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Welcome to The Chemical Show™, where chemicals mean business. Featuring interviews with industry executives, you’ll hear about the key trends impacting chemicals and plastics today: growth, sustainability, innovation, business transformation, digitalization, supply chain, talent, strategic marketing, customer experience and much more.
Episodes are published every Tuesday.
Hosted by industry veteran Victoria Meyer, The Chemical Show brings you the latest insights into the industry. You will hear from leading industry executives as they discuss their companies, business, markets, and leadership. You’ll learn how chemical, specialty chemical, petrochemical, material science and plastics companies are making an impact, responding to the changing business environment, and discussing best practices and approaches you can apply in your business.
Victoria: if you want your target audience
to remember the message the next day.
Tell a story.
voiceover: A key component of the
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push industry boundaries on all frontiers.
Here's your host, Victoria Meyer.
Victoria: Hi, this is Victoria Meyer.
Welcome back to The Chemical Show,
where Chemicals Means Business.
Today's episode is episode 161,
and it's about powerful business
storytelling and how you can use
these five tactics to make your case.
This is a refreshed episode
from one that I had published.
Earlier in 2023, and I thought it
was really critical to bring these
same points back to you today.
As I'm publishing this, and as you're
listening to this, it's a big couple of
weeks for trade shows and conferences
across the chemical industry.
We've got NYSCC Suppliers Day, where
I'll actually be on site this week.
ACS American Coatings Show
and NPE The Plastic Show.
Each one of these conferences and trade
shows is unique in that it's both a
combination of speed dating, you know,
Having these fast moving meetings with
current and future business partners,
as well as an opportunity for companies
to be introducing new products, new
innovations, and new solutions to their
customers and their business partners.
The challenge and the challenge
with these shows, and again,
which will have thousands of
exhibitors is: How do you stand out?
And how do you help your customers,
current and future, understand you and
understand your products and do it in a
way that's compelling and do so in a way
that when they get back to the office
this week, next week, the following
week, they'll remember what distinguishes
you, your company, and the products or
solutions that you are bringing to market.
Ultimately so that they return your
phone call; that they set up a meeting;
that you develop a project together,
which helps you place your products
and services, do business together,
make a formulation change, et cetera.
All of the things that
you're hoping will happen.
Cause again, companies go into these
conferences, spending thousands of
dollars, just in setting up booths and
spaces thousands of dollars, thousands
of hours of their people's time.
By the time you start adding it up, right?
When you put all the, the people into
it, that have done the preparation
work and that are there on site.
And you want to ensure
that you're creating value.
You want to ensure that the investment
that you're making in time and
resources and people is really critical.
And to me, the biggest piece
of this is around storytelling.
And so I think I'm going to challenge you.
I'm going to challenge myself to observe.
What kind of storytelling do
you see at these conferences?
And the key with storytelling,
and I'm going to get into this as
we go further into this episode,
it's really shifting from
just the facts, right?
Okay.
Facts, figures, data, which are
definitely important, but are also
assumed to be available to storytelling,
which captures your listeners.
Captures your customers in your
audience, helps them remember you
and compels them to take action.
And the solution to all of this
is powerful business storytelling.
As you listen along to today's episode,
you're going to get five key action
steps, as well as some examples
and some other facts and figures.
You're going to get the story.
That is going to help you remember this
and hopefully help you to implement this.
Now, I do have a challenge for you.
I would like to hear your best
example of a story that either you
used, somebody in business used
and that really stood out for you.
And it's the way in the use
of storytelling to create that
compelling value proposition.
To really create the hook and the
insight and the use of that as
opposed to just facts and figures.
In the show notes here today of this
episode, there is a link to speak pipe.
And what I want you to do is to
hit the link from your mobile
phone and then just record it.
Give me one minute of a story that you
heard and what made it stand out for you.
And for those listeners that
submit that story.
I'm going to give you a chance.
I'm actually going to probably put it on
a future episode, one of the next episodes
or publish it on the website so that we
can share your insights on storytelling.
Cause that's absolutely
what I want to hear.
Now onto today's episode,
today's topic, the importance of
excellent business storytelling.
Storytelling in business is critical.
It's not about fairy tales.
It's not about making up It's really
about controlling the narrative on your
business or aspects of your business.
We do it every day.
I mean, I think humans in general are
storytellers and if you look through
history, a lot of our history is
oral history and it's through passed
on through storytelling and we do
a lot of it in business, but it's
not always as deliberately, it's not
always as deliberately as we could.
Or should I've talked about this before?
It is really critical for companies
and leaders to own the narrative.
Um, and as I like to say, if you
don't tell your story, someone else
will, and they're going to tell it
in their way, embellishing details
that support their point of view.
And not yours.
So what stories are we talking about?
These are stories about
business performance.
It's about your products and your company.
It's about ESG and sustainability, right?
There's a multitude of places that we can
be telling stories and should be telling
stories and really owning that narrative.
So Um, on episode 106, I spoke with
Kevin Itry of Grace Matthews about M&
A for chemicals and material companies.
