Challenge

In one of my jobs, I was tasked to revitalize a non-performing safety services business unit in the Oil  & Gas industry. There were 2 challenges. The first challenge was that competitors are doing very well  but we are not. The second was that the management refused to compromise on price. That means  most of our competition would be offering lower prices than us.

Selection

I always love a good story. So do peoples in my industry. Whenever there was a gathering, there will  be lots of stories to be told. We love stories. Hence, I adopted storytelling to revitalize the business  unit. But I needed an impactful story that will convince my clients to pay us more.

Application

The industry is shaped by many accidents and disaster, namely Piper Alpha, “Charlie’s story”,  Deepwater Horizon and many others. The story of Charlie is well known and impactful to many. It tells  of the transformation of a man who does not believe in workplace safety. He almost lost his life in an  accident. This accident transformed him into a firm believer of safety. This was just the perfect story  to tell.

But no. I did not use it. Why? (I will reveal later.)

Instead, I choose to paint a picture of a hardworking man called “John” in my presentation. John  worked in a hazardous environment. He would have died many times but he didn’t. He was in safe  hands with a certain company at site. I went on to explain how our services and equipment keep  people safe at worksites and why we do better than others.

John was able to go home safely. His manager was glad John could have a good job which pays well  and be able to be home safely. More importantly, his manager was satisfied with productivity a safe  work culture brings about. This is when I pulled up statistics and calculations of how much cost-savings  and time savings we bring. I went on to show how much extra revenue the time save could bring to  my clients.

Then I made the comparison of how much we charge versus how much extra margin and revenue they  would be getting. And I made the invitation of asking them to share how much of the cost savings and  productivity they could achieve. From there, we began our proposal pitch.

Insight & Approach

This story telling way of presentation is a departure from the usual corporate presentations our  competition and we used to do. The old style was more technical based and open up to a lot of  questions, and sometimes really tough questions. It begins with introduction of what we do and what  we provide, followed by our differentiation and the dreaded Q&A. It was aimed at pleasing the  technical experts and getting them to please the decision makers who were often more interested in  dollars and cents. Our sales team often ended up in awkward situation where they are left stumbled  by the more senior technical experts. This isn’t a good situation to be in.

My style of storytelling presentation targeted the decision makers right from beginning. It was aimed  at the management levels that could decide the level of spending we are charging our clients. In the  past, we were trying to win over people who can only decide to a $100 budget to engage a $500  service. With this new presentation style, we are winning over people with decision power over a  US$10,000 budget to engage a $500 service.

After the first round of meetings with our existing clients, we were able to increase our revenue by  300%. This was just the existing clientele that we have. We had further successes with new clients. In  4 years, we grew by 5 times the annual revenue when I took over.

The technical experts were glad that we obtained the buy-in from the higher management first. They  were not comfortable in explaining the dollars and cents to their bosses. We solve that issue for them.  The management were glad that they have a service provider that understands them well, in dollars  and cents.

This was why I did not opt for Charlie’s story. I was not trying to convince the same group of people  as my competitors did – the technical experts. We had been doing that and failed. We targeted a new  group – the management.

Every manager wants to be John’s manager. Storytelling is about projecting the audience into the story  and having them visualize their desired outcome. We projected the management’s desire in the story  and have them visualized the outcome together with us.

This tool is powerful when used correctly. Through this tool, we were always able to size up the best  deal and proposal for our clients as they shared about their desired outcome, struggles and realistic  situation.

