Everyone loves a good story, but how many of us are good at telling good stories? For the most part, I think we create exciting and stimulating stories about our personal lives. We certainly have a tremendous amount of material to serve as our database. We love to tell stories about our girlfriends, spouses or partners, children, grandchildren, neighbors (good and bad). And we have no problem adding emotional content and passion to our stories.

Stories are a great way to draw others in and influence their behavior, yet many of us hesitate to use the same emotions and passion in our storytelling when pitching ourselves and our businesses. As a result, the stories don’t have the impact that we desire to grab people’s attention and stimulate further conversation.

In a recent article in Fast Company, author Kaihan Krippendorf, talks about a workshop he attended on storytelling where he was told to “use lots of LOTS”.

Our facilitator, Gary Lyons, senior coach at The TAI Group, told us a story and had us dissect what we remembered. Do this, and you will realize your audience is often checked out, comatose, or unable to hear or remember what you are saying. The key to engage them is to use lots of “language of the senses,” or LOTS. When telling a story, share with us what you see, smell, feel, taste, and hear. When you trigger a sense in someone, you bring them into the story with you.

Think about your own story. What type of senses can you bring into your story to engage your audience?

See: How can you open someone’s eyes to “see” your value? What do they experience when they see your product, walk into your store, enter your office? What visual trigger will add to your story?

Smell: Perhaps your product or service can be best described by its scent. How can you add this to your story?

Feel: This is a great one! What does success feel like? How does someone feel when they use your product or service? What is the end result? People love to hear stories where they are transported to a new positive mindset. Take them there with you story. Is there a tactile aspect of your product? Is this something you can talk about?

Taste: “I’m so close to success, I can taste it.” We use the sense of taste figuratively and literally. If your product is edible, describe in great detail what the experience of tasting that product is all about. Yummm.

Hear: Another great sense to include in your story! People are talking about your services. There is a buzz that starts slowly and builds up to a feverish pitch. Colleagues and clients are standing up and cheering for you! YEAH! What do you hear?

Kaihan Krippendorf goes on to say about the workshop,

We close with a “before and after” exercise. One of our members gets up to practice a pitch; he is raising money for an energy tech venture. He starts speaking, but I just can’t follow. When he finishes, I realize I have not heard a word. Gary coaches him–lots of LOTS, story spine, look us in the eye, take us in–and the speaker tries again. Now it is all waterfalls of electricity pouring down the mountain, the opportunity to create something and break through with passion. I heard every word, and so much more.

Improve your ability to tell stories–about the company you are building, the project you are leading, the life you live, and will enroll people more completely and emotionally in your mission.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

Are you being stingy?

…by not letting others know what you have to offer?

…by not speaking up and sharing your opinion or ideas?

Sometimes we are so focused on our “own stuff” and our fears or discomfort talking about ourselves that we forget that what we have to offer helps others. That’s right! Think about it. What you have to offer, whether it’s a product, a service, an innovative idea or new approach to a problem or simply your opinion, helps other people and improves their lives and/or careers in an important way.

Re-framing this as an offer to help is a terrific way for you to move beyond your fear and discomfort and focus on what the other person needs. It gets you beyond the “stinginess” factor.

How would your next job interview go if you used this mindset, understood what you had to offer and focused on how it could help the company?

How would your next networking event go if you used this mindset when meeting new people, finding out what they need and offering your assistance?

How would your next senior management or department meeting go if you used this mindset and offered your ideas and opinion?

For the next few weeks, I am offering you the opportunity to write and tell me specifically ONE way you help your company or clients (what value you offer), and I will feature your “commercial” in a new section of my blog/newsletter.

Please include your name, position, company (company website or personal website) and email so that other women can contact you.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

A prospective client called me last week about my coaching services. She had read an article of mine about how to prepare for an interview and was seeking help to better position herself for employment. We talked for a couple of minutes and I asked her what she does. It’s a simple question, right? We are asked this question all the time, but when I posed the question to her she could not answer it. There was silence on the other end of the phone.

“See”, she said. “This is my problem.” I can’t talk about myself let alone describe what I do. Turns out she is a financial analyst and had dropped out for 18 months to have a child and seems to have lost her way.

Of course, I hear this from men and women who are employed as well. We all get so tied up in our daily lives and everyday tasks that it is easy to lose touch with who we are and what is special and unique about us. We lose touch with who we are. I mean who we REALLY are.

Why do we lose touch? Well, we get distracted by the clutter in our lives. We are bombarded daily by the media with new promotions, new opportunities, new gadgets and technology, new theories. It’s easy to get distracted from the essence of who we are unless we are willing to take the time for introspection and meditation.

