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Feb 27 2008

Stand-up Storytelling

By storytelling

This post is not about stand-up comedy. I know this is a huge disappointment to those of you who know I spent over five years doing stand-up. Sorry, folks – this is about standing up and telling your story.

The particular storytelling opportunities I’m talking about here are networking events and organization meetings like Business Networking International (BNI) – those moments when you’re given the chance to stand up and tell a group what you do, or those places where you’re in a series of one-on-one or one-on-several conversations about you, your company, and your business value.

Do you have a set spiel? Something that you have down pat, that you can say backwards and forwards without thinking?

How sincere, how authentic do you think that sounds to your audience?

Canned Spam, anyone?

Or do you absolutely hate being the focus of attention, and wind up standing up but focused on your shoes, the table, the painting on the wall over there – anything to avoid making eye contact and actually reminding yourself that you’re speaking, in public, to an audience?

I feel your pain.

I’m an extrovert, and I do enjoy speaking, yet I only felt truly comfortable telling my story at these events after I knew what my story was. I’ve observed other people make that journey. In many cases, I helped them through it with presentation and story coaching. Once you get to that place of comfort, telling your story is organic – it comes easily, from the heart, and communicates clearly to whoever you’re talking to, be it a small group at a networking breakfast or, better yet, as the program speaker at that breakfast.

Stories are how we connect with each other, and with the world. This is true in business, in marriage, talking to your kids – or anybody’s kids. There isn’t any area of life where you won’t find stories necessary, and where you won’t, at some point, have to tell, and sell, your own. In the moment. Stand up storytelling.

The approach I’ve seen so many people use – the one I referred to above as pasteurized processed pork product – is to come up with a spiel you can easily remember and repeat, and then do just that. Lather, rinse, repeat. The issue you face if you do choose to tell your story that way is this: how can you communicate value without some element of passion?

You have to keep your story fresh, for yourself AND for your audiences. Canned won’t cut it. Look and listen carefully to what you’re saying when you talk about your business value, your products, your services.

If you don’t like what you’re hearing, if you’re struggling to figure out just what your story is…you know who to call.

That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it.

Feb 26 2008

Silly Season Storytelling

By politics, storytelling

We’re deep into the silly season – also known as the race for the White House – and the number of candidates has reduced itself from the two rugby teams of January to the ping-pong match vs. the old soldier of February.

What kind of stories are they telling? First and foremost, they’re all saying “vote for me!”, but they’re craftily crafting their messages to speak to the world-view of people who they think are most likely to vote for them.

The heated ping-pong match on the Democratic side of the fence is interesting to watch, because both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have to hit hard, yet also have to ensure that they don’t hit so hard that they alienate a piece of their base.

Obama has an advantage on the stump, in person, since he’s a better, more stirring speaker than Clinton. Clinton has always seemed to be speaking from behind a wall of “good girl” – the studious policy wonk who is now trying to connect with people’s hearts. She has, however, built a bit more credibility after serving a full term in the Senate and then managing to get re-elected.

Obama is positioning himself as the agent of change. That part of his story seems to be connecting most powerfully with younger voters, much of whose lives have been spent under the leadership of the Bush and Clinton families.  He’s also using his story effectively to connect with the parts of the Democratic Party that identify themselves as “We’re Not Republicans”. That tag will mobilize a small portion of Democrats, but not enough to win a presidential election. (John Kerry told that story in ’04 – that sure worked out well for him, didn’t it?)

The real power of Obama’s story is in his position as the first serious black candidate for President. His story, and his very multi-culti background, help him to connect with a wide array of people, and seem to resonate particularly with the under-30 voter. If he wins, that connection will be the tipping point.

The outsider story that Obama tells is in stark contrast to the “voice of experienced leadership” story that Clinton is telling. She’s got passionate support from the parts of the Democratic Party that feel like they’ve been wandering in the wilderness since the end of Bill Clinton’s second term. Bill Clinton has, at times, been a liability during her campaign, though – South Carolina springs to mind – and he’s carrying a lot of baggage. Who can look at him and not think of either cigars or Monica Lewinsky? At least for a moment?

Hillary also has not been able to mobilize all Democratic women on her behalf. She has a number of women supporters, yet she hasn’t seen the wholesale support that she likely expected when she started her run. This might be the lingering after-effects of her posture during the 1992 campaign, when she seemed to look down on cookie-baking. Her image has softened in the last decade, yet she’s still working to overcome some backlash from the mommy-track.

