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Stories are the key to reaching high objectives. They are the most effective way to get your message understood, much more than a reasoned argument, a fancy sales pitch, or any clever marketing trick. Your story will talk directly to your client’s unconscious mind and appeal to their experiences, memories and emotions.

This is the way to give them information indirectly, to work in their reality and lead them to a new way of looking at things. Your brain naturally matches what comes in through your senses to previous experiences and situations and makes you think ‘I recognise this pattern and it reminds me of something that happened before‘. Using a story or a metaphor is a way to take your client to a different place by putting them into a trance where they become more resourceful and responsive.

USING METAPHORS

NLP uses metaphors as stories or ways of saying something that have in them a comparison or related way of looking at something. The use of them distracts the unconscious mind by giving it a lot to handle to make sense. When that happens the unconscious mind takes over and gives a creative solution and resources that will give an answer.

In our lives we tell and respond to stories, like when we tell a friend about what happened last night or about the football match we watched. Stories do not have to be fictional but can be based on facts and beliefs. A good story has a number of elements:

1. Characters that can be good, bad, weak, strong, lucky unlucky the list is endless.

2. A plot that tells what happened in a sequence of events or storyline.

3. A problem or difficulty that is solved.

4. An ending or result that can be happy or sad, complete or incomplete.

When you hear a story you process the words with the left side of your brain and use the right side for a more creative and imaginative view. You can use a story for a number of reasons, but for our purposes we need to think about now a story can be used to make a point, offer a solution, resolve a problem, or make something simpler.

A story will engage the client and can be combined with testimonials and case studies to demonstrate its truth. There are so many stories about the birth of companies, whether it was Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard starting their company working from a garage, or Sergey Brin and Larry Page at Stanford University studying maths, and deciding they would download the world wide web on to their computers in the first days of Google.

These are stories that intrigue and excite, engage and enthuse you when you hear them and help you identify with the success that resulted.

TEACHING & INFORMING

Stories can be used as a tool to teach and inform, to influence and persuade your clients to make the right decision. By telling them how your client managed to solve a particular problem and find a new way of working can be very effective, and much better than touting facts and figures. Story telling has been around for millenia, forms an important part of our heritage and will continue for as long as we live on this earth.

USING METAPHORS

Metaphors are a very powerful way to draw a parallel with experiences we all know and feelings we have, and they add colour to what we say. Remember the different senses we use for understanding and learning new information.

The way this worked before was a pain in the neck

This product is a dream come true

It was like the sun coming up on our future

Suddenly a bell rang and it all made sense

Metaphors make comparison to help us move from one context to another. In NLP we can use them to move up and down through levels of detail or from one context to another. This allows us to make communication at the best level for our client depending on his or her preferences. Metaphors can shape perception and experience by relating to known situations and ideas. A metaphor is a way to find a new solution or approach to a problem or situation.

A direct metaphor is used to compare one situation with another when there are a number of similarities and comparisons that can be made, for example an upgraded piece of software with extra capabilities but the same basic approach.

An indirect metaphor makes comparisons that are not immediately obvious. This is the basis of advertising campaigns for new or novel products, where new ways of thinking are involved. For example when email came along to replace writing letters it was the benefits that sold the novel concept, even though it took many people a while before they could fully use the power of the new way to communicate.

BUILDING A STORY

When you are trying to build a story or develop a metaphor you can begin by establishing where you start and where you want to get to at the finishing line. A good beginning acts as a hook to capture the attention of your client and make sure they are interested in finding out how your story ends. Then you must develop the middle of the story as a strong framework on which to build your story. Experiences you come across every day are a very good place to start and especially situations that generate an emotion.

The characters or players in your story are important and they must be believable, perhaps based on real people to carry out tasks or challenges that move your story along. There must be an outcome of value, which gives reason for your client to want to go that way, and he or she must understand what they will have learned by going down this path.

A story is something you can develop over time, with feedback from your clients and colleagues, making it more effective and persuasive. You may be inspired by speakers and stories you hear, as you learn how to make your story the best it can be.

HOW TO START

You should start simply and build your resources and skills with practice. Humour is a very valuable tool in any story and a way to keep your client interested. As you build your rapport through all the techniques we covered in an earlier post you will get more response, with better listening and involvement. When you want to tell a story try to make sure your client is feeling relaxed and comfortable, without the pressures and distractions often faced in our busy world.

Enjoy telling your story and use your expressive skills to speak from the heart and be honest in what you say. By doing this you will stimulate and involve them in a range of pictures, sounds, feelings which appeal to their preferred styles.

STORY LOOPS

A useful device you can use is during the telling of one story have a diversion that may start ‘and that was how it was when…..‘ to include another aspect of the story that will further involve your client or audience in what you are saying and will leave them wondering how the first story element will end. You can leave them hanging before you come back and give the whole story, which will make sure they are still listening when you reach your high point, because their brains will want to make sense of the confusion.

Using these techniques takes practice, but by being a master story teller you will keep your clients interested in what you say and be able to shape their responses to gain agreement.

NEXT WEEK

Next week we will be taking a look at Rich Schefren’s latest blockbuster Attention Age Doctrine Part 2, which looks at marketing in an up-to-date context and can include a number of NLP techniques in building trust.

I hope this post has been able to show you how stories are the key to reaching high objectives.

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