Business Storytelling Tips: How to Harness Story in Your B2B Communication

Business storytelling is the use of narrative (defined by Merriam-Webster as a story or account) to move a specific audience toward a decision or action. In entertainment, the goal of a story is to hold an audience’s attention for its own sake. In business-to-business communication, the role of story is to shift how an audience thinks, feels, or acts.

More specifically, a story is a unit of information with a particular structure to it. It’s typically organized into three acts – beginning, middle, end – all crafted to convey your understanding of the audience’s pain and articulate how your idea or solution will generate a better outcome for them.

When you write and tell a business story effectively, it overcomes resistance and builds support for your point of view. Story is a particularly powerful way to make the case for organizational change, but you can also use it to pitch yourself.

The three-act structure is the spine of any persuasive business story, whether you’re pitching a product, leading a transformation, or talking about your own career. Each act does a different job: the beginning sets up a problem and its stakes, the middle shows the path through it, and the end shows what the world is like when the problem is resolved.

To create a distinct story structure, first get clear on what your audience needs to hear – which determines what you need to say:
1. Start by identifying what the audience thinks and feels about your topic right now, which is their current state. This sets the stage for your first act.
2. Next, define what you want them to think and feel by the time you’re done talking, or their future state. This tees up your third act.
3. Then craft the bridge between the two – or transition state – where you share your idea or vision and how it closes the gap between where they are and where they want to be.

Whether you’re selling a product or an idea, getting buy-in requires shifting how other people think or act. Story is the secret weapon of the world’s greatest persuaders because it changes how people take information in and process it.

When we become absorbed in a story, our critical mind quiets down and our emotions and imagination get activated, a phenomenon called narrative transportation. While people are immersed in a compelling story, they feel a sense of curiosity and wonder, which makes them more open to different ways of thinking or working.

This is why innovative companies in the technology and consumer goods industries use story in their brand and product communications – to make buyers willing to give their newest offerings a try.

Data and story are both used in persuading audiences, but they accomplish this through different pathways in the brain. Data speaks to the analytical center of the brain, while story speaks to the emotional center. One provides the evidence; the other gives it meaning.

For example, messaging can explain that your product boosts productivity by 20%, and real customer data on those gains helps prove the point. Pairing those with a story about how your product speeds up a typical user’s daily tasks makes the number meaningful. The audience will walk away understanding how their week will feel different when they use your product.

Business storytelling works on two levels, which I think of as “story with a big S” and “story with a little s.” Story with a big S is the most strategic narrative you can tell about your company’s vision, mission, and values. It is the through-line that stays true for your company over years or even decades of operation. Story with a little s is a set of situational stories you might tell in any given moment to make your company’s larger story more vivid, relatable, and memorable.

Here’s a real example of what that looks like in practice: Microsoft’s big S story is its mission “to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.” CEO Satya Nadella made that the company’s official mission statement in 2015, and it hasn’t changed in more than a decade because it’s broad enough to encompass Azure, Office, gaming, and whatever gets built next. The little s version of Microsoft’s story shows up across its brand and product communications, including a 2019 Super Bowl spot for the Xbox Adaptive Controller. The ad told the story of a nine-year-old boy named Owen and other young gamers with physical disabilities. While the mission statement was never mentioned, viewers clearly saw what “empower every person” looks like in practice.

You can use both types of stories together to create a cohesive, consistent narrative for your company. The situational stories you tell in a sales pitch, a town hall, or a one-on-one should be specific to a particular audience or moment, but still aligned with your company’s vision, mission, and values. Without the strategic business story, you have a pile of anecdotes that don’t add up to anything. Without situational stories, nobody can understand exactly what your mission statement means to them.

The hero’s journey is a story structure that was first described by the writer Joseph Campbell. It’s called the hero’s journey because a hero, or protagonist, undergoes an adventure in pursuit of a heroic cause or goal. Along the way, the hero encounters obstacles and enemies that nearly stop them. But with help from a mentor, the hero overcomes and is changed by the experience.