Obama and Clinton are duking it out, getting close to the gone-too-far line almost daily. Clinton is trying to paint Obama as a word-stealing poser, a man who can’t craft his own story without taking words out of the mouths of others. Obama threads his story with references to 20th century solutions to 21st century problems – a pointed smack at the occupants of the White House at the end of the last century.

On the Democratic side, my money’s on the fresher story – Obama has built considerable momentum, but the race for the nomination isn’t over yet. Next Tuesday’s primaries in Texas and Ohio will put a nail in the coffin of someone’s candidacy – stay tuned for how that story winds up.

On the Republican side, John McCain’s bus – straight talk or not – keeps rolling. McCain’s story connects strongly with moderate Republicans, and he’s morphed his story enough that he’s created buy-in with the conservatives that didn’t support him in 2000. His straight talk line is a bit played because of that story-morphing, but it’s worked well enough to knock off the early front-runner, Mitt Romney, and he now has the field with no real competition.

McCain can count on mobilizing the social conservatives, the Iraq hawks, Glenn Beck fans, and die-hard Republicans. Current poll stats show that McCain vs. Obama, Obama holds the advantage; McCain vs. Clinton, McCain is ahead. At least today. Of course, since the election isn’t until NOVEMBER…there’s still a lot of story to be told.

There are many banana peels littered across the political path (paging Ms. Lewinsky, there’s a party waiting for you in the cigar bar). And enough time left for many of them to be stepped on, by somebody. Stay tuned…

That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it.

Feb 25 2008

David & Goliath…and Storytelling

By storytelling

David and Goliath – the little guy vs. the behemoth. Every small electronics retailer looks at Best Buy and wishes for a good slingshot. Wal-Mart opens down the street, and even Food Lion can start to feel like a small player.

You’re a small business owner. Definitely a David. You believe you’ve uncovered and crafted your business’ best story. The one that you just know will have the world – or at least a stampede of customers – beating a path to your door. You weave it into all your marketing materials, your advertising, your web presence, and you’re using the core elements every time you get a chance to talk about your business.

Let’s say you’re a small IT services company. Do you have competition?

Does McDonald’s have hamburgers?

Not only do you have to compete against your marketplace’s Goliaths, but also against the host of Davids – small companies like your own. You also have to pay close attention to all the elements of the story you’re telling, and extremely close attention to the parts of your story being told by your customers.

It may seem that your story, and the story of every other “small IT services company” David in the known universe, would be the same, right? Wrong. Remember, this story about your company is really about you, your team, and your philosophy. Your story has to truthfully communicate to your potential customer a clear idea of what kind of experience they’ll have doing business with you.

What can they expect when they call your company? What approach do you take toward figuring out the best answers for your customers needs? Who’s doing the happy dance when your company’s name is mentioned? And…who ISN’T doing the happy dance? This last one is often overlooked, and it could be the rock to the forehead that takes your business down.

The same rules hold for mega-enterprise, too – just on a much larger scale. Managing customer expectations is just as critical to a Goliath as it is to you. Wal-Mart tells a story: every-day low prices. Microsoft tells a story: software for every possible use and user. Your story needs to communicate as clearly, and you need to pay even closer attention to customer feedback than the big dudes do. Your company might not end up having to monitor a site like walmartsucks.com, but if you don’t listen to and manage customer problems at their outset…well, I hear getting hit in the head with a rock really hurts. Can really put you out of action. Sometimes permanently.

One of the pitfalls of being a Goliath is that every David in the world is out there revving up his slingshot, just aching for a chance to let fly and take you down. However, David also needs to watch his back. Failing to tell a true story, not dealing immediately and fairly with customer problems, ignoring team morale issues – all of these are potential business-killers. There are plenty of stones out there, and plenty of slingshots in the hands of your competition.

Bottom line? Even if you think of yourself as a David, you have Goliath’s weaknesses if you’re not paying close attention to the whole story being told by your company.

That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it.

Feb 22 2008

Chemo-rama

By cancer

For those of you who have been paying attention, you know I got breast cancer for Christmas. I had my first chemo treatment on Monday, 2/11 (in keeping with that holiday theme – Happy Valentine’s Day, early!), and so far the after-effects have been weird, but manageable.  I keep thinking of cartoons where some character starts quivering, and then his head explodes into a Dali-esque fright mask with, oh, a foot springing out of his forehead.

That hasn’t happened. Yet.

What is happening is that instead of my usual eat-like-a-garbage-truck self, I’ve become someone who has to think hard about what might be edible. The data sheet on my chemo cocktail lists this side effect as “anorexia” – which makes me laugh so hard I can barely breathe. My name and anorexia in the same sentence? Get outta town.

