Storytelling   Challenge  In my position as sales representative of one logistics company I worked with customers  which were sceptical about whether a logistics company could ever meet their speciﬁc  needs in setting up a reliable supply chain for their products. My customers were  Biotechnology and Pharma companies, which created unique treatments from cellular  material from one patient at a time. This medicine could be given to this patient only after  long manufacturing period. The treatments were high price, highly sensitive to any kind of  transport damages and mishandling and not easily replaceable. If such medication would  be damaged during the transport, the consequences for the patient would be crucial,  starting from permanent health damages to death. In such situation also the reputation of  the Biotech companies would suﬀer.  Usually scientists were my contact persons and decision makers within such companies,  who were not familiar in depth with logistics processes. To go even deeper, there was a  low level of trust between the service provider and the customer. So my challenge was to  ﬁnd a common emotional base and create trust with the main decision makers instead of  confusing the scientists with complicated logistics terms and communicating standard  sales pitches. The goal of the meetings was to ﬁnd a common ground for cooperation  with the customer, which would result in the development of a customer centric logistics  solution.

Selection  In order to create an emotional connection and have a trust base with my customers I  often used the technique of storytelling. This technique enables the narrator to transfer  emotions and draw pictures in the mind of the listener. Images and emotions used in this  approach last long beyond the meeting boundaries and lead to an emotional connection  between listener, narrator and also to the company. An additional advantage for this tool  is that no assets are necessary despite a common language with the customer. Especially  when visiting the customer for the ﬁrst time, you don’t want to bring unrest into the  meeting by asking for a whiteboard that is not in the meeting room as this might be  necessary for the visualisation tool.

Application The emotion I wanted to establish during each meeting was that I’m „one of them“. Being  a scientist from training myself, I often used to tell a story of how I had to transport of  analytical samples between the lab I was working and analytical laboratory, which was  our corporation partner.  The samples looked, for those who don’t know, like small volumes of water, stored in 96  tiny vials. For those who knew, they contained several weeks of hard laboratory work and  many emotional ups and downs. I knew, that while the shipment was valuable for me, a  standard courier would not waste additional attention on it. After spending several weeks  on creating the samples, I could not imagine to hand over my “babies” to anyone who  would not handle them the way I would do it. So after spending a lot of energy on ﬁnding  an appropriate transport solution and company, I decided to transport the samples as a  hand carry myself.  At this point the customers already understood that we spoke in a common language and  was thrilled to hear the end of the conclusion. Also for them, the medication they worked  on for several weeks in the lab felt like own children. My last sentences of the story were that after such an experience I decided to switch the  sites and to help scientist to gain trust in the logistics wold, especially by representing the

customers interests in the company I was working. Not every scientist would be able to  leave their working environment for one or several days to transfer the medicine to the  patient, but still wants to have a feeling of control and trust, like he or she would have  done it himself. So this would be my job, to make their needs being transferred into  transport solutions.

Insights and approach From my experience the technique of storytelling provides a possibility to create a long  lasting connection between sceptical customer and the sales representative without the  need of long presentations or usage of empty sales phrases. By staying authentical, I was  able to  establish stable relationships to the decision makers and gain their trust to go the  next steps with me and the company I was representing.  I will use storytelling in my future projects of design thinking and possibly combine it with  the the tool of visualisation, dependent on the project. My main focus in the near future  will be to sharpen my abilities in usage of the tool beyond the information provided by this  course and to gain more theoretical knowledge of how to structure and compose the  story.

