Book review: WHOEVER TELLS THE BEST STORY WINS

How to use your own stories to communicate with power and impact

by Annette Simmons

Genres:

Sales
Communications Skills
Storytelling

Review posted on:

26.11.2016

The number of pages:

226 pages

Book rating:

3/5

Year the book was published:

First edition published 2007

Who should read this book:

People in Sales, Marketers, Start-up founders, Coaches

Why did I pick up this book and what did I expect to get out of it:

I found that storytelling is a powerful tool when trying to get your point across. Be it persuasion or just presenting something new to your target audience. The best way to do this is if you somehow know how to share your personal experiences in such a way that your audience finds them authentic and connectable with their own beliefs. That’s why when I found Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins by Annette Simmons I wanted to see what she has to share about storytelling and I hope to see some real-life examples of how she uses storytelling in her business and everyday life.

My thoughts about the book:

If you are interested in telling your own story, what you have experienced, and what you have learned in your life then Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins is the book for you. It does not have that many stories and most of them are personal stories of the author as an example of how to tell your own story based on the situation you are trying to explain. I found the book interesting, as the author provides examples of how you can come up with and share your stories for different situations. Annette Simmons through the book always guides you with steps about when to use which story, what to be careful about when preparing the story, and how to get feedback.

The main point of this book is that when trying to get the attention of your audience you need to open up to them and let them get to know you in the shortest time possible. All you need to do is tell them your story. The story of who you are, where you come from, why you are here, and what you want to accomplish. The tricky part is to find out what kind of values your listeners have, or what they have experienced that you could use to build trust. You do that by asking questions and listening. Every great storyteller loves to listen to the stories of others and collect them. So listen to your audience, get to know them, find that common factor that can create a bond, and build on it. The author does a good job at explaining how to do this.

If you picked up this book please let me know what you think about it in the comment section.

My notes from the book:

When you stimulate human emotions with a story, you point those emotions in a certain direction.
Stories become society’s memories that pull the attention of large groups of people to certain feelings and frames that filter perception of current events.
Attention is a prerequisite to influence because attention frames interpretation. When you control attention you control conclusions.
When you frame an issue you predetermine the conclusion people draw from available data by focusing their attention on the data inside your frame.
Story is how humans interpret things as good or bad, important or irrelevant, safe or dangerous, and “who is one of us” or “one of them”.
Humans experience this world from eyes and ears set in a body that can only be in one place at a time. The collective past, present, and imagined future times and places represent a subjective point of view that frames how a person feels about you, your idea, or your organization. Storytelling transports people to different points of view so they can reinterpret or reframe what your “facts” mean to them.
A story is a reimagined experience narrated with enough detail and feeling to cause your listeners’ imagination to experience it as real.
Nothing is more important than the stories you tell yourself and others about your work and your personal and community life.
When telling a story with the intent to influence get personal. People need to know who you are before they can trust you.
When someone assumes you are there to sell an idea that will cost them money, time, or resources, it immediately discredits your “facts” as biased. Tell this person what you get out of it besides money. Or if it is just about money for you, own it.
With stories, imagination is engaged because the experience is still ambiguous in the way real life is ambiguous. Stories don’t squeeze out interpretation they invite listeners to participate in the “what does this mean?” question. Stories give people the freedom to come to their own conclusions.
With stories, imagination is engaged because the experience is still ambiguous in the way real life is ambiguous. Stories don’t squeeze out interpretation they invite listeners to participate in the “what does this mean?” question. Stories give people the freedom to come to their own conclusions.
You may desperately want people to come to the “right” conclusions, but trying to control their conclusions pushes people away.
Trust is one of the first things to disappear when all decisions are forced to make objective, rational sense.
Stories live in the messy ambiguity of real life. If you clean them up too much you kill them.
Only by finding and telling stories that feel personally significant to you can you expect to elicit the level of personal engagement that wins hearts and minds.
Sharing personal experiences earns you trust and exerts influence. Stories of personal experience can be about A time you shined, a time you blew it, a mentor, a book, a movie, or current events.
Telling a story that discloses a mistake can increase trust twice as fast as polishing the story to give it a professional finish. Trust often fails because neither side wants to go first. But the very fact that you are sharing a personal failure shows them that you trust them enough to go first. This is how you get the ball rolling and people are more likely to trust you back.
The most important story you will ever tell is Who are you? Everything you have been, done, haven’t done, dreamed of, will do, will be, and won’t be… Your ability to influence people is directly related to what those people know or believe about who you are.
We don’t want more information. We crave personal experiences that build up our faith and if that is not possible we want true stories that feel like personal experiences.
If an offer feels exploitative people prefer to take nothing and will even pay their own money to punish a free rider.
When talking about the deal with your customers they do not relax and listen to what is in it for them until they are satisfied they know what’s in it for you.
Big mistakes make fabulous stories as long as you aren’t talking about unfinished issues.
A teaching story transports your listener into an experience that lets him or her feel, touch, hear, see, taste and smell excellent performance.
Tell three stories of past, present, and future consequences for missing the mark.
A good vision story makes otherwise ambiguous premises for future payoffs come alive with carefully crafted sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and feelings that eclipse the work we do today for tomorrow’s payoff. Overwhelming obstacles shrink to bearable frustrations that are worth the effort.
Stories based on negative emotions like fear fuel stress, by feeding the perception of danger, scarcity and us/them thinking. Fear literally narrows vision and limits creativity. It narrows your peripheral vision to a tiny percentage of the available input and toggles your options between two options: Fight or flight. Fear makes you stupid. it compartmentalized every IQ point you have into tiny loops of worst-case scenarios.
It is important to remember that a good vision story also validates the difficulties of achieving your vision. Vision stories that ignore real pain, sacrifice, and frustration can burn out your optimists and fail to motivate the “realists” in your group.
Regardless of what conclusion a story reinforces, it all begins with powerful sensory memories that activate strong good or bad associations, so you can direct these emotions toward new associations. When the new associations are stimulating enough to be remembered or retold, every “re-experiencing” of the new association further anchors the patterns and increase the probability that future events will trigger your new patterns of association.
Once a story stimulates a physical sensation in your listener’s body and is associated with highly familiar or strongly emotional experiences, it has sticking power. Be sure to implement triggers in the story, so your audience “feels” at least a pinch, papercut, bump, wind blowing, smell fresh cut grass, heat,…
Truly influential storytelling comes from the ability to step in and out of different points of view in time. Develop the ability to jump through time and space.