How business owners can tell their stories like "HollyWood Blockbusters."

Everyone loves a great movie, but unless you’re in show business, you don’t need to worry about story arcs and all that 12-stage hero’s journey stuff, right? I mean, you’re trying to sell products and services here, not write a blockbuster movie script. Just stick to the facts.

The trouble is, we’re not very good at remembering facts. And customers often buy on emotions anyway, not rational judgements. 

You can sprinkle a bit of stardust on your business stories. 

In this article, I’ll show you how the basic tool of a scriptwriter - the story arc - can help you tell a story that sells.

The story arc you’re probably using.

I have lots of conversations with clients who want to sell. Ninety per cent of the time, they’re actually using one version of a story arc, without even realising. The most common business story is the Problem/Solution arc. In this story, your customer goes from a bad place (before buying your product) to a good place (after buying your product).

There’s nothing wrong with this story arc. 

We’d all like to think there’s a miracle diet that can get us beach-body ready by the summer or a one-click solution to our IT problems.

The story arc your customer is hearing:

But… when your customer hears your optimistic Problem/Solution story, their inner skeptic kicks in. They’re saying to themselves “Yeah yeah, sounds too good to be true.”

And that’s because we’ve all heard companies over-hyping, over-promising and over-simplifying. And we’ve all seen those same companies under-delivering.

So you might be telling a Problem/Solution story, but we’re hearing a Too Good to Be True story.

So, what can you do about it? Move on. 

Tell a more credible story. 

The story arc you should be using:

You need a better story arc when you’re trying to sell to a sceptical customer. I call this arc “No Easy Way” because there’s no easy way to do a good thing. If it was good and easy, we’d be doing it already. 

Notice how this story arc looks like a rollercoaster, with dramatic ups and downs. Yes, your customer has a problem, and yes you could offer them a quick fix. But it won’t be plain sailing, because nothing good is ever easy. When they hit a setback, you’re not going to give up. You’ll help them through the crisis and on to an eventual solution.

This is the difference between selling a 12 month gym membership (pay up in January, but we don’t care if you give up in February) versus what a personal trainer will do (keep motivating you week after week, all year long).

I once showed an engineering consultant the "No Easy Way" arc. 

“Ah,” he said, looking at the crisis point in the story arc, “this is where I come in.” 

“What do you mean?” I asked. 

“Well, clients call me in and tell me what they think their problem is. But they’re wrong. It’s only when we try their solution, and it doesn’t work, that I get to find the real problem and fix that.”

See? There’s no easy way to do a good thing.

When you use the No Easy Way story arc, you can position yourself as the expert guide your customer needs, and distinguish yourself from your competitors (“they’ll just sell you a quick fix”)

This story arc is a simple tool. You can start using it right away. 

Ask yourself these questions to develop a No Easy Way sales story:

• What’s your customer’s problem? What might the real problem actually be?
• When you talk about your solution, does it sound a bit too good to be true? How might you make it sound a bit more realistic?
• What kind of quick fixes are your competitors offering? How are you different?
• What kind of setbacks might your customer experience as they (and you) try to solve their problem? How will you overcome these setbacks?
• What kind of long-term solution do you offer? How is that better than the quick fix?

Why does the Hollywood version work so well?

I believe it’s because we make sense of the world as if it’s a story. We remember the past and imagine the future as a series of little stories. And it’s the Hollywood version of any story - the most dramatic, rollercoaster version - that sticks most firmly in our memories. 

Non-Hollywood versions of stories do happen all the time.

The trick is to see events in your every day life as if you are the director, not the actor, and write the script for you and your client that brings out the story which brings you together.

Steve Rawling is the author of Storyteller Tactics, a practical toolkit for telling great stories about your work. He's a former BBC TV journalist who reckons he's told over 20,000 stories in his career.