Whether you realize it or not, many of the best movies follow this classic structure. All the epics do, of course, like Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, and The Wizard of Oz. But so do Moana, Rocky, and Hidden Figures. The one thing they all have in common? Somebody is forced to do something really, really difficult … but against all odds, they get it done.

That’s not just the stuff of movies; it’s the reality of life for you and your teams, too. When you communicate what’s happening in your business using elements borrowed from this epic journey – such as naming the hero, the cause they are fighting for, and the enemy they are battling – you help people understand how their work contributes to a bigger story.

Take, for example, the VP of product at a second-tier tech company that’s in the middle of a turnaround. She’s been asked to cut her department’s operating budget by 20% so the company can fund new bets. When communicating this goal to her team, she names the enemy they’re fighting in vivid terms: every dollar spent maintaining features nobody uses is a dollar stolen from the product customers have been asking them to build for three years.

Rather than simply telling her team to slash spend, the VP uses story to make them feel like heroes with a worthy goal. That simple reframe transforms a budgeting exercise into a battle worth fighting.

A business change story is a big-picture narrative that puts a transformation in context. It explains why change is necessary, what the change will accomplish, and how you’ll get there, told in three acts.

A personal change story is your own experience with a similar struggle, told using the hero’s journey. Personal stories like these build trust and show, rather than tell, that you understand what people are being asked to go through. In this kind of tale, you share a goal that you struggled to reach but eventually achieved. Revealing a real setback, and what it taught you, tends to build more credibility than a too-polished success story ever will.

You need both kinds of stories if you want to get and keep people on board with a big change. The business change story answers the business case, while the personal change story answers the harder question: why should people trust you to lead them there? Communicating your experience with leading change helps build confidence that you’re equipped to guide their journey.

The most common storytelling mistake speakers make is sharing the wrong kind of story in a given moment. The right story is the one your audience recognizes in themselves, not the one you personally relate to most.

Let’s say an executive wants to convince their employees to deliver a better experience to their customers. That leader might choose to share a story about white-glove service they received at an expensive five-star hotel. If the employees listening can’t afford to stay in a place that ritzy, the mismatch makes the leader seem out of touch instead of tuned in.

Whether I’m training individuals to be better speakers or working with executives in one-on-one coaching, I always start with audience analysis. I’ll ask about challenges their audience experiences on a typical day. Then I’ll ask a follow-up: when was the last time you struggled with that yourself? The right story tends to surface organically at that point, as the leader puts themselves in the shoes of their audience and empathy takes the wheel.

The acronym REAL can help you find the right approach for a specific situation:
• Relevance: Speak to your audience’s actual fears and needs in a way they can relate to
• Empathy: Practice empathy so you understand what matters to them before you speak
• Authenticity: Communicate authentically from your own experience
• Learning: Leave your audience with a lesson they can apply to their own situation.

A good business storyteller knows what story is; a great one knows how to tune the stories they tell to their audience. The gap between the two comes down to empathy. You’ve got to be able to sense what people fear, desire, and need to hear and then bring that to life in the tale you tell. Even if it means sharing something vulnerable.

I once worked with a Fortune 500 software CEO who was preparing to speak to his employees about a major transformation. It was a tough audience because his staff was frustrated and exhausted by constant pivots. He needed to build trust that he knew what they were feeling by telling a story about his own experience of going through a difficult change. The room went completely silent as he shared his story, and some in the room were moved to tears. That talk got the highest rating of his career: 4.98 out of 5. It shows that transparency is worth the risk when it makes your audience feel seen.

Study other storytellers by watching TED Talks or even reading short stories. Then try telling a story yourself in a low-stakes situation. Here’s a way to begin:
• Start with one specific memory about something that happened to you that your audience will relate to.
• Write it down using the three-act story structure with a clear beginning, middle, and end.
• Choose one person to tell that story to and ask them to give you feedback on it. Ask them what parts of the story stood out most, what made them feel engaged vs. where they got a little bored.
• Use that early feedback to fine-tune the story, removing the boring bits and expanding the most interesting parts.
• Keep repeating that process with one story until you get a tight anecdote that makes people lean in, nod and, most of all, feel something. That’s when you know you’re getting it right.

You can hear more about my approach to storytelling in this podcast.