Selling the Story.

David Kippen asks a question about sales pitches that lack narratives.

The question is one of presentation - Powerpoint slides and marketing materials are not written to sell, but to provide a focus for the people selling. Consequently, powerpoint slide printouts and slick glossies may jog the memory of a client, but they do very little for someone not in the room for the original pitch. Anyone who has sat through or given a sales pitch knows that passing our printouts causes most people to read the printout rather than listening to you, and in extremely painful situations, all the presenter does is read from the Powerpoint.

David, who happens to be the VP, Brand Communications and Realization for TMP Worldwide, asks the following questions about what happens when the client forgets your pitch and has only the materials and a hazy memory to rely on.

If your client can't connect the dots, maybe he'll call you in for a bit more work.
-But what if he leaves?
-What if implementation of the other four pillars falls to someone who didn't know you before the meeting that day?
-What if that really important caveat about launching one and four together didn't stick?
-More importantly, if the knowledge leaves the room in your head, whose fault is that really?

The solution is to make your marketing pitch a narrative. Tell a story. Tell your story. After all, the whole point of branding is communicating a lifestyle that consumers want to emulate or already see themselves as representing. From Starbucks to Gap to Virgin Atlantic, branding is about telling good stories.

So why would the the marketing reps trying to sell your company's story give you bullet points and expect you to fill in the blanks?

And for the record, I think that selling a story is a postive aspect of marketing. We identify with what we admire, and the job of a marketer is to find what customers and employees and the general public admire about a company and broadcast that message. If there is nothing to admire, well, that serves a purpose too.