I am a strong advocate of using personal stories and experiences to connect and inspire my audience regardless of the formality of my presentation. If you have been following my blog, you would realize so. To date, I have about five entries that I have enthusiastically written, expounding on the importance of using stories to engage, entertain and educate your audience. (See related entries below)

Adding to the archive of such entries is one inspired by Lois Kelly’s Beyond Buzz: The Next Generation Of Word-of-Mouth Marketing. In her book, she explained the nine types of stories that gets people talking. To put simply (in local context), these stories feed the KPO-ness of my fellow Singaporeans.

Imagine your upcoming business presentation peppered with such stories… Not only will you have your audience eating from your hands, you will have them raving about your presentation hours or even days later. That’s the kind of word-of-mouth marketing you can get by telling the right stories.

Coincidentally, Guy Kawasaki gave a fairly effective summary of what these nine types of stories are. Instead of regurgitating what he has said, I will provide you with some recent examples of stories that I have heard that fall under some of these recommended story lines. You be the judge of how effective these stories are.

Personalities and Personal Stories
Personal stories show the real-ness and vulnerability of the speaker; they make us feel that you are one of us. By allowing us into your world, you encourage us (the audience) to open our world to you. And it is through the open-ness, that we connect.

Look at all the great oratorical speeches given by the leaders of our century. There is none without a personal story. My favorite one is a speech by Bill Clinton on 13 November 1993 in Memphis to over 5000 ministers ten months after his inauguration.

The other day I was in California at a town meeting, and a handsome young man stood up and said: “Mr President, my brother and I, we don’t belong to gangs. We don’t have guns. We don’t do drugs. We want to go to school. We want to be professionals. We want to work hard. We want to do well. We want to have families. And we changed our school because the school we were in was so dangerous. So when we stowed up to the new school to register, my brother and I were standing in line and somebody ran into the school and started shooting a gun. My brother was shot down standing right in front of meat the safer school…”

Imagine how emotionally charged Clinton’s audience was after hearing his personal encounter and learning about the senseless violence that plagued America, the land of freedom. It would not have been that effective if he were to brush it off with one statement like “people as young as teens are running around shooting innocents…”

His message of the violence in America was further underscored with more personal stories.

The other day, the Mayor of Baltimore, a dear friend of mine, told me a story of visiting the family of a young man, who had been killed - eighteen years old - on Halloween. He always went out with the little bitty kids so they could trick-or-treat safely. And across the street from where they were walking on Halloween, a fourteen-year-old boy gave a thirteen-year-old boy a gun, and dared him to shoot the eighteen-year-old boy, and he shot him dead…

And in the recent commencement at Harvard, another Bill (Gates) shared one of his biggest memories in Harvard which marked the end of his college days and the start of Microsoft. (Commencement Speech by Bill Gates, 2007)

One of my biggest memories of Harvard came in January 1975, when I made a call from Currier House to a company in Albuquerque that had begun making the world’s first personal computers. I offered to sell them software.

I worried that they would realize I was just a student in a dorm and hang up on me. Instead they said: “We’re not quite ready, come see us in a month,” which was a good thing, because we hadn’t written the software yet. From that moment, I worked day and night on this little extra credit project that marked the end of my college education and the beginning of a remarkable journey with Microsoft.

Note how his story brings him down to the same level as the graduates. They feel connected with him since he used to be one of them. And more importantly such personal stories are memorable and effective as a vehicle to instil words of wisdom. In Bill’s case, the value of Harvard education. And also a medium to lead to a more important point - his regrets.

There are so many more examples of such sort… it will be more fun if you can go explore on your own! Let’s move on.

David vs. Goliath
In the story about David and Goliath, the young Hebrew David took down the Philistine giant Goliath with just a stone and sling. Likewise, in the real world, people love to hear about stories of the underdogs. Their success inspire them as they believe that if the underdogs can make it, so can they. It is with such idealism and fervent belief that such stories appeal to the mass crowd.

Think about all the movies you watch. Aren’t we always rooting for the underdogs? Like the recent movie Transformers, Sam Witwicky was our underdog. He is David in the Bible who unwittingly beats the Decepticons to their game. His win moves us and reminds us that we too can play a major part in this world.

