Drive Adoption and Buy-In Using Storytelling by Megan Himan
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Megan Himan discusses using storytelling to drive adoption and buy-in. She notes that stories should have a purpose, use real people to connect authentically with what people care about. When starting with storytelling, understand the story you want to tell and collect real people's pain points. Tell the story at the right time, frame it for your audience and desired outcome, and use details to evoke emotion by bringing the "why" to life with real people and descriptive pain points. Avoid pitfalls when storytelling.
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Drive Adoption and Buy-In Using Storytelling by Megan Himan
- 1. Megan Himan Founder & Principal, BrightStep Partners @meganhiman Drive Adoption and Buy-In Using Storytelling
- 2. Forward-Looking Statements Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: This presentation may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. If any such uncertainties materialize or if any of the assumptions proves incorrect, the results of salesforce.com, inc. could differ materially from the results expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements we make. All statements other than statements of historical fact could be deemed forward-looking, including any projections of product or service availability, subscriber growth, earnings, revenues, or other financial items and any statements regarding strategies or plans of management for future operations, statements of belief, any statements concerning new, planned, or upgraded services or technology developments and customer contracts or use of our services. The risks and uncertainties referred to above include – but are not limited to – risks associated with developing and delivering new functionality for our service, new products and services, our new business model, our past operating losses, possible fluctuations in our operating results and rate of growth, interruptions or delays in our Web hosting, breach of our security measures, the outcome of any litigation, risks associated with completed and any possible mergers and acquisitions, the immature market in which we operate, our relatively limited operating history, our ability to expand, retain, and motivate our employees and manage our growth, new releases of our service and successful customer deployment, our limited history reselling non-salesforce.com products, and utilization and selling to larger enterprise customers. Further information on potential factors that could affect the financial results of salesforce.com, inc. is included in our annual report on Form 10-K for the most recent fiscal year and in our quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the most recent fiscal quarter. These documents and others containing important disclosures are available on the SEC Filings section of the Investor Information section of our Web site. Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other presentations, press releases or public statements are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase our services should make the purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available. Salesforce.com, inc. assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements.
- 3. Megan Himan @meganhiman Founder & Principal, BrightStep Partners
- 4. Emails into the Abyss of Doom
- 5. My Meeting with the Big Wig
- 6. Data is Stagnant. Use Stories to Move People.
- 7. Use Stories with… Your Boss Your End Users Your Customers Your Kid’s Principal! story gets you there faster Tami Lau CRM Developer
- 8. What is a Story? Data Story
- 9. Why Do We Need Stories?
- 10. Stories (for business) Have a Purpose Use Real People (Authentic) Connect with What People Care About 1 2 3
- 11. So How do I Start with Storytelling?
- 12. Step 1 Understand the Story You Want to Tell
- 13. Step 2 Collect Real People’s Pain Points
- 15. How (and When) do I Tell the Story?
- 16. Timing is Everything Live Not Rushed Strategic in their Use
- 17. Frame it Up Know who you are talking to Have a desired outcome Start with “I’m going to tell you a Story”
- 18. Use Details to Evoke Emotion Bring on the big “Why” Real People Descriptive Pain Points
- 19. Avoid the Storytelling Pitfalls
- 20. Be Heard. Use Stories to Move People.
Editor's Notes
- Hello everybody! First day of Dreamforce. Whoot Whoot! This is Drive Adoption and Buy-In Using Storytelling. And before I get started I have to tell you
- Please don’t buy ANYTHING based on what I’m telling you here. Also known as you should always base your purchasing decisions on what is currently available.
- Alright awesome admins! Day One of Dreamforce! Now you’ve just sat through six hours of shiny demos (unless you’ve been waiting in line your badge) so it’s time to get real. I was working with a group of colleagues on a project for about three months. We were feeling really confident that all was going well, and two days before launch, the colleague Julie who was going to manage the go-live group unexpectedly announced she was going on long-term leave. Now this pretty much threw the rest of us into a panic. Now I don’t know about you, but one of the reasons I love being an admin is that I’m a problem-solver. And so the day after this happened, I began furiously writing emails to the director Luis about what I thought we should do next.
- I sent off one email with really detailed next steps (making motion of tossing the pebble). And then a few hours later, another. And the next day, and even more well-crafted plan, with charts (toss another pebble). And I was getting nothing back. Zilch. Have you ever produced what you thought was some great work, and have it go into a black hole of doom? An abyss from which nothing emerges?
