Three Storytelling Secrets that Pull Decisionmakers in and Get Them to Yes Faster

You're listening to the Nonprofit Power Podcast. In today's episode, we're sharing three storytelling secrets that pull decision-makers in and get them to yes faster. So, stay tuned. If you wanna have real and powerful influence over the money and policy decisions that impact your organization and the people you serve, then you're in the right place. I'm Kath Patrick, and I've helped dozens of progressive nonprofit leaders take their organizations to new and higher levels of impact and success by building powerful influence with the decision-makers that matter. It is possible to get a critical mass of the money and policy decision-makers in your world to be as invested in your success as you are, to have them seeking you out as an equal partner, and to have them bringing opportunities and resources to you. This podcast will help you do just that. Welcome to the Nonprofit Power Podcast. Hey there, folks. Welcome to the Nonprofit Power Podcast. I'm your host, Kath Patrick. I'm so glad you're here for today's episode because we all know that stories are important when we're engaging decision-makers, but we don't always know what story is going to be the right story. And how to tell that story in a way that is really going to pull that decision-maker in, and actually move them closer to yes. So often I hear from nonprofit leaders who tell me that, you know, they brought what they thought was their best story to a conversation with a decision-maker, and it didn't really seem to shift anything. It's not that it didn't land at all, but it didn't seem to get any traction either. We want every part of your messaging to be designed specifically to pull that decision-maker in and move them closer to yes. Your stories are absolutely no exception. In fact, they can be one of the most powerful tools in your toolkit, if you know how to use them to greatest effect. Since the very beginning of humankind, stories are how humans have shared important information with one another. Because of that history and that hardwiring, it's really how we learn best. That's why storytelling is so valuable in engaging decision-makers. Just like every other human, their brains are wired for story. It's one of the fastest routes to deep engagement, which, as we know, is essential to getting them to yes on the thing that we want them to do. But here's the thing, and I know you know this from experience, not all stories are created equal. A story that is built to accomplish something specific has a far better chance of succeeding than a story told without that intentional design and specificity behind it. The classic example of this is the standard client story of success. We assume it will be engaging and compelling because it's about success, and the client went from a difficult place to a successful place. And that's great, has this wonderful feel-good element to it. And, you know, when we're in a room full of donors, that kind of story can really work well. Honestly, when you have a room full of donors at an event who are already primed to give, maybe they've been enjoying cocktail hour, the checkbooks, the credit cards have loosened up a little bit. They're in a room full of like-minded people. Maybe the clients are up on stage adding to the compelling nature of the whole thing. So yeah, in that environment, you can tell an okay, pretty good client story, and have it produce a respectable amount of revenue at the end of the night. But when we're in a room with a decision-maker, where it's one fairly powerful, influential individual who controls government dollars or foundation dollars or corporate dollars. And we're having a conversation with them, and the goal is to get them completely on board with the work that we do and the impact that it makes. And to get them so excited and invested in it emotionally that they can't wait to invest their dollars or the policy change that we need from them, or both. Whatever we've come to ask for. A lot of times we'll take that same client story that worked great with a room full of individual donors at the annual gala or whatever it was. And we assume that that's gonna work with these other decision-makers. And most of the time it doesn't. If we tell that client story in that setting without having identified what specifically this decision-maker needs to get in order to be on board with our stuff and be excited about it, all we have is a nice story. It may be entertaining, it may be heartwarming, but it probably hasn't done the job of moving the decision-maker closer to the desired action. In order to get that, we need to design our stories intentionally. And the first thing we have to do is identify what it is we need this decision-maker to get. What are they not getting about the work we do, about the impact it makes, about the ROI that it produces, all the things. We talk about this all the time on the podcast, all your messaging elements that need to be there. And really what we're doing here is using story to accomplish some of that. And particularly to accomplish the getting it part, because story can do some amazing things for you. There are three critical ingredients, and these aren't actually secret. But sometimes they might as well be for how seldom they get used. So I wanna call these out and encourage you to build these into every story you tell with a decision-maker with total intentionality about what you're trying to make happen as a result of the story. So the first secret ingredient is the story should contain a lesson. This can be a lesson that you learned that you now want the decision-maker to learn. And maybe you learned it by hard-won experience that they don't yet have. So you're helping them by sharing this valuable lesson that you've learned. It can be a lesson about how complex the problem is, about what works and what doesn't, about what happens when the problem only gets solved halfway because of underinvestment in the solution, or by trying to shortcut the solution, or whatever else it is you need the decision-maker