Stories That Stick: How Storytelling Can Captivate Customers, Influence Audiences, and Transform Your Business

way more
effective, with the storied
approach leading to a ninefold increase in view through and subscription rates.
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So tell, tell, tell. Be the one who people look forward to hearing from, even if
they can’t quite put their finger on why. You know why. Because people love
stories. They want stories. So go ahead. Give them what they want. Tell your
stories.
Here are a few insights on how, where, and when to do it.
Tell Stories in Presentations
One of the most obvious places to tell your stories is in presentations. Whether
it’s a five-minute update at a weekly team meeting or an eight-hour pitch to
close a multimillion-dollar sale, stories will make your presentation and
subsequent results better. Here are a few tips.
Start with a Story
It was a Thursday afternoon, and I was catching up with friends during a rare
happy hour. Shelly is an expert in her field and had just started speaking at
conferences in her industry. That visibility has meant excellent growth for her
business, but for someone who never considered herself a public speaker, each
presentation was intimidating. She asked if I had any advice. You won’t be
surprised to hear I told her to tell a story, but my reasons and strategies were far
more specific than you might expect. Specifically, I insisted she start with a
story.
The moment she stepped on stage and greeted the room, I told her to
immediately launch into her story. Why? Several reasons. One, it’s an easy way
to ease the natural tension that sometimes exists between audience and speaker.
Sometimes the nature of the event—a pitch or sales presentation—puts an
automatic divide between the two. At other times the nature of the audience
makes the environment a little hostile. Perhaps the audience is comprised of
experts in the field who are skeptical about listening to other so-called experts.
In either case, starting with a story helps to break down these barriers and makes
you a person just like them instead of the expert in front of the room they are
forced to listen to.
To that end, I encouraged Shelly to tell a story that centered on a client
versus herself and her expertise, whose situation was likely one the audience had
experienced themselves. Or tell a story of one of her kids. As we’ve learned in
previous chapters
, as long as the major lesson learned with her children was

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relevant to the overall message of her presentation, it could work to both
illustrate a point and equalize or neutralize any audience tension.
Starting with a story also helps to calm your nerves and for good reason. The
act of public speaking, being on display and vulnerable to people’s judgment and
criticism, often triggers the ancient self-preservation fight-or-flight response.
Starting with a story answers the only question a speaker’s lizard brain cares
about in that moment: Do they like me?
If you start your presentation with a story—the thing other people love
hearing—you will see the audience naturally engage, nod their heads, uncross
their arms, perhaps even chuckle. Not only is this a positive experience for the
people listening to you, the visual cues of acceptance will signal your ancient
self that, yes, people like you. With that question answered, the rest of the
presentation gets a whole lot easier.
Shelly thanked me for the advice that night and vowed to put it into practice.
Four days after our conversation, she sent me a text. Based on the excessive
number of emojis and extreme capitalization, I could tell she was still on a
speaker’s high. She wrote, “I started with a story about my daughter and it was
FANTASTIC!” After the lecture she was swarmed by people who said it was the
best presentation they’d ever heard. A presentation destined for success from the
moment it began.