If you want people to pay attention to what you say, you have to communicate with them at an unconscious level.

In order to do that successfully, it’s useful to know that the unconscious mind loves symbols. Therefore, a great way of communicating with it is to use metaphor and stories. Good communicators do this all the time without realizing it.

People love to hear a story. When you give them information in the context of “this is what happened with so and so,” they will take the message on board much more convincingly.

The reality is that most people will resist an obvious sales pitch but will respond much more happily to the same information presented in the form of a story. For example, try telling a story about how someone’s life has changed as a result of using your product.

You can also learn a lesson from Hollywood and fill your stories with interesting characters and dialogue plus a dramatic benefit.

Compare the following sentences and consider which one is more likely to leave the biggest impact.

‘We provide great training to many leading companies’.

or

‘Bill White at Marriott was telling me how their sales people had seen appointments double as a result of attending our course.’

Another benefit of stories or metaphors is that they can create feelings in the listener. If you tell a story about someone having a good time, being successful and enjoying things, it will make the listener feel good too.

If your story is full of lots of negative information, it will make them feel bad and less likely to do business with you – unless you are offering a solution to that bad feeling!

To put stories to work in your business, you should build a fund of examples of people you have worked with in the past or people who have benefited from using your product.