to get. What's very helpful to remember when you're crafting a story around a lesson, is that there was a time when you hadn't yet learned that lesson. And chances are most of the lessons that you now want the decision-maker to learn are ones that you had to learn through time and experience. You weren't born knowing the scope and complexity of the problem you solve. You weren't born... knowing the most effective way to solve it. All those things are things you've learned. And in the process, you also have probably learned a lot about what really works, And that's what's behind your secret sauce. It's whatever it is that you do in your work that gets exceptional results, exceptional outcomes, that then in turn produces very impressive ROI. Whatever you're doing that probably not everybody else is doing that's producing those exceptional results. The magic combination of design and client-centered focus and the scope of services that are included and the order in which they're delivered and all the things. Whatever all that is, that makes it work better than anything else. You learned that, and you learned some valuable lessons along the way. Now, you don't have to tell the decision-maker the life story of the evolution of your services. I recommend that you do not. We wanna be interesting here, not bore them to death. So if your story starts with,"And then in 1975, we blah, blah, blah," no. Please don't do that. I have been in the room when someone decided to tell a story that way, and everyone in the room sort of groaned and slumped in their seat and thought,"Oh, my Lord, we're gonna be here all day. This is painful." So you don't wanna do that. This is a simple three-step thing. What does the decision-maker most need to get? And you already know this because chances are you have, either with this specific decision-maker or with decision-makers like them. There's something or several somethings that they consistently either misunderstand or fail to understand. And that lack of understanding is getting in the way of them understanding the full value of the impact of your work, and therefore the level at which the investment needs to be made. So you know what they're stuck on. You want the lesson in your story to unstick that thing. If they're stuck on thinking that surely there's a cheaper, easier way to solve this problem, can't we just do that? Or can't the result happen faster? You know, you've got these people in this program for six months or nine months or whatever. Can't we do it in six weeks? That would be better and more efficient'cause then we could help more people'cause we could run them through really fast, and that would be great. Those are really problematic misconceptions, as you can imagine. And I know you've got your list of stuff decision-makers either accidentally or deliberately misunderstand. Sometimes the misunderstanding is deliberate, like with,"Oh, well, I'm sure it would be much more efficient if we just ran them through faster and got to the result quicker, and then we could serve more people for the same amount of money. That would be awesome." Yes, it would, if that were possible. But of course, doing that would create unacceptable trade-offs in a huge drop in the quality of the outcomes, and in fact then leads to actually wasting money. But they don't know that yet. So story is a great way to help them get it. You could just say,"Look, that's not right. Here's what's really true." And sometimes that's effective. Sometimes you can just do that. But what's so much more effective is to basically convey that message, but do it with story that says,"Here's how we learned why that doesn't work." You can even be accommodating a little bit and say,"You know, we thought that might work ourselves, and so we tried it once." Or we noticed that some other organizations in town were doing it that way, and we got curious about, well, would that be a more efficient model? Should we consider adopting that? Let's take a look. Let's compare the outcomes. What are the pros and cons, the costs and benefits of the longer term of services versus the shorter? And here's what we learned. What we found is in the shorter duration, these five reasons why it doesn't work as well. You lay that out in a story that then concludes with, and so what we learned was that it was a really stark difference. Folks who went through the longer form consistently got so much better results. The ROI was much higher. The folks who went through faster, they got a little bit of a result. Some of them didn't even stay, and the impact was minimal. And so, yeah, the cost was a little bit less, but the ROI was actually worse. When you compared the two, the ROI on the shorter version is lower by a lot. And so if you're talking about investing the same amount of money either way, wouldn't you rather get the higher ROI? You can build stories that way that teach a lesson that you already have learned. And you help bring the decision-maker along in that learning with a good story. The second ingredient is, whatever kind of story you're gonna tell, you always want vivid imagery and lots of detail. Now, again, that doesn't mean that you go on and on and on. You can do this in condensed form. What you wanna be able to do with all your messaging, stories included, is to be able to have a very compact version that makes the impact, and then, of course, the ability to stretch that out like an accordion and make it a bit longer if the situation warrants it, if the decision-maker is asking for more. But if you're pressed for time, you don't wanna have a situation where the only story you've got that's gonna accomplish the thing you want is gonna take you 10 minutes to tell, and they don't have those 10 minutes for that story. So be able to be concise, but at the same time, you want vivid imagery. Instead of just saying, Suzy Q client had this problem. It was really bad, and then she got our services, and it got way better, and now her life is better. Obviously, you wouldn't say that. But you want to be able to describe in some detail what her life was looking