Telling the macro through the micro - the power of storytelling in B2B

If you want prospective customers to fall in love with your products and services, tell them stories. Stories form emotional connections with your audience, connecting them to your product, brand or idea. 

There’s one storytelling angle that I find particularly effective. It’s to lift the lid on your brand, business or organisation and tell stories about the people who work there. By talking to the people at the heart of the organisation, you are holding up a mirror. It reflects everything that’s good about your company; the elements that make your culture unique; why people love working there. These stories are the nuggets that attract your audience and help strengthen the bonds between you and who you are targeting. 

A few years ago, I delivered a storytelling project for Buzzacott, a 400-strong, 100-year old accountancy firm. I spent time with a handful of people inside the organisation, creating a series of human stories they could utilise in their marketing. I spoke to people like Matt who headed up the corporate finance division. We lifted the lid on his working life, hearing how he used his walks along the Thames to the office to make decisions. “In my role a lot of what I do is like a game of chess: you do one thing, and something else will happen,” he told me. “Whilst walking through London I think through multiple scenarios. By the time I reach the office, I’ve got to make a decision.”

Matt’s was a simple yet effective story that reveals the human being behind the job title. It makes his work in the corporate finance division more gettable and shows him as personable, approachable, understandable. It gives the audience - existing and prospective customers - something to grab hold of. Painting a picture of one of its key people makes the accountancy firm more memorable.

I used this example in a ‘lunch and learn’ storytelling session I ran recently for a team of B2B marketers at a big corporation. One question came from around the table. A participant said he understood how stories like this could be unearthed in an organisation of a few hundred people, but not in an organisation of thousands. How can it scale? he asked.

But storytelling isn’t a numbers game.

It’s all about the people. You can still shine a light on the stories inside your organisation whether you’re a ten-person start-up, a 400 hundred person professional services firm or a tens-of-thousands global corporation. 

Because after all, what do stories do well? They tell the macro through the micro. B2B marketers could learn a lesson from TV documentary markers. The BBC is currently screening a documentary about the retailer Sainsbury’s.  Sainsbury’s been going since 1869, has around 2,300 stores and employs around 189,000 people. Of course, the filmmakers wouldn't try to represent everyone - instead, they need to zoom in tight. So they’ve selected a handful of people from the CEO to the shop floor and shone a light on them. Showing the macro through the micro.

And that’s what B2B storytelling is about. Finding compelling stories, sharing them and getting engagement with the audience. Yes, you might need to find a variety of stories to answer the needs of those in the buying process. But size doesn’t matter.

Stories are at the heart of our civilisation. They help us know who we are and where we are going. And that applies to everyone, wherever you work.

Want to connect authenticity with your customers? The Ian Sanders Company will help you unearth your gold and tell the stories that everyone needs to hear. Discover more about our three-stage, story-mining process here - iansanders.com/storytelling