What’s missing is the connection with our core essence. What makes each of us unique?

I do many workshops to help professionals connect with their value and what I have discovered is that many of us are so disconnected that we lose our way. We need a foundation. We need to re-establish this connection with our value and establish a strong belief in ourselves and our capabilities and strengths. I’m not talking about the normal hype or the mundane adjectives we often use to describe ourselves, but the connection with our true authentic selves.

Do yourself a favor and take some time to re-establish this connection. What are your strengths and what do you contribute to your organization, your family, your community? How would others describe you? Dig deep until you truly understand your value, not what you think others expect of you or what you think you should be. If you dig deep enough you will find your core essence.

It is this core essence that provides the foundation for your confidence and well-being. It is this foundation that will free you to talk about yourself in a positive way and promote yourself with conviction.

Why do car salesmen have a bad reputation? Why do we hate those nagging telephone calls from strangers telling us to buy something? The reason, I believe, is that the sales techniques they use are impersonal and we often feel that something is being forced on us that we do not want or need.

The fact of the matter is that even if we do need the product or service that’s being promoted, we are so turned off by their  approach, that we can’t wait to escape from the conversation. We say, “I’m just looking, thank you” and hope to be left alone or we hang up. Quite simply, we don’t like being told what we need and what we should purchase. Most of us like to make our own buying decisions.

With that in mind, it is important for anyone who is promoting their own product or service to be aware of how they themselves feel when they are being sold to. Very often, we are so focused on selling the product or service we provide, that we don’t take the time to tailor our message to the potential buyer. We don’t take the time to ask the right questions to see if, in fact, this person needs what we have to sell. If we use one generic approach for all potential buyers, we will not make the necessary connection with the person to close the sale.

Asking questions is, of course, a great way to ascertain if there is a need for what we are selling. Open ended questions such as, “how?”, “when?”, “where?”, “what?”, “how much?” elicit the information we need. The process of asking questions, listening, and responding, creates the foundation for  a relationship and it is the relationship that is critical in the end to closing the sale. When a stranger tries to force us to buy something, we get agitated, defensive, and immediately put up a protective wall.

So maybe you’re not a car salesman. Maybe you’re an entrepreneur who must promote their services in order to grow their business. How does this apply to self-promotion? Do the same sales techniques apply when you are promoting yourself? Absolutely! When you are in a conversation and someone asks you what you do, you are certainly in the position to talk about your business and the benefits and value it provides for your clients. But how do you know if this person is a potential client unless you begin to ask them questions to get to know them better?

Remember how you feel when someone tries to sell to you. How do you feel when someone gives you a generic one-size –fits- all pitch? Ask questions that will help you get to know the person better. Ask questions to determine their need; their pain. Then deliver your own irresistible pitch so that they understand very clearly what you do and the energy and passion you have for your business. It may be that this person is not a potential client, but by establishing a relationship, you are setting the stage for referrals or even a future sale.

As women, we need to speak up more and create visibility for ourselves whether it’s in a meeting, an interview with media, or a conversation with colleagues at work. This topic comes up over and over again in my discussions with clients as well as guests on my radio show. In my recent interview with Toddi Gutner, the hesitancy of women to speak up and stand out surfaced again.

In the interview, Toddi talks about how important it is for women as a group to become more visible in the media. Visibility in the media supports and contributes to women’s leadership initiatives across all industries and government. The White House Project’s Benchmarking Women’s Leadership Report confirms the fact that women get less bylines in eleven of the top political and intellectual magazines and that this lack of visibility needs to be addressed in order for women to advance to leadership positions. Women need to be visible and credible.

Toddi also says  from her experience as a reporter she finds that women are not only hesitant to promote themselves, but are also not always organized, can often ramble, and don’t come across with the same confidence as men. Men are much more declarative. They frequently respond quickly to her questions in precise, short and often quotable statements.

Both the White House Project and Toddi strongly advocate media training for women. I agree, of course, but also feel strongly that women need to learn how to promote themselves more effectively and feel comfortable delivering their message. We must get over our belief that we are bragging when we talk about ourselves in a positive manner. Certainly, bragging turns people off and, as women, we need to be especially mindful of this in the workplace. Outright bragging can sabotage our efforts to advance our careers, but done diplomatically and appropriately, it is possible to get our message across to become more visible  in the organization. It is possible to learn this and do it well.

We  have valuable experiences, information and stories to share. We need to speak up and promote ourselves!

I was in Rhode Island last Friday giving a workshop on Promoting Your Brand to Rhode Island Networking to Open Doors to Jobs. I arrived early and was, therefore, able to sit in on the facilitated networking exercise at one table. All of the people at the table were highly qualified and competent individuals who held director or executive level positions before being laid off.