like while she was in the problem. And not just the view of the movie camera filming Suzy Q's life, but to tell it from being inside Suzy Q's life. What does it feel like to be in Suzy Q's situation? What does it feel like to be in the problem? Because very often, with most of the services nonprofits provide, the problem we're solving is deeply affecting the client's life. And it's hard to be in that problem. There's emotional distress that goes with it. There's often physical stress that goes with it. There's impact on the kids and the spouse and the family in general. There's impact on ability to work, all the things. So again, you can tell that in very condensed form. But to say, when a typical client comes to us, and Susie Q is an example. If it's a healthcare problem, you can describe what it's like to be dealing with, for example, uncontrolled diabetes, or congestive heart failure. And you can describe what that's like to feel that. The struggle to have the energy to both be able to work and to take care of the family. Maybe they had a job where they had to stand a lot, and that was becoming really difficult because of the side effects of the condition. This is what's going on. She's standing for her job, and she's in pain the whole time. And it's getting to where she can't handle that, and so she's had to cut back to part-time hours. But then that has this tremendously negative effect on the family. Now they're struggling to make rent. So it doesn't just affect her health, it affects her whole life. And you could do this with a workforce development example with someone who is underemployed or working multiple gig opportunities or multiple part-time opportunities with no benefits, and how that plays out in their life. You could use this with a housing example, where what it's like to be either completely unhoused or to be in unstable housing, where they're moving constantly, maybe dealing with evictions all the time, whatever the situation is. You know your clients, you know the problem, you know how it manifests. and You wanna be able to describe In some visceral detail what it's like to be inside that problem and how hard it is to keep hearth and home together in the process. And then to talk about how that situation and how their experience transforms once they get your services and are on the other side. As always, there is no need to describe in detail the services that you provide. You can just say, most of my clients have a name for the service they do that's their secret sauce thing When they come into the secret sauce program, they get all the help they need to get their diabetes under control, get themselves moved into more stable health, which then cascades into ability to go back to full-time work. Whatever your path to improvement looks like. And sometimes, as we know, success isn't life is perfect and now we don't have any problems. A lot of times success is things are far more stable than they were, and the person has greater agency and greater capacity to take care of themselves and their family than they had been before. So characterize it however is appropriate. But you want to describe what it feels like to move from being fully in the problem to being on the other side of the problem, where it's either controlled or resolved. And how much their life changes as a result. That's the story arc that you wanna be able to tell about the participant. Now, if for example, you know that a particular decision maker has unhelpful beliefs about the people you serve or about the problem, then a big part of your story is going to center on dispelling and dismantling those beliefs. And so you might, for example, with a decision maker who has an unhelpful belief that says that all people who are getting your services are lazy and don't wanna work and they're just looking for free stuff. If that's something you've gotta get past, then you would emphasize the aspects of the experience of the client that is all about them doing everything in their power to be able to be self-sustaining. And why the problem they're experiencing is preventing them from being able to do that. And that once they get your services, they are more able to do that. They might not be 100% self-sufficient, but they're a lot closer. So whatever the combo is, but you see how you would weave that in as part of the unspoken lesson. You're dispelling a belief simply by telling an engaging story of someone who is highly motivated to be self-sustaining, which then puts the lie to the belief that this is a bunch of lazy, entitled people. You always want detail. Now, again, not going on forever, but instead of saying, susie Q had this problem and It got bad enough she wasn't able to work full-time." Well, why wasn't she able to work full-time? Because she had diabetic neuropathy, and she had pain so bad in her feet, and her job involved standing. And she loved her job. She adored that job. But the pain of standing for eight hours a day was intolerable. You wanna bring to life that if she's in physical pain, you talk about being in physical pain. If they're really stressed out, talk about how that stress manifests itself. And give a little detail of what the experience is like. The goal is the vivid imagery and the detail are painting a picture that the decision-maker can see clearly in their mind's eye. Because in addition to being wired for stories, we are also wired for pictures. If their imagination engages enough with your words that they make a picture in their head, they can't unsee that picture. It's there now. It's now planted in their brain. And that's a huge win for you in your storytelling. Third ingredient is unpredictability. A surprise, a twist, something unexpected. It can be unexpected in terms of the information you're sharing. You're telling them something that's counter to what they thought was true, or that they would never have imagined could be true. You might share some surprising data or an unexpected detail that changes how they see the problem. Anytime you can produce a shift in how they see something, that has huge impact. And stories