E-Tips

Story Lands $800,000 Sale!

By Robert S. Fish, Ph.D.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, is a story worth $800,000?

Mike Malinchok took PowerSpeaking® six months ago. As a result of the program he began using stories in his sales presentations. As a sales director for a Silicon Valley high tech company, he frequently makes presentations to prospects. Mike told us of a recent success:

"As we were closing the deal, my contact informed me that of all the information that the CFO heard from the competitors, he remembered my story. He felt that the relevance of the story and how our product resolved the issue demonstrated my company's innate understanding of the business and we got his vote. As you can imagine the CFO's vote carries quite a bit of clout. This account will result in about $800K over a two year period!"

Is this an isolated incident? I don't think so. Stories have the power to affect people's decisions.

How is that possible? We've been taught that data, hard evidence, is the primary road to persuasion in presentations. As it turns out, this is a false assumption. How so?

First, we now know that the brain processes different kinds of information in different areas. Data is processed in the left hemisphere, the analytical number-crunching

side of our bio-computer. Stories, like art and music, are processed in the right hemisphere, which is stimulated by images and emotions. Stories contain both. So when we're starting to doze off during a data-dump talk, a good story switches the input from the left to the right hemisphere, re-energizing our attention. Images, therefore, stimulate brain activity.

In addition, the element of surprise, or pattern disruption, plays a key role in this stimulation. In his book, Brain-Based Learning, Eric Jensen writes, "Our brains have a high attentional bias towards something which does not fit a normal or expected pattern." This has survival value for us. Eons ago when our ancestors lived in the forest, they had to be keenly aware of changes in their surroundings. The rustling bushes could be a saber tooth tiger about to have them for lunch.

When we have a high attentional bias we secrete adrenaline, which "acts as a memory fixative, locking up memories of exciting or traumatic events," says Jensen.

According to Jensen, stories stimulate emotion which in turn stimulates adrenaline which in turn stimulates the brain's memory centers. This may explain why we remember stories longer than we remember data. Most of us have experiences that support this thesis. For example, we can remember horrifying stores the history teacher told us in class about Napoleon's army freezing to death on their march to Moscow, but we can't remember the date of the war or why it was fought.

Getting the audience to remember parts of a talk is any speaker's goal. Stories do that.

Let's summarize. Stories are a powerful persuasive tool in part because of the effect they have on the brain. The novelty of the images, in contrast to data, stimulates chemical activity in the right hemisphere, resulting in higher attention and the secretion of adrenaline, a memory fixative.

All this presupposes that the story being told has value and meaning for the listener and is told well. If the story connects with the audience, they are more receptive to the speaker's message. Perhaps to the point of buying $800,000 worth of product. It worked for Mike Malinchok. It can work for you.