The Most Powerful, No-Cost Tool for Connecting with Customers

One of the most important skills for soloists is being able to communicate effectively with customers – whether to introduce them to your company, share news, or persuade them to purchase your products or services. And one of the most effective ways to connect is through stories.

“Stories provide an emotional hook to the listener,” explains communication consultant Thaler Pekar, president of Thaler Pekar & Partners. “When you offer a story, you’re offering a gift – not only a piece of yourself but an invitation to shared experience,” she adds.

As an expert in persuasive communication, Thaler works with individuals and organizations to elicit their stories and help them discover what they need to say and how to say it best. Here are three steps to sharing your own powerful stories:

1. Find your story.
Take a look at your marketing copy, Web content, and other text, such as your business plan. Use Wordle to identify the words you are using most frequently. What stories – from your life or your work - best illustrate the meaning and application of those words to your business? Alternatively, collect images (from magazines, the Web, postcards, etc.) that somehow illustrate your business. Reflect on why you selected these pictures. Do they spark any stories about your work as a soloist?

2. Develop your story.
Craft your story with a beginning, middle, and an end. Add some sensory details, such as color, smell, or the weather -- just enough so the reader or listener can imagine himself or herself in the situation. Then practice the story. “Storytellers say that you need to tell a story nine times to make it yours, and 100 times to understand it,” says Thaler.

2. Share your story.
Share your story at networking events, on your Web site, even to family members who have never really understood your work. Listen to the stories you’ll hear in return. They’ll teach you more about your own story and will remind you of other stories you’ll want to develop and share. “Remember that storytelling is a one-way street. Story sharing is what modern communications is all about,” adds Thaler.

-- Terri Lonier
Founder, WorkingSolo.com

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