The One Vital Skill Every Entrepreneur Needs

March 29, 2013

No, you don’t have to be the next George R. R. Martin. But as an entrepreneur you need to be able to inspire others, and learning how to tell your company’s story is one of the most important things you can do.

 
Earlier this year, Dag Kittlaus, the innovator who co-founded voice-command app Siri and sold it to Apple in 2010, gave a speech to entrepreneurs and tech founders at 1871, a Chicago-based co-working location for digital startups.
Kittlaus covered a variety of common startup issues and shared several lessons from his time with Siri (like, for instance, why you don’t have to be an engineer to build and sell a highly technical software product). But one message in particular stood out to Andrew Follett, founder and CEO of online video production service DemoDuck: “Learn to tell your company’s story.”
As Follett writes on his blog, doing that in a clear, compelling way that inspires your audience to take action can be the difference between success and failure. And he should know.
In 2010, Follett founded DemoDuck to help businesses — from larger brands like Lowes and Trulia, to lesser known companies like eye tracking technology provider CrazyEgg (see below) — create explainer videos that simply, clearly, and compellingly tell their stories.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3f-2WG7ONc
“Video is a very natural medium for storytelling, but you can tell your story through other forms of content, as well,” Follett told OpenView in a recent interview. “The core idea is to deliver your value proposition and allow customers to understand why they should care, and to do all of that in the most engaging, compelling way possible.”

Five Tips for Creating a More Inspiring Story

Follett says founders often find difficult to clearly convey their company’s story because their version is different than the one their customers need or want to hear.
“If you’re a founder, you tend to be pretty close to your business and that can create blind spots,” Follett explains. “The things that matter to you might not matter to your customers, or you might not speak the same language they do.”
To avoid those potential pitfalls, Follett suggests following these five tips for approaching your company’s story:

  1. Figure out what matters to your customers: Survey, interview, and poll existing customers or users (discover 6 Great Survey Tools and Poll Apps for Startups here). Ask them how they view your product or service, and what benefits they see from it. Once you have their viewpoint, you can use that information to frame your story.
  2. Explain the pain: What’s the universal problem that your customers are facing? Follett says you need to understand that first and then explain it in a way that people can relate to.
  3. Introduce your solution with one line: This is your elevator pitch, and Follett says it’s probably the most difficult aspect of great storytelling. It can take a little wordsmithing and editing, but this step is critical to crafting a concise and clear company story.
  4. Tell people how your product works: That doesn’t necessarily mean you have to go into great detail or talk about the technical nature of it, Follett says. Instead, focus on the key features and benefits, and list how your product is going to work for the customer.
  5. Provide a call to action: Follett says it’s critical to make sure people know what to do after they’ve digested your story. Should they call you? Sign up for a free trial? Whatever the next step is, make sure to conclude your story with a compelling call to action.

The truth is that telling a story isn’t easy. If it were, Follett admits that DemoDuck may not exist.
But if you’re able to boil down the essence of your company into a short, compelling story, you’ll knock down one major barrier to new customer acquisition and rapid growth.

Storytelling Isn’t Just for Complex Products, Either

While crisp storytelling can help simplify complex products, Follett says that seemingly simple products can benefit from a great story, as well.

Learn more about how Method turned its small size into a disruptive competitive advantage — and so can you

Ideas for the Underdog Get Disruptive: A Bold Strategy for Taking Down Your Big Competitors


Take Method Products, which was able to disrupt the once bland, stodgy cleaning products industry by finding a new way to tell the story of soap.
“They took products that didn’t seem to need much explaining and creatively found a way to make customers view those products differently,” Follett says. “The company knew that its value proposition was unique and it understood how to convey that story to its consumers. It wasn’t just about saying, ‘you have dirty hands, here’s a great new hand soap.’ It was about saying, ‘we all need cleaning products, but we know that X, Y, and Z matter to you, and we care about them, too.’”
That’s the gist of great storytelling, Follett says. Take a step back, think critically about what makes your company unique or different, and associate those benefits with specific customer needs.
“With a great company story,” Follett explains, “someone should be able to watch a video or digest a piece of content and walk away knowing exactly what your company is all about and why they should care.”
 
Photo by Sunchild57 Photography

Founder & CEO

<strong>Andrew Follett</strong> is the Founder and CEO at <a href="www.demoduck.com">Demo Duck</a>. He loves to travel and currently lives and works in Oak Park, IL.