The closest analog I can come up with for the current eating sitch is this: back inna day, when I did offshore sailing, there were more than a few times that the rest of the crew was crawling around on the deck, beggin’ to die. At those times, my experience was usually, “well, I don’t feel GREAT, but how about I make some soup?”

The most memorable version of this was twenty years ago, delivering the schooner ORIANDA from Lauderdale to Tortola. The skipper decided to leave Lauderdale literally on the tail of a hurricane (luckily only a weakening Cat 1), just before midnight.

No, it didn’t seem like a great idea to me, either, but a ship is not a democracy.

Another woman on the crew and I had drawn 12-4 watch, meaning we were first up, and would be fighting the Gulfstream by 2am. When we did hit the Stream, we had 15 foot cross-seas and were shipping green water over both bows. Both my watch-partner and I were literally tied to the boat (as one always should be offshore), taking turns steering, which was like trying to wrestle an anaconda. At about 3am, the engine started to sputter (we were under engine and sail power – we needed everything we could get to keep the ship stable!) – the skipper and the mechanic headed into the engine room to see whassup. Diagnosis: busted fuel hose.

The engine room was off the pilot house, which was directly in front of the steering station. In order to work on the engine, the pilot house light needed to be on. In order to see the compass and steer a course, the helmsman needed to have the pilot house light OFF. We struck a
compromise – I would hold the pilot house hatch doors closed and shield them with my body, preventing the light from hitting the helmsman in the face and thereby risking a course change for Havana. Or Maine.

So, there I was, holding the doors closed as heavy diesel fumes rolled past, and the boat tossed around like we were driving through a washing machine on full agitate. Right about then, the 4-8 crew staggered up on deck. The first mate, who had asked me every five minutes before we left port if we had enough Dramamine on board “because sometimes people get seasick on these deliveries”, took over the helm – which was right behind me, remember? – asked the skipper for his course, was told zero-nine-zero, responded “aye, aye, steering zero-nine-….” The rest of his reply was literally drowned out as he started hacking up everything he’d eaten since the Carter Administration.

He continued this until dawn. My watch-mate had to re-take the helm, since first-mate-dude was pretty useless. Really hard to steer while barfing – you tend to drag the wheel over with you as you heave. I’m still holding the pilot house doors closed. So: diesel fumes, a violently ill crewmate less than two feet behind me (at this point, he was like a sodden mass of rags at the bottom of the cockpit…yep, beggin’ to die), and motion so violent that we’re all literally hanging on for dear life.

What I wanted most right then – other than for things to settle down, just a bit, or for blessed dawn to break – was some coffee. And some soup. Which I got, a few hours later, once the dawn did break and I could get down to the galley (I was ship’s cook), clear away the debris from the rough passage, and get things going.

So, chemo “anorexia” for me is more like eating like a 10-year-old. PB&J sandwiches, mac-n-cheese with grilled chicken, chicken noodle soup. My usual chili, garlic, and stinky cheese palate has vanished. It’s only until June, though – who knows, maybe I’ll feel better about bathing suit season after this!

That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it.

Feb 21 2008

Features & Benefits?

By Uncategorized

You’ve got a phenomenal product or service. You’re passionate about what you do. You want to start selling the bejabbers out of what you’ve got.

You study sales. You learn that you need to communicate the features & benefits of your stuff. You develop a nice list of features, and a terrific little list of benefits that those features will help deliver.

Stop right there.

DON’T do it.

Don’t launch into the usual suspects of the sales game: features & benefits. What you really need to do is: tell the story of what you’ve got, why it’s great, and why you’re so passionate about it.

The features & benefits will be apparent. Trust me.

Think of some of the great marketing messages you’ve seen – were any of them loaded up with a features & benefits statement?

Yeah, Cialis and Viagra do advertise the potential for a 36 hour hard-on, but I don’t know as that feature is really a benefit. Any feature that includes “see a doctor if…” might not be a real benefit. Or any kind of sales trigger.

Seriously, though, what about those great Career Builder ads from the 2007 Super Bowl? Or this year’s model, the Naomi Campbell/Lizard-wit-a-grill LifeWater ad? Did they have a laundry list of features and benefits? No – but they spoke volumes about what the products/services had to offer. Career Builder will help you feel less like an office-supplies-bedecked gladiator. LifeWater will help you dance with lizards…or maybe look like Naomi Campbell. Or at least feel like you could.

The best sales pitch is a great story about your product. The best features & benefits statement is a great story about how your service impacted someone’s life, business, health…pick one.

Stories are what connect us. Charts & graphs, features & benefits – that’s useful data, but it won’t sell anyone. It will help show ROI, yet no one will think to ask about ROI unless they’re drawn in by your story.