Other stories of victorious underdogs that shook the world include the Greek states who successfully repelled the Persian Empire at the Battle of Salamis, Boston Red Sox’s victory against the favored New York Yankees in 2004, and the fight for freedom by Martin Luther King Junior and Ghandi.

And then in the technological front, we have Google and You-Tube. Both started out as underdogs, too small and insignificant to threaten the tech giants like Microsoft and Yahoo. And yet when Google beat Yahoo and MSN to their game, their success stories were aplenty in the blogsphere. All of a sudden, people began to take interest of the two founders of Google - Sergey Brin and Larry Page. They want to know all their ups and downs… and then there is you tube. When the small company founded by Chad and Steve was bought over by Google for $1.65 billion, they began the next big thing. We read about them in the papers, in the blogs, in the magazines. People started raving about their win. We began to have an interest in their lives and how they became so successful.

Similarly, we - as ordinary speakers - can engage in a similar story line to entice and excite our audience. Share with them your journey as you battle failures after failures. Tell them how you wanted to give up. Relate your extremely discouraging conversation with your parents. And then show them how you went through all odds to achieve your current success. That’s right - the rag to rich stories!

In my business networking workshop, I love to tell them about the success story of a 21 year old girl in the fashion business. She is the David in the Goliath industry of fashion. It’s because of her vulnerability that her story becomes appealing to the audience. Why? Coz’ the audience can relate! The story of how she successfully set up her fashion business within three months and earning an average of $10,000 a month never fail to invoke confidence and conviction in my audience. As one of my participants proudly proclaimed, “If this little girl can do it, I can too!”

So there you go, people love stories about underdogs, especially if they win. Helps if YOU are the underdog as you will find your listeners exceptionally attentive as you share with them how you emerge victorious. Of course, with such powerful stories, don’t forget to share with them your nuggets of wisdom on how they too can succeed.

Seasonal/Event-Related
What’s some of the hottest events happening right now?

Live Earth! A 24-hour, 7-continent concert series taking place on 7/7/07 that bring more than 100 music artists and 2 billion people to trigger a global movement to solve the climate crisis.

Back home in Singapore, we have the Great Singapore Sales and the ades moquitoes infestation.

By peppering your presentation with stories relating to these seasonal or “hot” events, you can ride on their popularity and even create strong interest for your topic.

Let’s take last Saturday for example. I was conducting an introductory public speaking program and three of my participants spoke about global warming. However the presenter who got our attention was incidentally the one who shared with us about the Live Earth event and how wearing green on that day shows that you care for Earth. He wasn’t the best in terms of delivery or confidence but he sure was memorable. He got the audience so engaged that we ended up bombing him with questions about the Live Earth event. Talk about engaging the audience!

On a similar note, you can also share stories that relate to the latest problems that we all face currently, for example the Ades mosquitoes infestation. Telling stories of friends or relatives who get infected with the dengue fever will strike a chord with your audience, and they are so much more effective than meaningless numbers or newspaper cuttings. Simply because they are current and everyone is talking about it anyway. I can bet you ten dollars that your story will be the most talked about during the next coffee break or dinner.

So the next time you plan for a story, make sure you find out what’s the latest event happening around town OR what’s the most talked about issue. Local papers, headline news or just your mother are good resources to find out what they are!

There are of course more story lines that you can incorporate… Read more about them at Guy’s blog.

Seriously… after reading this article, you have NO reason to complain of a story-drought. Things happen, all you need to do is to PAY ATTENTION to them. Starting from today, keep a look out for stories that fit the above three story lines. When you chance upon one, jot them down. And then keep looking for more. In time to come, you will be spoilt for choices on which story to tell in your presentation.

I look forward to hearing your kick-ass presentation!

Cheers,
Eric Feng
Your Public Speaking Coach

Related Entries
Getting Your Audience Engaged And Excited…
6 + 6 = Everything You Need To Know About Public Speaking
Things Happen, Pay Attention
How To Create A Story In Ten Minutes Or Less
The Secrets To Storytelling Success

P.S: Have you read the previous post? Interested to learn seven speaking strategies that can radically improve your public speaking skills? Click link to learn how.

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