea generation is a 2 steps process: divergence and convergence. The divergent phase focus on generating as many ideas as possible. Brainstorming, mind mapping, freewriting are all efficient ways of generating ideas. In this phase, we want to avoid thinking about structure or hierarchy. The convergent phase is about trimming ideas down to the most relevant ones.

Content
The content is the result of the divergent phase. This is where we start to build the story, we collect the facts, the studies, and we start to build the verbal channel. We want to focus on the benefits for the audience, the great Wiify (What is in for you). Remember to focus on the benefits, not the features. Put the needs at the heart of your work. You should do the thinking so your audience does not have to do it. Make everything crystal clear.

Content should be consistent and avoid the Frankenstein effect, just strapping ideas together to try to create something. The left brain can be powerful in this phase. Start from the big idea, the wiify, and cluster content that will support the idea. 3 pillars is usually a good balance.

Finally, another ground rule for efficient presentation is storytelling. Tell a story where the audience is the hero. A story is usually composed of an exposition, an escalation, a climax, and a resolution. On top of it, a story (and a presentation) must convey Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. You must be credible, appeal to the emotion, and convince with logic.

Structure
The structure of a pitch is more or less always the same. An icebreaker to catch the attention, act I to expose the problem, act 2 to explain the benefits, act 3 to reveal the solutions, and a call to action to wrap everything up. The storytelling mainly covers act 2.

The icebreaker: The Icebreaker represents the first words of the presentation. The icebreaker is a way to capture the audience's attention and to set the tone of the following presentation. Depending on the presentation, it can last a couple of seconds or several minutes. Some example of icebreakers include: An icebreaker can be many more things, as long as it serves the same purpose.
 * 1) Questions: directed at someone in the audience or the audience in general
 * 2) Factoid: A little known fact or a striking statistic
 * 3) Retrospective or prospective: looking forward or backward
 * 4) Anecdote: A short story
 * 5) Quotation
 * 6) Aphorism: A familiar saying
 * 7) Analogy: A comparison between two seemingly opposite subjects to help make complex topics easier.

Act 1 (watch "pay it forward" for a good example). Act 1 should answer 5 key questions:

The call to action is the base of your presentation. Each step of the CTA should be one of the main arguments in your pitch.
 * 1) Setting: What is the topic of the pitch?
 * 2) Role: What is the role of the audience?
 * 3) Point A: What challenges are they facing?
 * 4) Point B: Where do they want to go?
 * 5) Call to action: How to get from A to B?

Act 2: Act 2 represents 90% of your presentation. this is the meat of the delivery. You want to focus your Audience's attention in the roman column, to the main topics. You want a structure that allows them to lose information during the explanations or the details of it but a structure that catches them back every time you address an important point.

Act 3: Act 3 is the conclusion of your pitch. It should come naturally as a good wrap-up of everything said before.

The call to action: The call to action is a way to wrap up the presentation. It answers the "so what?" question by providing the audience with what they should do from now on.

Narrative
In this step, the goal is to build up the narration. During the preparation of a pitch, the narrative step is the first one in which we start to construct slides. For each slide, we want to verbalize the content. We want to have all the text done with all the content line up according to our structure. As we do not care about the visual channel, for now, slides should only contain headlines and key ideas. The information will be in the notes of each slide.



Persuasion is moving the audience from point A to point B. Persuading should be the goal of every pitch. Stories are powerful tools to reach that end. Joseph Campbell uses a simple framework to construct a story around the Heroe's journey. The idea is to move from a comfort zone to an unfamiliar setting, growing up through the situation, and going back to the comfort zone.

Visual Channel
The visual channel represents the things you are going to show during your presentation. The leader is always the verbal channel as the visual is a support to the arguments made.

They are 4 flows we want to avoid while doing the visual channel: Cluttered graphics, too much content, small fonts, Data bump. Your presentation is not a document, the details should be in the notes or in a separate word file.

Techniques
The technique part regroups the hard skills involved in pitching. They are the skills and tricks you can use to be more efficient.

Story flow options
When pitching a story, the flow is really important. Moving smoothly from one point to another guarantee a pleasant experience for the listeners. Furthermore, these techniques can be used anywhere where you need a transition (from a key point to another, to go to details, etc.) Here is a list that can improve the flow of a story.

Modular Chronological Physical Spatial Problem/Solution Issues/Actions Opportunity/Leverage Form/Functions Features/Benefits Case Study Argument/Fallacy Compare/Contrast Matrix Parallel Tracks Rhetorical Questions Numerical

Internal linkages
Internal linkages are ways to reinforce the structure of your pitch by highlighting some of its components. Internal linkages are self-sustained reference as the build-up on the presentation itself. Linkage help create a presentation that is tightly unified and look like a whole. Linkages need to be planned, practiced, and verbalized.

External linkages
External linkages are used to create a link with the audience. Their goal is to make sure the presentation fits with its audience. They help the presenter to keep the content intact while adapting the way it is a pitch to secure