That’s MY story, and I’m stickin’ to it.

Feb 20 2008

Why Should Your Business Care About Storytelling?

By storytelling

I am often asked why I call myself a storyteller. It’s a good question, especially considering the number of people who also call themselves storytellers and operate in a vastly different arena than I do.

My preferred operating area, the place where I most want to communicate the value, the necessity, of good storytelling, is in business – particularly business-to-business enterprise. That’s where jargon and buzz-words rise and spread fastest, making authentic communication – what I call good storytelling – almost impossible.

It’s true that jargon can communicate, yet its use is, at heart, aimed at clearly marking lines between “us” and “them”. “We” get it, “they” don’t. Which is fine, unless “they” happen to be looking for what you’re offering, but can’t clearly understand what you’ve got because the jargon has fogged their windshield.

Another issue is that the word “storytelling” has almost become jargon itself – the jargon of the children’s library, the folk festival, the book fair. I cannot emphasize enough the value of the storytelling found in those venues, particularly for children, and for the propagation of the oral traditions of historically-ignored populations. Yet, when I call myself a storyteller, I can often see the eyes of my audience glaze over as they imagine me, oh, dancing a hornpipe or – just shoot me – demonstrating my skills as a mime.

I repeat – just shoot me.

Storytelling, in the business sense, is the authentic statement of your value in the marketplace. It’s not charts and graphs, it’s not a slide presentation – let me repeat that, it is not a slide presentation – it’s the language, spoken or written, that says why you’re the best at what you do.

All storytelling is theater – in the business form, if you’re talking to a couple of people at a networking event, it’s close magic; if you’re presenting at a sales meeting, it’s a one-act play; if you’re giving a workshop at a trade conference, it’s a mini-series.

One of the most central tenets of theater (storytelling) is – keep it fresh. Each performance has to be approached as a new game, every time. Which means that the cute speech you’ve memorized, the one that you blather out every time someone asks you some version of “what do you do?”, is hugely counterproductive if you truly want to connect, to communicate your business’ value.

Try this: what really fires you up about what you have to offer? What audiences (customers) do you want to tell that story to? Exploring the answers to those two questions can put you on the road to really engaging your customers, really attracting your market.

And if you need help uncovering the answers to those questions…you know who to call.

That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it.

Feb 14 2008

Dispatch from Cancer Camp

By cancer

It’s been a while, so let’s catch up: got cancer for Christmas (whoopee!), and then a New Year lumpectomy, followed by Valentine’s Day chemo. Coming up later this year – Fourth of July radiation, in which I’ll get beamed up by the mother-ship.

Enough of that. Back to another story already in progress.

I’m sure you’ve wondered why I haven’t weighed in on all the twisted tales being told daily – even hourly – by all sides of the current political race. All sides in that sense including the candidates, the flacks, the mainstream press, and “new media”, a/k/a the blogosphere.

The answer there? Exhaustion, pure and simple.

Back inna day, when political noise emanated from just the campaigns and the mainstream press, I thought there were way too many words being used to describe way too little real thought or policy. Adding the chorus of new media voices to that dissonant opera has done…what, exactly? At best, it gives every possible view the opportunity to have its champion, particularly on the media side. At worst, it confuses the hell out of everybody.

This reflects the scattered political landscape this country – and any democracy – has, whatever tidy little bundles history books try to make out of the American past. For every issue: fetal rights, fetal pig rights, gay rights, “sanctity of marriage” rights (that’s got to be a joke, considering the divorce rate in the U.S.?), education, dedicated ignorance (a/k/a “teaching creationism”), there is a candidate that will meet your needs.

Once you pick one…is he, or she, electable? That’s what this long, muddy slog toward the first Tuesday in November is purportedly about. I have to admit, though, that as I watch this horse race, I’m thinking less Lincoln, “To give victory to the right, not bloody bullets, but peaceful ballots only, are necessary”, more Barnum, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

Dec 24 2007

What I Got for Christmas

By cancer

Remember that old song, “All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth”?  A sincere cry, albeit with a lack-of-dentition lisp, for a physical transformation. Just in time for Christmas.

I’ve had occasion to recall that song in the last few days, as well as one of my favorite Jules Pfeiffer cartoons.  In the cartoon, a guy is bemoaning all the things in his life that have been discovered to cause cancer, the most recent being scotch whiskey.  In the last panel of the cartoon, he lifts a glass (scotch, of course) and says, “Whoopee! Cancer!”

This year, I got cancer for Christmas.  Whoopee! Cancer!

