Bring Value by Storytelling

In my 30 years of selling enterprise solutions to Fortune 1000 companies, and more than 20 years in the digital marketing trenches, it’s time that the seller start respecting the buyer’s time, intelligence, and attention span. Potential clients are everywhere. You are next to them in line at the grocery store, or jogging next to them on the treadmill. You don’t know they are a potential client, you don’t know that they have pain points that you have the remedy for. You don’t know because they are not asking you in line or at the gym, they’re asking the internet. And when they ask the internet, you better be there and you better have a story to tell.

In today’s digitally chaotic world where people are literally addicted to their phones… the power of STORYTELLING has never been more important. Articles in the form of stories are powerful marketing tools and the following examples will provide insight into the value they deliver.

Examples for storytelling to solve problems

Advanced Facilities, Inc. builds world class data centers for their customers. AFI’s ideal client is the facilities manager or director of data centers. One of their challenges is around maintaining building power to support critical systems. The story below highlights a recent project that was completed just in time to avoid a major power outage. Here’s a portion of that story -

Jason described what took place to Tim Amann of Advanced Facilities. “We had a building catastrophe around 1:30pm.  The building lost power for about 5 minutes. The entire building was dark and the data center failed over to UPS, activated the generator, switched to generator in about 3-5 seconds, air conditioning fired back up.  The room was back to a proper cooling state in about 5-7 minutes.  We ran on the generator for the minimum 30 minutes.  The system automatically detected stable utility power and switched back once the minimum 30 minutes lapsed.  All hands-off, I just watched it go through the motions.”

Jason ended with, “It was great to watch. Everything went exactly as designed. It was a wonderful thing!”.....read the rest of the story

SIS, LLC provides IT products and services to clients throughout the Midwest. Their ideal client is IT department, from the CIO down to the system admins, they all have similar challenges that keeps them up at night. One of these challenges is recovering from Ransomware attached. One of SIS’ long term clients reached out to their technical team to help with a truly terrifying experience. As you can see from this story the client was hit by Ransomware and brought the organization to its knees. -

The aftermath of this attack from a simple leak in a Google Drive was nothing short of devastating. Everything was shut down for a week: no email, no progress, and no new data. Only after about a week or so was the company able to turn on a few key systems but most of the web-hosting data was lost completely and needed to be recovered. Three weeks after the attack business is operating at about 60% of their infrastructure with the remaining 40% needing to be rebuilt or recovered. 

How could this have happened?

It’s no secret that there are evil people all over the world, and some of them get their kicks out of attacking businesses through viral attacks. Businesses and individual users sometimes understand these threats and take great precautions and preventative measures to prepare, but this Company was nothing short of a sitting duck on a freeway. The month long ordeal and recovery process from the attack really started before that Sunday in July with an extreme lack of preparation and an outdated disaster recovery strategy, if you can call it that. 

With only a few hodgepodge solutions, including a snap-shot based technology that was only used for patch checks, a backup server that was not patched at all or maintained properly, and a tape-based disaster recovery strategy, the data infrastructure was no match for this malware attack. Shortly after disaster struck, this company reached out to SIS to assist in the recovery and to help sort out the colossal mess on their hands....read the rest of the story

Scholarpreps, LLC was started to help parents better understand the recruiting process, they provide information regarding the recruiting process to help guide parents through this exciting and challenging subject. One of the questions asked by the student athlete as well as the parents is “what is the real value of playing collegiate sports? As you can see from the article we help answer this important question -

The value of playing a sport in college is difficult to measure. When you graduate from college with a bachelor’s degree and play sports, you are simultaneously graduating with a master’s degree in numerous life skills that will set you up for success in the work place and in life. Through lectures and textbooks you can learn a lot about calculus, the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, and the molecular structure of plants, but the same cannot be said for virtues like accountability, perseverance, and teamwork. One set of knowledge will help you from time to time in specific situations where that specific knowledge is needed, but the other set you will need to tap into day in and day out……

Self-Improvement

In order to achieve anything great, you must work very hard at improving yourself, staying focused, and achieving short term goals along the way. No other program or regimen can prepare you for that mentality and that process like collegiate sports. From day one you learn about accountability and how important that is. You have a job to do, team meetings to attend (if you’re not early you’re late), and a process to learn as part of the team. After college, no matter what your job is, accountability is key to excelling and keeping your job.

To be an athlete and to make it to the next level, it’s not enough to just keep your job and to stay on the team. To be an athlete is to be a competitor. You don’t want to just be a player on the team, you want to be the best player on the team, the league, and the country.  Playing collegiate sports is a master class in self-improvement. From day one you are in awe of the veterans and you tell yourself, “I’m going to take their job! I’m going to be the starter, the captain, the campus hero!” So you go out and try to be the best but you very quickly realize that you have a lot of work to do....Read the rest of the story

Each of these three articles do three things well: establish trust, tell a story, and leave you with more knowledge. Who are you, and what do you do? If you can’t convey these things quickly and without boring your audience then you’ve got a shot. You better get through to them quickly though, because attention spans are shrinking every year. Capture these future clients’ attention with a story. Paint a picture of their world where their business problems are solved. Now more than ever, it is imperative to establish these tried and true business principles in acquiring new business.

They need to know you.

They need to like you.

And they need to trust you.

If any one of these three principles is lacking, then business will not happen. Show up with helpful and entertaining information with clarity. Show up with a story. Most importantly show up respecting their intelligence, time, and short attention span and you’re on the path to building rapport and an eventual relationship with a new client.

Reach out to our team today to get started on your story strategy…Contact us today