are great for that. The way you share it can also be unexpected. You can use humor. You can use unconventional metaphors that are kind of surprising and entertaining and attention-grabbing. Framing with metaphor is really powerful. You take something that is already familiar to them in some way or something that is so vivid that you can't help but see it. For example, a metaphor that would be easily visualized and impossible to forget would be imagine if you dropped a watermelon off a 20-foot ladder onto concrete. What would happen They see that in their mind. They see the watermelon drop and go k-ploom at the bottom, and it flies into pieces and explodes. Part of the point with this kind of a metaphor is it's a very vivid image that has absolutely nothing to do with anybody's direct services, but that everybody knows. Everybody knows what a watermelon is. Everybody knows enough about a watermelon to know that if you dropped it from a big height, it would explode. There's no other possible outcome. So if you're talking about something being fragile, you can use metaphors that would be something fragile breaking on impact. If you're talking about something being really difficult, you could come up with a mental image and a metaphor that would be immediately understandable as really difficult. Like having tied multiple knots in a rope really tight while it was wet, and then it dried. You're never getting that untangled. They can see that in their head. So think about when you have a minute to play, and grab your team for this,'cause this is much more fun as a brainstorming exercise. What are some mental images that are a great metaphor for the point you're trying to make about the problem you solve, about the people you serve, about the outcomes you get, about your ROI. You can do all sorts of really obvious imagery with money. You can say the ROI on method A for solving this problem is a stack of$1 bills about an inch tall. The ROI on when you do it our way is a stack of dollar bills that's a foot tall. That's immediately understandable. It's a clear visual image. By the way, something to keep in mind always is that people have trouble visualizing what a number represents. And so the more we can create metaphors and physical object comparisons to help them get it, the better. Of course, they understand that, for example, 1,000 is bigger than 10. But they don't necessarily understand the relativity of that. They know that one is bigger than the other, but how much bigger is harder for them to grasp. But if you show it visually, like$10 is this tiny little stack of$1 bills.$1,000 is this massive stack of$1 bills. Oh, that's a visual comparison. I can see that's a lot bigger. That helps me understand how dramatic the difference is between them. Use those kinds of metaphors and visual images and pictures to help illustrate your points. And to do it in a way that's surprising to them. People come in and recite statistics to them all day long, cite dollar figures to them all day long. And yeah, they may be people who deal in statistics and dollar figures on a pretty regular basis. That doesn't mean they don't benefit from a visual representation. Sometimes you actually show them a picture, sometimes you just describe the picture. Great example is you might say 30% of the people in a community are affected by this problem. Okay, fine. Most people know what 30% is. But if you say,"That means, think about it, if you walk down the street, someone in every third house is dealing with this problem." That's a whole different image. That's like,"Holy cow. That's a lot of my neighbors. Wait a minute." The other thing is don't forget the value of humor. Of course, you will use it judiciously, and you need to know your audience a little bit to determine what sort of humor you can use. But I will tell you this. Most of these decision-makers see a parade of nonprofit leaders coming in and asking for stuff. And they expect a certain boring format from the nonprofit leaders they talk to. When you break the mold even a little bit, that grabs their attention and starts to pull them in, and it's already an advantage for you. If you make their experience of talking with you a little bit entertaining, a little bit less boring, you're ahead of the game with that. So use humor. But mostly the unpredictability is, give them something they didn't know or would be surprised to hear. And frame it in a way that makes them sit up and take notice. If you build those three things into your stories, you will have a winning story just about every time. Play around with different metaphors, different stories, different story elements. This takes some time to get really good at this. But the more you play with it, the more you'll begin to get a feel for what is really gonna work well. And I absolutely recommend practicing this on other people who are not decision makers, to raise your comfort level with this kind of storytelling.'Cause it's not the same old, let's tell a client story to help them understand what we do. This goes way beyond that. This is designing story with purpose. And the first thing you wanna do is always say, what is the thing or a couple of things that I really need this decision maker to get? What's a story I can tell that will help them get it? What's the lesson I can share from something we've learned? What's a bit of surprising data or an unexpected detail that might help change how they see the problem? Is there room for a little humor somewhere in this story? Is there room for a little plot twist where they think they know where the story's going, but oops, it doesn't go there, it goes somewhere off to the side?" And then always, whatever you're doing in your storytelling, include vivid imagery and enough detail that they have a picture in their mind that's bright and clear and that they can absolutely see and are unlikely to forget. If you could do those three things, your stories are gonna start working so much better for you almost immediately. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode right here on the Nonprofit Power Podcast.