The Underrated, Undervalued Role Of Storytelling In Business

With a little help from Carmine Gallo.

I’ve written before about the general power of storytelling — to leadership efforts, for example, or to marketing — but now let’s discuss it in the context of business storytelling.

Here’s a Wharton interview with Carmine Gallo, author of a book called The Storyteller’s Secret. The first thing we’re going to do in this post to try and showcase the value of business storytelling is move it away from the Type-A execs who will bellow “That’s something marketing does! I hit targets! I make money!” Right. But what if … just what if … this idea of business storytelling is actually tied back to making money?

Here’s the first quote from Gallo towards that end:

Vinod Khosla, billionaire venture capitalist here in Silicon Valley, where I live, tells me that the biggest problem he sees is that people are fact-telling when they pitch him. They’re giving facts and information and he says, “that’s not enough, Carmine. They have to do storytelling.”