- So Finally, I got Luis to commit to a meeting with me. I knew this was my moment to make something change. I had to do something different than my usual emails and spreadsheets. And I knew I wanted Luis to do two things: 1) own up to his role in this situation and 2) start communicating with me and the the team. There was distrust and panic spreading and I knew the only way we were going to get through this was if he started giving us more info. We sat down, and we talked through the situation a bit. And then we got toward the end of the conversation and I said, “Luis, I want to tell you a story.” And I told him about how earlier this summer I and my team accidentally erased 30,000 contacts from a client’s Salesforce database. Gone. Then I told him how our team quickly overcommunicated with the client, and figured out what had happened, what we were going to do to fix it, and how we were going to prevent this from happening again to them, or to someone else. At this point Luis’s body language changed and I could see him leaning toward me, and no part of his body was moving. And I could tell that I finally had his attention. There was a palpable change in the way that he was hearing me, in a way that my emails hadn’t gotten through before.
- The very next day, our team got a series of emails from Luis, about both what had happened and next steps. And a week later, Luis called me out in front of a group of colleagues, saying that I had “Held him accountable with Kindness” I saw the power of story to move people in a way that nothing else could. Story succeeded where my emails and charts had fallen into the abyss. Today I am going to talk to you about how you can use story to succeed in your organizations. Stories have the ability to communicate with people in a way that data alone can not.
- In the same way that you can go over there and learn technical skills, you can *learn* how to use story effectively with your boss, your end users, your customers, and even your kid’s principal. I’m going to talk about what is and what isn’t a story, and how to go about collecting stories for business. And then we’ll get really tactical and talk about the how and when to tell stories in your organizations.
- So what is a story anyhow? For example – telling end users during a training “It’s really important to log your activities so that everyone else can know what’s happening” is really different than saying this: “Last week Colleen walked into the big event with our major partners, and ran into Jim – who you know is our most important contact for making our goals this year. Jim started talking to her about a project some of your team members were collaborating on with him, and it was quickly clear that she didn’t know anything about it. Jim felt rebuffed and Colleen felt really embarrassed, and it was a real blow to our relationship. We’ve made a decision to start logging our activities so that everyone stays in the loop to avoid this situation in the future.” The difference between giving someone information and telling them a story is like the difference between brocollli and ice cream. We all need brocolli. Brocolli is good and important. But if you’re ever had vegan roommates – you know that you can only digest so much brocolli. At some point, you literally can not digest any more. And in the same way, if you showed up to every staff meeting with a bucket of ice cream, it would get old. But if you use stories effectively, they will get your teammates lining up in a row in a way that data alone can not. Stories help people understand the big why in a way they can taste.
- You might be saying that’s all good, but in my work, I need data. Lots of data. Afterall, I’m a database manager. Data’s kind of like my job. Here’s the thing, when we get back home from this amazing place, where we can nerd out over there in the automation studio, and then we go back to our jobs and talk to our bosses and end users, this is literally what they hear. We need stories because the people we work with see our data as a broccoli salad of doom.
- There are three key components that really define what makes a successful story for us as admins. If we want our end users to line up for the ice cream truck, we gotta know where we’re going, and what we’re trying to accomplish. Our stories must have a purpose. The clearer you are about what you want the outcome to be, the more effective you’ll be at both choosing and telling your story. Second, no one wants to hear fairy tales in a business meeting. The only way you can really be heard, and influence people at work is to use stories with real people. And the more you talk about things that happened to you personally, the more effective those stories will be. This doesn’t mean you need to share all your private gory details about your vegan roommates, but you do need to be authentic, and talk about things you’ve observed. Third, a story that doesn’t connect with what the listener cares about is like telling an entertaining story around the campfire. Your audience might be engaged temporarily, but their behavior won’t change. Ultimately stories for business will move people because they are rooted in a place of shared connection.
- So how do I get started???
- So, before we can even begin to collect a story we need to understand the story we want to tell. This relates to knowing the purpose of our story. So how many of you here can think of something, right now, that you have been dying to change, for months in your organization. Now visualize the person you need to move to make that happen – maybe it’s your boss, maybe its your colleagues. Maybe you want your boss to stop scheduling you for 8:00 am meetings. Or maybe you just want your seven-year-old to start wearing underwear to school. Step 1 – know where you’re going with your story.
