The Secret of Telling Great Stories: Understand the Point

In their best-selling book, Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath relate an anecdote from Nora Ephron, the screenwriter who penned Oscar-nominated scripts, Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle. Before captivating Hollywood, Ephron worked as a journalist for the New York Post and Esquire magazine. Her career choice was the result of a lesson taught during her first day of journalism class in high school. Most of the students believed that journalists research facts and then report what they find. Fact finding involves finding the who, what, when, where and why - also known in the trade as the five Ws.

 

The class's first assignment was to write a headline for a lead newspaper article. The facts conveyed were:

• The principal of Beverly Hills High School announced today that every faculty member will travel to Sacramento next Thursday to participate in a colloquium in new teaching methods.
• Speakers will include anthropologist Margaret Mead, college president Dr. Robert Hutchins and California Governor Edmund "Pat" Brown.

The class dug into the assignment, typing away to craft compelling headlines. Most responses, according to Ephron, reordered the facts and condensed them into a single sentence, wrote the Heath brothers. "Governor Pat Brown, Margaret Mead and Robert Hutchins will address the Beverly Hills High School faculty in Sacramento next Thursday," was a typical offering.

 

The teacher looked at the headlines his students developed and then stopped. Made to Stick relates, "Finally he said, the lead to the story is, 'There will be no school next Thursday'." 

Ephron had an epiphany. She realized then that journalism is not simply about regurgitating facts. Instead it requires figuring out the point. It's not sufficient to know who, what, when, where, and why if you don't understand what the facts mean and why they really matter.

 

Therein lies the lesson for decorative plumbing and hardware showroom owners, designers and sales professionals. To connect with customers emotionally which thereby enables you to become their trusted advisors, you need to understand the hidden point of their projects. You need to go beyond the who, what, when, where and why and determine what those facts mean to your customers and why they are important. What is the motivation for the project? What does the ideal solution look like? What will your customer feel when they enter their new space for the first time? Answer these questions and the odds are you will not have to squabble over budgets.