The facilitator at the table asked each person to give a little information about their background, their strengths and expertise, and what kind of position they were seeking. I was impressed how well each person articulated their strengths and what types of companies and jobs they were targeting for employment. Everyone around the table responded enthusiastically with potential contacts and leads for their colleagues.

We worked our way around the table to one woman who told the group that she was an architect and was now in limbo and trying to decide what she wanted to do going forward. She told the group that at this time she was looking for any type of job. Interestingly enough, the group who had previously been so helpful to others, now remained quiet. They simply did not know how to respond.

The lesson from this is: People really want to help. In fact, most people are eager to assist you in getting a new job or getting clients, but YOU need to give them enough information so that they CAN help. When we are vague and unclear about what we want ourselves, we cannot expect others to come up with the answers for us.

If you are a business owner or entrepreneur, the more specific you can be about who is your target audience, the easier it is for people to refer business.

If you are looking for new employment, be clear about what type of company you want to work for and what kind of position you are seeking.

People sincerely want to help. Give them the opportunity to be helpful.

I was in Orlando this past week with some colleagues training a medical device sales force on “purposeful communication”. “Purposeful Communication” is communication that has a goal or desired outcome and when applied to sales presentations, the objective is to create a sales presentation that is well organized around a desired outcome with your target audience.

Selling to a large or small group of potential decision makers has many similarities to promoting yourself and your business to prospective clients. One similarity is in the way you open a presentation. The opening of a sales presentation or “attention grabber” is much like the way you start your elevator pitch or promotional message.

Attention grabbers are just that. They are designed to get the attention of the audience from the start so that they will engage and listen to your message.

How effective is your attention grabber?

Here are some different suggestions on how to open your pitch to grab attention from the listeners.

1. Open your pitch with a statement or question that creates some kind of an emotional bond. A good way to create an emotional bond might be to say, “Imagine yourself….. or how would it feel if….”. You can move your listener to a state of mind or emotion where they will connect with their need for your product or services.
2. Ask a poignant question that demonstrates that you get their problem or challenges. “Have you ever experienced….? What do you do when….? etc.
3. Share a story about yourself and your journey that connects with your business in some way. Maybe you experienced similar issues, overcame those issues and now are passionate about helping other people.
4. Make a statement that has an unexpected ending or is surprising in some way.
5. Use a quote or song title or lyric that people can easily identify with and fits well into your message.

Starting your promotional pitch with your name and company name is NOT a great attention grabber. You need to give people a reason to remember you before you give them this information.

Draw them in first with something that gets their attention and then talk about your business and the benefit your product or service will provide to them. NOW, they will remember your name and company!

Have you ever been to a networking event where everyone needs to stand up and introduce themselves?  I don’t know about you, but after about 3-4 people stand up and recite their elevator pitches, I can’t remember who does what. Very few of them capture my attention. Even less of them are memorable. They all sound alike because everyone is using the same approach, the same boring approach.

How  then can you distinguish yourself? How can you stand out in the crowd?

We all want to sound professional, but in our quest to be professional, our pitches often fall flat. The goal of a good pitch is to attract clients and be memorable. So how do you create a great message; one that is effective and “sticky”?

I find that most of the pitches I hear do not have the “sticky” factor. And many of the pitches are very difficult to deliver. They are too technical or too wordy and, therefore, lose the audience. Some of the pitches are too vague. Sometimes we use jargon that no one understands in an effort to sound professional. The end result is that people may think we’re smart, but they have no idea what are business is.

Here are some tips on how to create a great elevator pitch:

1. Your message should be authentic. Don’t use a lot of jargon or professional language that is off putting. You won’t connect with people this way.
2. Your message should be personal. Tell your story. People love stories and they remember them.
3. Put energy and passion into your message. Let people know that you love what you do. Don’t you want to work with people who love what they do?
4. Make an emotional connection with you message. Identify the need and pain of your target audience so that people can easily identify with what you provide and they will remember you.
5. Make your message easy to deliver, conversational. Don’t write a speech that you need to memorize and recite. It doesn’t sound authentic. It’s boring.
6. Stimulate curiosity. Give a teaser or enough information so that they want to learn more about you.
7. It might be appropriate to make it light and fun. Try using cliches, song titles or quotes to begin your pitch and get people’s attention.

Promotional messages take time to create. Start big, not small. Brainstorm and write down all your ideas about how to present yourself and THEN review your notes and pull out sound bytes to craft a great message.

