I’m honored to share this blog post by Jim Blasingame. I’ve known Jim for almost a decade now. He produces and hosts a radio show called
I became part of that brain trust when I was invited by Jim to talk about risk-taking with the publication of my first book, Right Risk. Since that time, Jim has become a true friend. My brain certainly trusts Jim. So will yours when you read this post about Jim’s new book, The Age of The Customer.
Cogito ergo sum. French philosopher Rene Descartes proposed this idea in 1637, which translates to I think, therefore I am. Certainly the power of abstract thought is what separates humans from other animals.
Anthropologists now believe Homo Sapiens succeeded, unlike other members of the genus Homo, Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon for example, because our brains had a greater capacity for speech and language. Today Descartes might have modified his philosophy to I think and speak, therefore I am.
In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith proposed the written word as one of the three great human inventions. But long before humans were writing we were telling stories. These stories – told, memorized and retold over millennia – became the headwaters of human development. We humans love to tell stories almost as much as we love to listen to them.
Another thing that’s older than writing is the marketplace. Long before Madison Avenue ad copy, merchants were verbalizing the value and benefits of their wares. Surely early business storytelling was the origin of modern selling skills.
In 1965, Intel’s co-founder Gordon Moore made an observation that became Moore’s Law: “Computer processing power doubles every two years.” But in his 1982 watershed book Megatrends, futurist John Naisbitt posed this paradoxical prophecy: The more high tech we create, the more high touch we will want.
So what does all of this mean? It means that in The Age of the Customer – a time of rapidly compounding technology generations–the most successful businesses will consistently deliver high touch to customers with one of our oldest traits – the telling of a story.
Here is Blasingame’s Three C’s of Business Storytelling:
- Connect – Use stories to connect with prospects and convert them into customers.
- Convey – Use stories to convey your expertise, relevance, humanity and values.
- Create – Use stories to create customer memories that compel them to come back.
Storytelling is humanity in words. Since small businesses are the face and voice of humanity in the marketplace, we have a great advantage in the Age Of The Customer. No market sector can execute the Three C’s of Business Storytelling to evoke powerful human feelings more than small businesses.
And regardless of how they’re delivered, stories don’t have to be long. I just told you five different ones in the first half of this article. Write this on a rock: The Holy Grail of storytelling is when someone else tells your business’s story to others. For a short video from Jim on this topic, click here.
Jim Blasingame is one of the world’s foremost experts on small business and entrepreneurship, and was ranked as the #1 small business expert in the world by Google.
He is the creator and award-winning host of The Small Business Advocate Show, the world’s only weekday radio talk show dedicated to small business, nationally syndicated since 1997.
He is also a syndicated columnist and author of two books, Small Business is Like a Bunch of Bananas and Three Minutes to Success.
His third book, The Age of the Customer, will be released on January 27, 2014.
