Tag Archive for "story telling"

January 6, 2023

By Jeff Walter, Senior Editor

There is a reason you’re in the business you’re in, and it’s not just to sell products and services. This reason runs deeper than even the best mission statement you might compose. Chances are, you get a little emotional thinking about it. Your passion helped you get where you are … and it will keep motivating you to get where you still want to go.

But you didn’t reach this point on passion alone. You’ve done the legwork: the self-education, the research, the outreach, the preparation, the partnering and collaboration that are necessary to do what you do at a high level. You’ve made agonizing decisions, confronted daunting challenges, celebrated victories large and small. You quite likely have faced the challenge of selling others on your dream and your vision, be they partners or investors or employees.

It all makes for a heck of a story. How well are you telling it?

Consider that your customers, like you, are interested in more than just products and services. Perhaps they love a good story, especially one that makes them feel good about the product or service they are buying. What else might you and your organization offer them beyond overt sales-oriented marketing?

There’s the vision, the origin, the journey so far. There’s the experience: the hard-earned wisdom you’ve accrued along the way. What anecdotes and insights, old or new, might benefit your customers while helping you connect with them on a more personal level? From the organizational level to the frontline individuals who personify the team, from behind-the-scenes glimpses to inspirational customer features, there are numerous little stories to be told, even as the big story is still being written.

Blog posts, videos and other digital content that captures why you do what you do can get other people fired up about it as well. We’d welcome the opportunity to help you share your story.

Image: Getty Images

About Hammock Healthcare Idea Email | This post is part of Hammock’s award-winning Idea Email series. Idea Emails are sent every other week and share one insightful marketing idea. Idea Email comes in two flavors: Original and Healthcare. To subscribe to the original Idea Email (general marketing ideas), click here. To subscribe to the Healthcare Idea Email (healthcare marketing ideas), click here.

Healthcare Idea Email: Three Lessons From Comedy Clubs for Healthcare Marketers

Posted in Healthcare Idea Email, by John Lavey

November 23, 2021

By John Lavey | Hammock President and COO

I spend most of my professional life helping clients tell stories across all forms of media to accomplish a business objective. But in my personal life for the past eight years, I’ve also been part of a few storytelling groups in Nashville and have gotten up on stage in bars and comedy clubs to tell comic stories.

Telling a story in front of a crowd has informed my perspective on marketing, and I’ve learned through great nights where I was killing it (and one or two nights where I’ve bombed) three truths about what it takes to engage an audience. I think those three truths are just as relevant for engaging your audience at a healthcare conference as they are in a club.

Show, Don’t Tell—Any writer will tell you this, but you have to make people feel the details and concrete nature of a problem or challenge you face. When you are telling a story about a bad date, it matters to share details about how bad the calamari was, or how you were both glancing at your phones, and some of the specific and terribly awkward words shared. When it comes to talking about industry issues (say physician burnout), we tend to focus a lot on data-supported points (which are necessary for making a decision) but don’t engage our hearts and minds like the stories of men and women logging into an EHR at 1 a.m. after days and days of treating patients.
Create a Story With an Arc—Most of us prefer to deliver a resolution, and when you are telling a funny story, that means to deliver a laugh line. But if you don’t take someone on a journey that shares the ups and downs to demonstrate the depth of a problem, then you won’t get the payoff of a great laugh. In talking about solutions in our work, it’s a similar dynamic. The great CEO, writer and speaker Nancy Duarte talks about the principles of good storytelling when presenting, and the importance of creating an arc, with distance between “what is and what could be.” If you don’t create the arc of a story, you are delivering a boring corporate presentation.
Resolve With Truth—I’m convinced that what is magical about laughter is that it is a spontaneous reaction to something that we believe to be true (however unexpected). And a group of people laughing is shared recognition of something resolved, and the relief of resolving the situation you’ve shared in a way that they didn’t expect but that they believe. With your presentation, you have the ability to deliver the same resolution by accurately telling a story of a situation faced in their work and resolving the situation with something they believe.

Storytelling and creating engagement with your ideas and solutions can be enhanced with attention to these tips, in my experience with clients, too, not just strangers in a comedy club. And that’s no joke.

Image: Getty Images