Spend enough years in marketing and you’re bound to stumble across the CEO or business founder who genuinely struggles with the process of articulating the story behind his or her business. They know their stuff, have great passion for it, and for obvious reasons are hungry to share the love with others – preferably customers. Why the difficulty?
I think this figurative separation has its physical counterpart in the brain’s corpus callosum, that neural valley that connects – and attempts to translate – signals between the brain’s two hemispheres.
The ‘product’ of right-brained storytellers is every bit as valuable as that of left-brain executives – just not as easily codified, quantified, and calculated.
I can’t speak for others, but in my many years of consulting, sales, marketing and journalism, the lion’s share of business leaders hailed from business backgrounds. Which is to say, they have spent years immersed in the left-brained worlds of statistics and accounting, economics and finance, strategy and management theory and, in our tech-happy world, engineering and technology.
These individuals are most comfortable in the rational, orderly realm of the left brain. They’d be perfectly satisfied if the organization’s ‘story’ could be told in a Power Point presentation or Excel spreadsheet. Alas, that’s not how most of us think and, far more important, it’s not how we make buying decisions (and that goes for left-brainers too).
Bridging the Divide
Business-speak to the typical consumer is dull, eye-glazing stuff, and it rarely if ever makes it across the corpus callosum into the emotionally crazy, colorful, creative, intuitive world of the right brain where we humans ultimately make most of our decisions.
Studies confirm that more often than not we will make a buying decision with the right brain, then retreat into left brain territory to defend and justify the decision. Which means, your story had better ‘speak’ to the right brain of your customers. The problem: Most of us can’t, especially those aforementioned left-brained executive types.
Indeed, when it comes to storytelling our structured, rational Mr. Spock-as-CEO finds himself in unfamiliar territory. He’s schooled himself in MBA land, spent months or years with engineers building the Better Mousetrap, and toiled with lawyers, accountants, financiers, etc., to cross the t’s and dot the i’s. Hardly the realm of juicy storytelling.
Understandably, our CEO sees his story best told through facts and figures. But the storyteller knows different. She knows that the human mind tunes out on this kind of content. The brain wants story, emotion, meaning, context, connection and conflict. The product or service obviously is real, but the audience is more apt to succumb to – and buy into – a more dramatic narrative rendering.
(Recently I stumbled across this short video gem, which does a marvelous job of explaining the difference between typical CEO-style facts and figures presentations and story.)
So what is our CEO/founder to do? Answer: Hire an outstanding storyteller and let go of the reins.
Storytelling is a Skill
You don’t want me representing you in court or doing your corporate books. In fact, if I do the latter you’ll probably end up in the former. Which is to say, it is important to recognize the things one can – and cannot – do. This can be a tough pill for a CEO to swallow. The business is HIS baby, lots of ego is involved. And frankly, who knows the story better than him?
Far too often the CEO/founder mistakenly believes that, because storytelling cannot be easily codified or credentialed, he can easily slide into that role. After all, how difficult can it be to explain the business into which he has invested so much of his energy and expertise? It’s just a story, right?
But here’s the key to the entire marketing equation: If you can’t sell the story of your product, service, or brand to discriminating buyers, how are you ever going to sell the actual product or service that story is supposed to promote? Storytelling is a talent every bit as important as that of an engineer, chef, pilot, or CEO. And truly great storytellers are a breed apart. Hollywood learned this lesson a long time ago.
So to you frustrated C-suite types and startup founders desperately wanting your Better Mousetrap to catch on, my advice is to get out of the way and find (and trust) someone who knows how to translate your business into a story that resonates. A good marketer is going to look at your business in ways you cannot imagine. Let her. Because she’s going to come up with the story of the Better Mousetrap story that is worthy of the product itself.
And that’s something your left-brain actually can count on.
Want more doug food? Doug Rekenthaler Jr.
I eat my own dog food, meaning I only write about topics that I personally have found to be effective business marketing tools. So if you're interested in having posts like this sent to your inbox in a convenient weekly digest, click here. I promise not to waste your time (or mine).
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