For more tips on how to create a great elevator pitch, listen to my Women Mean Business show, Tune Up Your Pitch. On the show, I coach 3 women entrepreneurs through a process to tune up their pitch!

www.voiceamerica.com/voiceamerica/vepisode.aspx?aid=43836

We all have unique stories to tell about our careers and our businesses. I did a presentation last week on self-promotion in Boston to the Downtown Women’s Club and heard many great stories from the attendees and I was reminded again how truly wonderful all our stories are. Each story reveals something personal about us.

What is the story behind starting our business? Where did the idea come from? Why did we choose to start this particular business?

What’s been our personal journey thus far? How have we taken our passion and turned it into a business?

What attracted us to a particular company and career?

When we incorporate stories into our promotional message, it creates a message that attracts listeners. People love stories so why don’t we tell them? Why do we hesitate tobe personal in our approach to self-promotion? Often we get so hung up on presenting a “professional” persona that we end up with a promotional pitch that falls flat.

If, in fact, the goal of a promotional pitch is to attract interest and be memorable, it only makes sense that we should infuse more of our personality and passion into the message.

What is your unique story and how might you include some of that story in your conversations about your business and career?

Telling your story can make a huge difference in a job interview. It’s certainly an improvement over just reciting your resume. Think of an appropriate story about your accomplishments that will set you apart from the other applicants.

At a networking event, how do you answer the question, “What do you do”? Keep the conversation lively by revealing something personal (o.k. maybe not too personal) about how and why you chose to start your business, about your passion for what you do. People will remember you as they also tune out everyone else’s boring elevator pitches.

In our quest to be professional, we create messages that are dull and forgettable.

Step out of the box and say something that will set you apart.

Isn’t that the goal after all? To have a message that people remember?

I’m offering a teleclass in November on “Promote Yourself to Success”. This class will be 3 consecutive Wednesday evenings 7-8 pm EDT starting November 4th. Three one hour sessions $99. Class limited to six.

Participants will:

• create a new promotional message

• develop an action plan for self-promotion

• practice delivering their message

http://womenssuccesscoaching.com/november-teleclass-workshop-registration/

This is a guest post by Lisa Tener, author and book coach.

Have you noticed how many people are writing books lately? Maybe some colleagues and competitors in your field have recently become published authors. Do you wonder if becoming a published author is for you?

A book can help you start a new business or take an existing business to the next level. It can help you position yourself as an expert in your field and open up new (or bigger) opportunities in public speaking, media attention, joint ventures and more.

Evana Maggiore, Author of Fashion Feng Shui: The Power of Dressing with Intention, has told me that she often hears from new person who found her on the internet, read her book in a day and immediately signed up for her training program with a several thousand dollar price tag. Even those who don’t sign up for training often look for a fashion feng shui consultant who can help them dress their mind, body and spirit for powerful results. Evana’s book is out there attracting a following for her own business and businesses of FFS Consultants she trains 24/7—even when Evana is on vacation.

Aspiring authors tend to to talk about their book to anyone and everyone—friends, family, people at cocktail parties. Mum’s the word. I’m not going to tell you they’ll steal your idea. That is extremely unlikely. The fact is, though, that the less energy you project outward about your book, the more you focus your energy inward into the writing. Talking about your book can take the place of writing it. Keep it quiet and write, write, write.

But wait. Before you just start writing mounds and mounds of stuff that someday you’ll have to wade through and organize and figure out how to put it all together into something coherent, take a deep breath and begin to plan.

Without a plan, how do you know what to do and how to get there? Everyone needs a plan. Plan your time; plan what you need to do; plan how to research your market before you begin; plan what you’ll do when you run into snags. Plan how you’ll get support, as well as any expertise you need. Support can come from a friend, colleague, writing cohort, coach or writing class. Expertise can come from people in your market (potential readers), editors, a writing coach, agents, publishers, colleagues and experts in your field.

Above all, have fun and stay connected to your passion for your subject. Writing a book, getting published and hearing from readers about how the book made a difference in their lives can be a peak experience. The more connect with what excites you about the subject, the more fun you’ll have.

Lisa Tener is a published author and book coach. She teaches on the faculty of Harvard Medical School’s CME publishing course. Lisa has been interviewed on ABC World News with Peter Jennings, NiteBeat and PBS-TV and quoted in USA Weekend, Glamour, Family Circle, Body and Soul, Fitness, the Boston Globe and dozens of other publications. Her clients have been interviewed on Oprah, Montel and much more.

To sign up for her FREE teleseminar, Write Your Book: The First 5 Steps (next offered September 9 at 8:30 pm ET) e-mail Lisa at Lisa@LisaTener.com with the subject: “Sept. 9 seminar, new.” You can visit her website at www.LisaTener.com. And sign up for her blog at www.LisaTener.com/blog.