Stories That Stick Quotes

“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? It’s an age-old question, and when it comes to your stories, a relevant one. If you find your story and put the effort into crafting it, but you never tell it, does it even matter? While the forest-tree conundrum is up for debate, the answer to the storytelling question is pretty straightforward. No.”
― Kindra Hall, Stories That Stick: How Storytelling Can Captivate Customers, Influence Audiences, and Transform Your Business

“The problem,” Sharon explained, “is that they all want to become volunteers.” At first blush that sounds impressive. Getting volunteer help is notoriously challenging. And United Way always needs volunteers. But that wasn’t Sharon’s goal. The programs need money, and Sharon’s job was to raise it. Her story, as beautiful and touching as it was, simply wasn’t doing the job she needed it to. It was doing a job, but the wrong one. Just as we learned in the previous chapter, there is a difference between finding a story and finding the right story. I was confident Sharon had found the right story; the story about the boy and the difference United Way had made in his life was perfectly suited for the task at hand. What we were dealing with was a crafting issue. As we rewound her story and worked through it, the problem jumped out right away. The story itself was compelling, but the message in her story—what people took away—was that it’s very rewarding to volunteer.”
― Kindra Hall, Stories That Stick: How Storytelling Can Captivate Customers, Influence Audiences, and Transform Your Business

“In truth, I don’t think elevator pitches even matter that much. It’s one of those sales techniques you hear about, but they never actually happen in the real world. What the story does reveal, though, is that stories don’t have to be long to be effective. They just need to be as long as they need to be.”
― Kindra Hall, Stories That Stick: How Storytelling Can Captivate Customers, Influence Audiences, and Transform Your Business

“No,” I answered with my own smirk. We had used the same track. The same footage. We only added some small clips, because the story version was slightly longer. All that had changed between the two videos was that we crafted a story and told it. Well-crafted stories don’t need gimmicks to work. That’s the point!”
― Kindra Hall, Stories That Stick: How Storytelling Can Captivate Customers, Influence Audiences, and Transform Your Business

“Any moment that makes you wonder could be a story. Or one that brings a smile to your face. Or one that makes you slightly angry. Or one that you watch unfold with heightened curiosity. Each of these is prime story material happening in the moment.”
― Kindra Hall, Stories That Stick: How Storytelling Can Captivate Customers, Influence Audiences, and Transform Your Business

“That last one is key: your audience. Remember, you’re not telling a story for story’s sake. And I certainly hope you’re not telling a story just to hear your own voice. If you’re telling a story in business, you’re telling it to an audience for a reason. These are always my first two questions any time I sit down with a storytelling client: 1.​Who are you telling this story to? 2.​What do you want them to think, feel, know, or do?”
― Kindra Hall, Stories That Stick: How Storytelling Can Captivate Customers, Influence Audiences, and Transform Your Business

“This is often an awkward conversation. After hearing all the wonderful things a company does, I’ll ask a client, “So why don’t people choose you?” And while no one enjoys talking about this, if you know why your customer says no to what you have, you can tell stories that put their concerns at ease. If you know they think your product is too expensive, you know to look for stories that illustrate how your product saves them money in the long run. If you know they’re resistant to change, you know to look for a story that illustrates the pain of not switching to your solution.”
― Kindra Hall, Stories That Stick: How Storytelling Can Captivate Customers, Influence Audiences, and Transform Your Business

“Even if your stories are small, you have them, and they are worth telling.”
― Kindra Hall, Stories That Stick: How Storytelling Can Captivate Customers, Influence Audiences, and Transform Your Business

“That is the essence of a value story—to illustrate value in a way nothing else can. No matter how big or small your business, if you want more sales and better marketing, start with your value stories. And if you’re suddenly planning a Mother’s Day photo session with your mom or grandmother, you’ll have to get in line behind me.”
― Kindra Hall, Stories That Stick: How Storytelling Can Captivate Customers, Influence Audiences, and Transform Your Business

