Business Storytelling: Craft Your Value Story

1. Hello and Welcome!: Hi, my name is Saprina Panday and I'm a multi-media storyteller. For over a decade. I've been helping people transform their lives using the science and art of storytelling. I do this by incorporating neuroscience and time-tested techniques informed by my experience as a TV journalist, a writer, a filmmaker, a performer and much more. I'm now very excited to be here to help you unlock your best life using the power of story. So a lot of people waste valuable time and marketing and sales efforts by simply not knowing how to tell a story that shows the value of their product or service. In this lesson, I'm going to help you craft stories that captivate people and turn them into clients by showing them what value your product or service will add to their lives. At the end of this course, you will be empowered with tools to craft a story that demonstrates the value of your product or service compellingly, every time. 2. Give More: We're going to start off with five elements that we want to look at in detail. And I'll be asking you a couple of questions and there'll be some research for you to do. So just so you know, we will get to those first five things first and then we're going to look at structure. So the first thing that a lot of people's focus on is on the features and the benefits of the product or service. While those things are very important. Those things don't not speak to us as humans right away. Always remember, people buy out of pain, the buy out of a problem. And so it is really important for you to understand what exactly is their problem, what exactly is their pain. And of course, how does my product or my service solve it? Indeed, according to neuroscience and psychology, we are primed for 2 things. Those two things are status and connection. And because we are primed by these two things which are not actually material things when you think about it. So a good exercise in this instance for you to do is to think about all the other things other than money and cost. The financial cost of your product or service that you are contributing to somebody's life, Time, energy, joy, family, friends, confidence. These are the things that motivate us more than just a thing or a service. We want so much more out of life and you have to think about how you can bring that through your service or your product. 3. Who is your Character?: The second step we're going to be looking at your customer or the person you're imagining, as a character. How well do you know this person? Do you know what they do on a day-to-day basis? Do you know what keeps them awake at night? Do you know what their routine is like? Do you know how much time they have? Do you know how much money they have? All of these questions are there for you to really do your research to understand who are the people that you are trying to help and how you can best help them based on their lifestyle. And again, when doing this exercise, just come back to pain. What is the pain they are feeling? Are they feeling frustration? Are they feeling anger? Are they feeling sad? Are they grieving? What exactly is that pain? What is that emotion like? When does it strike and how is this emotion impacting their life, their business, their dreams? If you don't know this, then it is not a time for you to start thinking about ideas and other things. You have to stop and do the research and find out. So go and ask these people these questions and find out because without this knowledge actually all the information and all the messaging, all the marketing and sales efforts that you're doing is just not going to resonate. And that's exactly what you want. You want your stories, you want your messages to resonate. And the reason why we do this step is because when you're going to tell a story, this client or this customer, whoever it is that you're targeting is going to be your character. So remember, your customers are real people. And the character that you're going to have to create for your stories is based on this real person. So you need to know this real person really well. 4. Capture the Core Emotion: So the third step really is to think about the emotion. Before I had asked you, what do you think they're feeling? What is the day-to-day life like? What are they going through? And that's a really good place to start off to have an understanding, an overall view of how they're feeling. But what I want you to do now is really to identify the main prime emotion they're feeling. Is it frustration? Is it sadness. Are they grieving? Are they tired? Are they exhausted? It's about really honing in on the core motion because that core motion is going to be what was going to lead to the climax of your story. It's going to be the driver of your whole story. So identify what that is first. And then think about how does your product or service fix that particular emotion. 5. That Magical Moment: Now the next step, like in any story, there's a special moment right? There is that moment when things are able to change, where the solution is possible, where things are possible. And that is the moment for you to discover and understand from the perspective of your customer or prospect. When is the moment where the solution is discoverable? Were they on Instagram? Or watching TV? Were they on a field just hanging out by themselves when something just popped out to them out of the sky. It's about really thinking about that moment, that special moment in a life when things can change and trying to incorporate that in your story. 6. The Aftertaste: Now we have come to the After of the use of your product or service. Ff the journey in many ways. So how is life different now, what does it look like? What is enhanced or improved? What do your customers feel? It's the same way, in many ways as when you go to a doctor. You go to a doctor because you have a problem, the doctor gives you medicine or does something and you're fine. The same journey is what you have to go through in this instance, going through all the pain points of your character and seeing how your product solves each of those pain points throughout the journey so that at the end, that pain is not even there anymore. Here are some questions that you can ask yourself. How does this product or service solve the problem? How does it solve the pain or fix the pain? How does it make their life easier? What is the experience like of using your product? How did they feel about it? How do they feel during it? How do they feel after it? How is using your product or service, different from anything else they've ever experienced? 7. The Power of Details: Now that you've got your elements, what you really have to think about are all the details, all the things that make the story vivid, real and interesting. And here's where a lot of people will try to go for generic things. They will say, Oh, I was in a car and I was driving to the mall. And we don't know where which car, we don't know which model, we don't know anything about the specificity which makes it such that we don't actually know who the character is. Is the character somebody who's lived in New York their whole life and is driving around in a car for the first time and going through a mall in a completely unexpected place? We don't know. And that's all -all of those things that allow us to build a world. And so here is why it's so important for you to think about the details and get specific. The more specific you are, the more vivid, the more true and the more authentic your story will be. For example, don't say a car, say a forest green 2008 Prius with a cracked windshield. Do you see how much more vivid that is? How much more powerful? How much more specific? If somebody has a previous, they will immediately connect with that. If they don't, at least they can see it and they will connect with it that way too. So look at the specifics, look at the details and try to see how much you can get fromspeaking to people, all that research that you would have done on character by talking to your customer can be used here. And I would definitely encourage you to do that because without details, your story will become generic. It will become anybody's story and that's not what you want. 8. Structure, Structure, Structure: So when it comes to structure, a lot of people get confused because there are so many different kinds of structures out there. But really here all you need to do is stick to the basics, which is the three-act structure. And if you want to think about it in a different way, there is this amazing author by the name of Kindra Hall who explained that any story, especially this kind of story, can be broken down into three parts, which are called normal, explosion, new normal. For more on structure, definitely check on my other course that's also available on Skillshare. Now that you've got all these other elements, what we're gonna do is first we're going to start off with this theme. What is the theme? Then we want to have the setup. and the setup is who, what, where, quick, clear to the point. And then here we want to get quickly to the turning point, something happens. And then that leads us into action. This is going to be where we want to stay most of the time, things are happening. Things aren't working out, but whatever it is, it is happening here. Then, we want to go to Turning Point 2. And this is where you need to have an escalation turning point. So don't stay the same emotional place as turning point 1. turning point 2 has to be much bigger. We have the resolution and the denouement it's called the untying of knots, everything that put to rest, the new normal. Blake Snyder in his book, Save the Cat explains it really well where he says, You know, you can just imagine that the first scene of a movie starts off one way and at the end, the last scene, ends the same way, even though so much has happened in between. And we know that, by just having those two things coming together is very harmonious to us and puts us in a place of satisfaction. So that's where you want maybe people to be or not, depending on what you want them to feel at the end of your story. 9. Final Thoughts: So I hope that this course has helped you start building your value story. I would definitely encourage you to write it, to share it, and get feedback as much as you can. Because getting the right value story can transform your business, can transform your life, can transform your relationships, and it will definitely resonate and connect you to those very people that you're trying to bring value to. So that's why it's so important to invest in this and get it right. I'd love to hear your stories and hear where they've taken you. So don't hesitate to find me on LinkedIn at Saprina Panday or on YouTube at Saprina Panday And let me know how you're going and what else I can help you with. Thank you so much for watching, take care and happy storytelling.