Business owners hear constantly that they should tell better stories about their brand. Few understand why a story persuades a buyer when a list of features does not.
On today’s episode of Strategic Edge, Jay Abraham, Founder and CEO of the Abraham Group, said storytelling works because it puts a buyer inside a before-and-after moment, creating a psychological investment that plain facts cannot produce.
"(Stories are) such a powerful and underutilized force of success in any endeavor, whether it's economic, emotional, romantic, physical, anything."
The five types of stories
According to Abraham, there are five types of stories businesses can tell to move a buyer through that same before-and-after arc, which include:
- Origin stories
- Discovery stories
- Customer before-and-after stories
- Overlooked-benefit stories
- Prestige and caliber stories
Abraham said a business should never commit to one story arbitrarily. He recommends identifying a few candidates and testing them in low-stakes settings to see which one resonates before leaning on it in a higher-stakes moment.
Origin stories
Everyone, and every business, has an origin story, Abraham said, pointing to his own.
Married at 18, with two children by 20, Abraham said he had no formal education to lean on. He worked in five different industries in quick succession and found that no one marketed the same way twice. Armed with that knowledge, he took proven concepts from one industry and applied them to another. That practice became the foundation of what Abraham calls “funnel vision.”
A story like that lands harder when it unfolds slowly, he said, rather than jumping straight to the outcome.
Discovery stories
Discovery stories explain how a product or service was created, perfected or found. This type of story gives a personality to something that would otherwise be just an object on a shelf, Abraham said.
A founder who explains why an ingredient, process or method was chosen turns a product into something with a history behind it.
Customer before-and-after stories
Abraham recommended a range of customer stories rather than one single testimonial. One might follow a customer who tried other solutions first and came away disappointed. Another might follow someone who believed their problem had no solution until they found one.
"Just tell the story about somebody that came to you and were disappointed with everything else they tried."
The length of the story should match the size of the purchase behind it, he said. An ice cream parlor could justify a higher price with a story, Abraham said. He pointed to an owner who imports a specific ingredient from Zurich at three times the standard cost because nothing else compares.
Overlooked-benefit stories
Every product or service carries benefits a buyer might not think to ask about, Abraham said.
A story built around one of those benefits can move a buyer more than a features list. It surfaces something the buyer didn’t know to look for.
Prestige and caliber stories
A caliber or prestige story ties a product to the kind of people who use it, Abraham said.
“You can associate a story to prestige, to frugality, to enjoyment, to physical emotions, sexual emotions. Any goal you’re after, a story can basically multiply your impact a lot more than just the facts,” he said.
Abraham illustrated the idea with a hypothetical example. He said, nearly 30 billionaires drink a specific brand of water and three of them have cases flown in from overseas. That kind of story makes people assume there’s something special about that water, even if there is not. The exact reason, he said, mattered less than the impression that detail leaves.
Every business has a story; every story has value
Some business owners believe their own story isn’t interesting enough to share but Abraham says that’s not true. People are usually bored by their own work, he said, but genuinely curious about what other people do. It represents a world they don’t know.
"Whatever they do bores them and they're more interested in what other people do."
Storytelling is one of the few advantages a business can build that a competitor can’t easily copy, Abraham said. Most companies lack a patent or exclusive territory to protect them. A story, though, belongs only to the business that lived it.
The applications go well beyond business too, Abraham said, spanning economic, emotional, romantic and physical outcomes alike.
ASBN, from startup to success, we are your go-to resource for small business news, expert advice, information, and event coverage.