“Having an identifiable character is a critical point of distinction between a strong story and a weak one. The greatest mistake of marketing is to put what you offer at the center of everything instead of the person you offer it to.”
― Kindra Hall, Stories That Stick: How Storytelling Can Captivate Customers, Influence Audiences, and Transform Your Business

“Remember Mary Poppins? The nanny all other nannies could never measure up to? When the children refused to take their medicine, she paired the healing concoction with a spoonful of sugar. Just as dog parents hide their puppy pills in peanut butter or, as my mom was prone to do, crush up Tylenol tablets and mix them in with applesauce (a food I still regard with a hint of suspicion), so you should wrap your data/logic/points/information in a story.”
― Kindra Hall, Stories That Stick: How Storytelling Can Captivate Customers, Influence Audiences, and Transform Your Business

“A person with a problem. A person who needs you to solve that problem. A person who needs a story to captivate them, assure them your solution is the right one, and turn them into a believer. That”
― Kindra Hall, Stories That Stick: How Storytelling Can Captivate Customers, Influence Audiences, and Transform Your Business

“it’s about quality of life.”6 People don’t buy the thing. They buy what the thing will do for them. In order for them to do that, you have to tell them a story. That story is a value story.”
― Kindra Hall, Stories That Stick: How Storytelling Can Captivate Customers, Influence Audiences, and Transform Your Business

“When it comes to creating persuasive messages, Kahneman said, “The general principle is that anything you can do to reduce cognitive strain will help.”3 While your message may be true, if it isn’t easy enough for your audience to believe it and accept it as truth with System 1, they will call in System 2. And when System 2 is involved, the likelihood of cognitive strain, followed by frustration and agitation, greatly increases. Lists are bait for System 2. Bullet points are bait for System 2. Price comparisons are bait for System 2. Features are bait for System 2. Benefits are bait for System 2. Of course, in the case of the gelato shop, it wasn’t a matter of value story versus no value story. But, whether you’re in the business of sweet treats, used cars, luxury real estate, or medical sales, when it comes to communicating the value of what you offer, you have a choice. Logic or common sense. Strain or ease. Information or story.”
― Kindra Hall, Stories That Stick: How Storytelling Can Captivate Customers, Influence Audiences, and Transform Your Business

“Simply put, System 1 is characterized by cognitive ease while System 2 involves cognitive strain. Read that statement again. Cognitive ease versus cognitive strain. If, such as in the case of Workiva, the value of what you have to offer is relatively obvious, if you believe (which I’m sure you do) that your product or service will make a positive difference in the lives of your customers and the decision should be easy, then why would you ever want to engage System 2 and cause cognitive strain?!”
― Kindra Hall, Stories That Stick: How Storytelling Can Captivate Customers, Influence Audiences, and Transform Your Business

“This is the first gap in business: the value gap. The gap between the problem and the value of the solution. The gap between the product and the value to the customer. The most important gap any business needs to bridge is the gap between what they offer and the people who, whether they know it or not, need it. To capture the attention of buyers, to convince them that, yes, this is the solution, and eventually to transform them into repeat users, customers, buyers, believers. When it comes to sales and marketing, the value story is king. And the value of a value story starts in psychology and spans the full spectrum of why we say yes.”
― Kindra Hall, Stories That Stick: How Storytelling Can Captivate Customers, Influence Audiences, and Transform Your Business

“The normal is where you include the components. The normal is where you give your audience a reason to care. The normal is the part most people leave out, which is why their stories don’t stick.”
― Kindra Hall, Stories That Stick: How Storytelling Can Captivate Customers, Influence Audiences, and Transform Your Business

“After all, we’re not in third grade anymore. From now on, let’s try thinking of them as normal, explosion, and new normal.”
― Kindra Hall, Stories That Stick: How Storytelling Can Captivate Customers, Influence Audiences, and Transform Your Business

“The strongest, stickiest stories are those that master this final component. Using specific details in a story is a way to illustrate how well the teller knows the audience. If, for example, you’re telling a story to a 1980s audience, a detail could be a boombox. If you’re telling a story to an audience made up of a lot of parents, a detail could be wrestling a stroller into the trunk of a car. Each use of a detail signals to the audience how deeply the teller understands them and builds a strong connection between the audience and the teller and the message.”
― Kindra Hall, Stories That Stick: How Storytelling Can Captivate Customers, Influence Audiences, and Transform Your Business

