Mario Pedrini’s Reflection

Design Thinking for Innovation - Storytelling

Challenge & Selection    Once upon a time I got a major in engineering, thereupon I was “formatted” to see and  work with numbers, applying math, physics and some other exact sciences, which should  not represent any inconvenience to overcome my day-to-day on my own.  When I started my company, I could be a particularly good engineer dealing with most of  the problems given to me by my clients, and I could test my knowledge as well as the ways  to solve the issue.    As an entrepreneur I had to overcome diverse angles in management, those that I had just  glimpsed during my days as student, and one of the must -terrifying- situations was selling  my services to strangers, specially over the phone performing a cold call, no matter having  a script in front of me.  Generally speaking, when trying to convince potential customers to purchase my services,  the conversation was too technical, and the context lacked feelings.  Often both parties  were heading different destinations, therefore I had to use an extra effort to persuade and  get my goal. When the job had been finished the appreciation was good in terms of time  and quality of delivery.    Application    Hence our proposals fulfilled the requirements, the relation client-contractor was not  totally satisfying because a touch of magic was missing.  Let’s not forget that B2B is done  between people.    At some point and since technology has evolved like greased lightning, -storytelling- arose  as a helping hand when dealing with emotionless operations.  As a touch of magic, the use  of real stories when talking about businesses made the clients turn and pay attention in full  when required during the process of sale.     Insight & Approach    When using storytelling, stress was cut of the situation and emotions were involved  immediately when talking about common past experiences.  It is a must to put some “heart”  to touchless situations and cold things to get going.  After some time of practice, the use of -storytelling- has been developed abroad our sales  department, making both the clients and the sales representatives better related persons,  when our business spins with a human touch.

