There's been so much written about storytelling but so little focused on how we know we are telling the right stories. The goal of B2B storytelling isn't just to engage and entertain - it's to help customers buy 1/

Often B2B buyers have never purchased a solution like ours before. They first have to make sense of their options and decide what criteria they should use to build a short list. This is very very hard to do 2/

There are endless comparison sites but they don't categorize solutions for particular types of customers beyond overall market "leaders" or "challengers". Product information is unlimited. Market insight is scarce. No wonder 4/10 purchase processes end in "no decision" 3/

Most storytelling exercises ignore this. The story of "a customer has a problem..." doesn't map a market. There isn't a single "villain" for B2B buyers - these stories don't help customers categorize different approaches to solving the problem so they can make choices. 4/

We, as vendors, are perfectly qualified to do this. Every successful company I've worked with has a very distinct point of view on how their best fit customers should evaluate solutions. But we often avoid talking about it because we don't want to mention "competitors" 5/

But customers aren't interested in hearing you bash your competitors either. They want a deeper understanding of how your approach to the problem differs from other approaches, and what types of customers are the best fit for each 6/

We can help customers make purchase decisions by telling a compelling story about our point of view on how different types of customers should approach solving a particular problem. That might not be how you write a movie script - but that's how you craft a story that sells /end