Yeah, yeah, I can hear you screaming.  Trust me, it was a gift, and here’s why.  I’ve gone for a mammogram every year since I turned 40.  That’s fifteen of the suckers.  This year, instead of hearing what I’d heard every year before – “see you next year” – I heard this from my radiologist as we looked at my films: ”Hmmm…”  There was a “thing”, and he wanted to take a look at it.

Magnification mammography.  Stereotactic core biopsy (for this procedure, I highly recommend an IPod with volume set to “Stun” playing something like the Clash or Pearl Jam).  A diagnosis where he actually said, “Well, I’ve got good news and bad news.”  You can guess the bad news, right?  The good news is that it’s so small that the only thing that makes it Stage 1 vs. Stage 0 is that it’s an invasive carcinoma.

Why am I telling you about this?  I think you probably have an inkling already.  Girls, get your mammograms.  Get a baseline by 40, and then get one every year after 40.  Guys, encourage the girl you love to get her mammograms. And help her get through what might come after, because it will be infinitely preferable to planning her funeral.

Girls, I know that mammography is a classic example of a medical device made by a man.  I know that you feel like you go in a 38C and come out a 42 Long.  I know that if guys got screened this way for testicular cancer, there’d be some big changes quick.  As much of a pain in the boobs that mammograms can be, this one saved my life.  There was no lump.  Who knows when
a lump would have been palpable, and how far this thing would have spread by then?  I’m glad I don’t have to learn the answer to that question.

I’m taking this as a gift.  I’m also choosing to look at what’s going to get yanked out of me this way – it will be a complete encapsulation of all the anger, resentment, self-doubt, all the crap collected on a 55 year journey.  It’s coming out, and I’m moving on.

Since I’m more of a Druid than anything else at this point, I’m marking the Winter Solstice this year as my Yuletide celebration.  The end of the darkness, and the return of the sun.  An appropriate image for a time in my life where that has, literally, happened.

Happy New Year.

Nov 16 2007

What Recession?

By Uncategorized

I found myself listening to a pretty powerful group of people talk yesterday about the economic trends in my hometown, Richmond VA.  Jim Bacon, Jeff Cooke, Michael Sesnowitz, and Greg Wingfield all sat around – well, on stage – and talked about whether or not events like the Wachovia Securities move from RVA to St. Louis would cause an economic tremor in River City.

When I heard about the WachSec/AG Edwards merger, my reaction was “Opportunity!” – for new businesses, for watching some real-time change management, and for writing a new chapter in the Story of River City.  Turns out I’m with the smart set on this one, since that was the consensus of the experts.

The presence of VCU – and the engagement between VCU and the region’s business community – is a prime example of how the practical application of knowledge can be the storied tide that lifts all boats.  A university that’s plugged into business trends provides learning – and a workforce – that’s relevant to need AND that drives innovation.  The very model of win/win.

The interplay and collaboration between education and business would really make an impact in primary education, too – wouldn’t it be great if kids were taught early to find a need and fill it, rather than to get-good-grades-and-a-job?  The primary/secondary public education system seems stuck in a 19th century model.  Some concrete input from the business community on early education might address that – who’s up for pitching that to the Board of Ed…?

Sep 25 2007

Faking It Can Mean Real Trouble

By Uncategorized

Comcast has gotten itself into some  deep kimchee – $4000 worth, to be exact – with the FCC over a video news release (VNR) it aired in September 2006 as a news piece on CN8’s “All About You” segment.  CN8 is Comcast’s “news” station, and is a good example of how the intersection of a need to fill air-time with the ready availability of corporate PR video can cause fender-benders on the information highway…

First, there might be no such thing as bad publicity, but I doubt that the folks who make Nelson Rescue Sleep, the product being touted in the fine-inducing VNR, are entirely delighted with the headlines they’re getting today.  Seeing a company’s name in a story about “fake news” can make a potential customer run for the exit to avoid getting ripped of by something “fake” – whether the actual product is snake oil or not.

Second, and more serious, is the further erosion of public trust in what they see on TV or in print labeled “news” – is it really news, or is it someone’s propaganda?  Propaganda has been around since the first clique formed, right after there were more than two people on the planet.  Everyone – individuals AND enterprises – wants to put their best face forward, to tell their best story.  Problems arise, however, when any story is presented as fact without independent commentary or opinion.  If you ask Allstate, they’re the best insurance company in the world – best service, best value, best coverage.  But if you’re doing a survey of the insurance industry, you’ve gotta get input from State Farm, too – AND from independent analysts.

I’m all about a good story – but telling a story to attract customers is vastly different than presenting that story, stand-alone, as “news”.  It ain’t news – it may be a great story, but it ain’t news.

That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it.

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