“Often, where messages that are intended to be stories go wrong is they stay too vague, too high level, too broad, too general. For a story to be compelling, it should include a specific moment in time or physical space. This component, along with the fourth component, which we’ll discuss next, aids in what I call the co-creative process. Where the listeners actively engage in creating a version of the story in their own minds, and in doing so, the story sticks longer.”
― Kindra Hall, Stories That Stick: How Storytelling Can Captivate Customers, Influence Audiences, and Transform Your Business

“Additionally, and for clarification, emotion does not refer to what the story receiver experiences, but rather the emotion felt by the characters or inherent in the circumstances of the story. It is through that emotion that the story receiver experiences empathy with the story. No emotion means no empathy; no empathy means reduced impact of the message.”
― Kindra Hall, Stories That Stick: How Storytelling Can Captivate Customers, Influence Audiences, and Transform Your Business

“be clear, a character is not a company name. It is not a value someone is committed to. It is not even a large mass of people or even a small group of people. A story needs a single or several single, separate characters we can identify with and connect to.”
― Kindra Hall, Stories That Stick: How Storytelling Can Captivate Customers, Influence Audiences, and Transform Your Business

“The components we tested were the ones I’d been inserting into wannabe-story messages for decades: •​Identifiable characters •​Authentic emotion •​A significant moment •​Specific details”
― Kindra Hall, Stories That Stick: How Storytelling Can Captivate Customers, Influence Audiences, and Transform Your Business

“was. The general consensus then was that more information meant better decision making. The secret to making business work was to give consumers or team members or people more options and more information about those options.”
― Kindra Hall, Stories That Stick: How Storytelling Can Captivate Customers, Influence Audiences, and Transform Your Business

“The power of storytelling is exactly this: to bridge the gaps where everything else has crumbled. —PAULO COELHO”
― Kindra Hall, Stories That Stick: How Storytelling Can Captivate Customers, Influence Audiences, and Transform Your Business

“Just one factor alone wasn’t enough to get those results: you needed both attention and trust. What Zak had shown in the lab was the neurological basis for what storytellers have known for ages: stories focus your attention and forge bonds, based in trust, between people. In essence, Zak’s research showed how story placed people at the intersection of captivation and influence.”
― Kindra Hall, Stories That Stick: How Storytelling Can Captivate Customers, Influence Audiences, and Transform Your Business

“Story is the language of the brain. —LISA CRON, STORY GENIUS”
― Kindra Hall, Stories That Stick: How Storytelling Can Captivate Customers, Influence Audiences, and Transform Your Business

“once worked with a transit company whose sole purpose was moving things from here to there, but they understood their work as being about helping customers keep their promises. Noble. I’ve also worked with title companies who, on the surface, may appear to be the soulless i-dotters and t-crossers of the mortgage and home-buying process. But as they understood it, their work is what makes the American dream possible and allows people to confidently call a home their own. Noble. In business, there is always more than meets the eye, something bigger at play. Telling the story of that something can transform business entirely.”
― Kindra Hall, Stories That Stick: How Storytelling Can Captivate Customers, Influence Audiences, and Transform Your Business

“The Eight & Bob story did more than just convert; it turned Michael and me into converts. We were transformed by the story. We couldn’t wait to tell it. To share it. We became like the sales clerk who had been just bursting to tell us the story. The desire to share it was as urgent and contagious as a cough and lasted much longer.”
― Kindra Hall, Stories That Stick: How Storytelling Can Captivate Customers, Influence Audiences, and Transform Your Business

“This ease of attention is one of the great strengths of storytelling and is the result of a unique leverage point no other form of information exchange has: the storytelling process is a co-creative one. As the teller tells the story, the listener is taking the words and adding their own images and emotions to them.”
― Kindra Hall, Stories That Stick: How Storytelling Can Captivate Customers, Influence Audiences, and Transform Your Business