Using Storytelling in Business Presentations

Impact the Audience With Storytelling

Successfully presenting your thoughts and ideas, and effectively impacting others with your message, can be a gateway to better relationships, more productivity and an enhanced bottom line.  Delivering a successful presentation requires that you truly connect with your the audience, and storytelling can quickly establish that connection.

Most presentations promote a concept, or an idea you wish to convey.  Your hope is to persuade the audience to a certain manner of thinking, and the use of an appropriate story, if practiced and perfected, can easily drive your point home.  Storytelling is entertaining, informative and perhaps the best way to captivate your audience, provided the listener can directly relate to the story.  There are many important considerations, the first imperative is to know your audience, the second to narrate the story in such a way that they are able to quickly identify with it.

Appropriate Use of Stories

Consider storytelling as a prop, and relate your story to the specific needs of the audience, so the story you tell will aid the listener in following the subject matter.  Get a feel for the company they work for, or the group they associate with, as well as the needs they have or challenges they may face.  Develop an understanding of what may motivate them, be it to make a dramatic change or simply improve upon an already productive path.

Storytelling has a great impact!  For instance, remember the last time you couldn’t lay down a good book, reading late into the night?  Or how you felt, on the edge of your seat, while listening to the inspirational message of an ‘against all odds’ success story?   A story well told has the power to change opinion, and not just one opinion, but the opinion of the masses.

Connecting With Your Audience

Finally, use sincere language in your storytelling and your listeners will respond. The actual words you use are very important, so, choose them carefully. Practice your presentation multiple times, in private or with family and friends, before giving it to an audience.  If you feel disconnected at all with your topic, your audience is sure to feel disconnected as well.  Effective stories in a presentation will make your content sticky, and will be appreciated and remembered, long after the presentation is over.   And you, as the speaker, will be gratified and very likely achieve your desired outcome!