- The second step of story-telling is collecting the pain points from our end users or our leaders. This is a really important step – because these details will form the basis of the story we’re going to tell. It’s really different to say to your boss “Suzanne is spending a lot of time entering data after events” rather than sitting down by Suzanne, watching and feeling her pain, and saying “Suzanne had to do 14 clicks to enter one new contact after the event, and she spent three hours processing the event list every week” A great way to collect these pain points is to sit by someone’s desk, or do a virtual screenshare with someone when you get an unusual request or see a pattern emerging. You’ll get juicy details, and the some of the root causes of what’s happening may surprise you.
- Step 3 - Don’t Answer the Question. Yes, I really just said don’t answer the question. Our tendency as problem-solvers is to answer questions and solve things. This is really about stopping, and listening first. An example that happened recently is that Kris joined our client’s team as a new director, right after we had done a big project setting up a ton of security around their use of the service cloud – basically so that the sales team couldn’t see sensitive cases coming in. Now they’d spent a bit of money on this work, and the service team seemed pretty happy with the security as well as the new case automation we’d setup. Shortly after she started Kris asked her Salesforce admin Kerry to do a detailed analysis of three different colleague organizations and what tools they were using to track cases. Here’s the thing. A few short years ago, in Kerry’s role, I would have emailed Kris that information off in a detailed excel spreadsheet. But that would have been the *worst* thing for Kerry to do. Why? Because What Kris was really saying, is “I don’t’ have confidence yet in the solutions we have in place. Help me understand this tool and how we got here.” Giving her detailed spreadsheets would have actually been distracting because it would have sent Kris down some rabbitholes. What Kerry wanted and needed from Kris was real emotional engagement around this tool. Not answering the question when it comes to storytelling is about listening first, and giving our bosses and our end users storys they can understand that connect with their fears and what they care about.
- We’ve understood the story we want to tell, we’ve collected juicy pain points from our end users, and we’ve connected to what people care about. What’s next?
- A great blog post is a beautiful thing, but if we want to move people, we must tell our stories live. So that means in person whenever possible, or virtually if not. It might go without saying, but pick a time that’s not rushed. If you know your boss is running out the door in the afternoon, wait and schedule a later time. Finally, think about using stories strategically. If every conversation with your boss or sales manager involves a story, they will lose effectiveness. Ice cream once a month is great – but every day and its too much.
- Next, Know who you are talking to. This really ties into understanding what people care about (don’t answer the question!) and ultimately how you’re going to tell the story, and what details to use. I could tell the same exact story about pulling out my phone in a meeting and using Salesforce1, but the details and emphasis could vary a lot – depending on whether I’m telling the story to my boss or to a group of the sales team. It’s also okay (and good) to be really clear about the desired outcome. It’s kind of like the punchline of your story. “And that’s why you should all download Salesforce1 on your phone…” Finally, it sounds cliché, but we as humans are hard-wired for story. And starting a key part of a conversation with “I’m going to tell you a story about…” can be really effective. Now if you start every conversation that way, it’s not going to work, but for us as dataphiles, if we use that phrase selectively people will pay attention.
- Here’s where a story comes alive. I want to taste that ice cream. I want to feel the excruciating 14-clicks it takes Suzanne to enter data after the event. When we’re competing for the attention of our boss and our end users, what we really want to do is show them why they should care. Using details is how we tap into that emotional connection so that understand the big Why. Ultimately this involves one person’s story – not groups of anonymous people “the sales team” . This is talking about something I’ve experienced personally, or something I’ve observed, like watching Suzanne’s struggles with the database.
- A lot of folks with get started with business storytelling and make the mistake of describing a situation, in great detail – like Universal Containers needed to implement a new HR system and I kicked butt with process builder and built an app. That’s more of a case study then a story. With a story, you need some drama mama. This isn’t made-up drama, but it’s involving real conflict – a before, a moment of tension, and and after. Case studies can still be useful to show you know your stuff, and to offer reassurance about a decision– but if you want to stir up the pot and move people, you need some drama.
- Friends, you *can* try this at home. I have journeyed back from the abyss of doom of excel and email hell, and you can too. I encourage you to go back your own organizations and try telling stories to your boss, your end users, your customers, your kid’s school principal. Stories that have a purpose, are authentic, and connect with what people care about will move people in a way that your data alone can not. Be Awesome. Be Heard. Tell Stories!