The Dots

We’re at the final email in this storytelling series.

To recap, here’s what we’ve covered so far:

• ​Why build a story anyway?​
• ​Your core story ingredients​
• ​Finding your story​

Then, we moved on to building your story in a 20-page deck:

• ​Act 1 / The Destination​
• ​Act 2 / The Nightmare​
• ​Act 3 / The Twist​
• ​Act 4 / The Process​

There are 5 Acts within our story, which leave us with one more to cover.

The part that, when you execute it just right, will have your reader yearning to take the next step forward to working with you.

But first, to make sense of what's about to come, we need to talk toys.

My youngest son is obsessed with animals.

I mean REALLY obsessed.

All kids like animals, but he spends every waking moment going through his collection of non-fiction animal books, watching animal documentaries, or going outside and discovering insects.

He’ll compare and contrast the lifecycle of a ladybird and a bee, then move onto listing his favourite types of squid.

Oh, one other thing he loves doing is playing with his toy animals.

The brand we get is Schleich.

We started buying a selection of his favourite (at the time) animals.

It was basically anything featured in BBC’s Planet Earth II.

But that collection has ballooned through all the Christmas, Birthday and Holiday gifts from the past three years.

We have every animal in the Schleich wildlife collection.

We're not starting on the farmyard collection

Even if he does love horses, we’re not buying him one.

Because he’s aware that a horse is part of the farmyard collection.

And if we buy him a horse, he’ll want a pig, then he’ll want a goat.

And then we’ll have to complete the collection, just like we did with the wildlife animals.

This is all normal behaviour (I think).

I had it with music.

I’d buy one Muse album, and when I decided I love Muse, I needed them all.

Part of it was to have and play the music, but if I’m being honest, it was really about completing the collection. I didn't play each album in equal measure.

Because everyone craves closure

That’s why it’s so infuriating when a TV show you like cancels at the end of season 1 due to low audience numbers.

They ended on a cliffhanger, and you’ll never know what happened next.

Like The Messiah on Netflix.

It’s why, when my son started his Schleich collection, he had a burning desire to complete it.

And that desire for completion manifests itself in many other ways.

It’s also why we love a great ending when a story neatly ties everything together.

Where each character and plot line had a purpose, all coming together to deliver definitive closure.

And when it doesn’t, things don’t add up, characters are inconsistent, and it’s all hard to believe - which we hate.

Act 5 - The Dots

We won’t be doing a Game of Thrones here. Nice and neatly, we’re connecting the dots from start to finish.

In this last act, we tie everything together.

Let’s continue with the example in previous emails.

In her ​TED talk​, Zoë Karl-Waithaka is selling the following idea: How marketing could improve the lives of African farmers.

We’ll tweak things a little here from previous emails.

As Zoë isn’t presenting to a prospect, her ending doesn’t align with ours.

So I’m going to give you her ending as if she were in front of a prospect like you are:

• It’s not just Kenyan farmers I’ve helped. Here are some other happy ‘heroes’.
• Africa is still relatively early in its development trajectory versus other markets, but there’s an opportunity here to use marketing as the catalyst to improve the lives of farmers in Africa.
• In the 1980s, few Avocado farmers would have believed you could sell one Avocado for $15. But now, in the US at least, it’s hard to imagine selling it for less.
• If you’re ready to do the same, book a call and we’ll figure out if this is a good fit for you.

Here’s the structure of this section:

We close the loop by referencing the example we mentioned at the beginning of the story (avocados), then sign off with the call to action. After reading or hearing this story, what should they do next?

And that’s your sales deck completed

This deck contains your sales story in its entirety. You share it with prospects on a call. Maybe they share it with colleagues when making a buying decision.

And you use it as a reference point to share small snippets of that story across marketing channels: headlines, landing pages, ads, social media, etc.