Rakesh Wadhwa :

How can storytelling be individualized in B2B?

 

David Aaker:

The B2B first of all they understand that stories are important. Because prospective clients want to hear stories about how you've done something similar in the past. And so to be credible they need to know that. In B2B it's pretty common for people to develop stories and they'll do these case studies that we did this wonderful job back when. At profit we have we have 70 or 80 such case studies. Now the problem in a B2B setting is these case studies tend to be superficial. And they're superficial of for couple of reasons. One is when they're superficial because they're afraid that clients would be embarrassed. If you really expose the problem that they were facing. And also the clients would be fearful that their solution would help their competitors if it became out. They want to keep their solutions secret. So as a result the stories tend to be very bland so they have a lot of them but they're not very nice. Another problem we have in B2B is that. they're not naturally good communicators. They're engineers often and they're really good at planning and strategizing and calling through and executing. They're really good at executing. They're not so good at communicating. So when it comes to telling stories they probably don't have a journalist on the staff a videographer on the staff an editor on the staff and that somebody that could find really great stories and then present them in a compelling way.

Again go to YouTube and look at dollar shave club. Look at UC health look at charity water it look at some people that have really done it well and you'll see these things have so much emotion so much humor. You just want to share them because you know that others will enjoy them and learn from them. And so that's the problem. So how do you get around that problem? And the answer is you raise the bar and have higher standards. So find some signature stories that do hear the wall effect and don't settle for a superficial. And get some professionals to help you create the stories in their presentation.