And if you listen to that episode,
you'll recall that Kevin talked
about when a company is in a deal
making process, let's just say
potentially selling their business.
It is Absolutely critical to articulate
that business story in a compelling
manner, where you are today, where your
business is going, managing the story, the
narrative, the optics, and really creating
value in the eyes of the beholder,
whether it be the buyer or the seller.
Right.
This is also supported by a recent
Harvard business school study about
economics, not about storytelling.
This was about economics.
What that study found is if you
want your target audience to
remember the message the next day.
Tell a story.
So Thomas Graber, who's a professor at
Harvard business school, conducted this
study entitled stories, statistics, and
memory, and he found that people were
more likely to recall information over a
much longer period when it's wrapped in an
anecdote as opposed to statistics, right?
And I think across the
industry, we are number lovers.
Um, and it's easy to say, well,
the numbers tell the story.
I'm sorry, the numbers
don't tell the story.
The numbers tell us something and it
relies on us as individuals and as
leaders to wrap a story around it and
make sure that when people are looking at
the numbers, understanding the numbers,
that we help them use using a story.
We help them get to the answer.
For simplicity, when we talk about
business storytelling, I'm breaking
this into two broad categories.
One is the brand story and
variations of it, right?
Your company, your people, your
products, and the value they create.
There's a multitude of stories
that need to be told around that.
The second type of story that
it's really critical to manage
and own is the results story.
Your business performance.
Your business strategy and vision,
the direction that you're going,
heck stories around negotiations and
how that needs to take place, right?
There's again, when you think about
the results story, there's multitude
of places that stories need to be told.
How do you tell a good story
about your business though?
Right?
So when you think about that, what
is critical in telling that story?
So number one, the storytelling,
when we think about business.
It's really about interpreting the
facts, storytelling, not just about
business, but about life is about
interpreting the facts, right?
So you and I have both had the
experience where you're telling a
story and you're about an experience
that you had with a friend and your
friend is telling the same story.
Completely differently, right?
They experience differently.
They narrate the story differently.
Stories can be told in
a multitude of ways.
And that's really because storytelling
in many ways is interpreting the facts.
It's creating the emotional connection
and helping cement that event, the
facts, et cetera, in somebody's mind.
When you're getting ready to tell a
story and really deliberately thinking
about the story that you're telling.
There are a few things that a
few pointers that I've got to
help with business storytelling.
Number one, start with the end in mind.
We've heard the Stephen Covey Statement
of start with the end in mind.
This is true.
Storytelling, what response
are you trying to drive?
Are you trying to gain support,
understanding, anger, alignment,
hope, belief, understanding.
I'm bringing that
understanding back again.
What is it that you want your audience?
Whether it's an audience of one
or an audience of many to walk
away with right choosing the
right information and timeframe.
We talk about this in the context of
business reporting business storytelling
my example with Kevin Yttre when a company
is getting ready to sell its business.
Telling the right story, picking
the right information, picking
the right timeframe as part of
your setup for your story, right?
Visual support, right?
Visuals are so critical, whether it be
a chart, whether it be an actual image,
a picture paints a thousand words, or
maybe it's a, I'm going to talk to you in
just a moment about the use of props and
storytelling and how powerful that can be.
And then word choice, word choice matters.
Having strong words.
Having words that invoke the response.
That you're hoping for.
We all have instinctive
responses to words.
When you are crafting your business story,
where choice matters, pick the right ones.
And then really bringing that
story in and making it personal.
Whether it be a narrative
around a situation, whether
making it very specific, right?
Bringing in a specific customer
or an individual location, right?
So I've had those experiences and you guys
have to, where you can make your business
case when you can talk about company X
told me this, and that's critical, right?
Making it personal and
specific, making it relatable.
Relatable to the individual
relatable to the business relatable
to the situation that you're in.
Here's a storytelling example
I want to share with you.
Several years ago, an executive from CP
Chem spoke at a conference in Houston
that I was attending and the talk was
really about growth, the investment
that they were making in the U.
S.
Gulf Coast.
And as it turned out, it was really about
emphasizing the importance of plastics.
And of course, CP Chem is a
large polyethylene producer, and
they're heavily investing and have
invested and continue to invest
in plastics and that value chain.
But the importance of plastics in the
role that sustainability plays in it.
So imagine this, it's a
business conference, several
hundred people are there.
This executive takes the
stage and he's got a prop.
That prop is a loaf of bread.
I'm just going to tell you,
I have never seen a loaf of
bread on stage before, right?
That was a new one to me.
That loaf of bread was really
relatable and he utilized that
prop as part of the story.
Right?
So the, the story being, you know,
bread and plastic packaging, very
common, familiar to most of us.
When you look at the store shelves,
maybe what you have in your pantry and.
A loaf of bread in a plastic bag lasts
twice, 3 times, 4 times as long as a
loaf of bread that maybe is just sitting
on the counter or a loaf of bread.
That's in paper.
Right?
Number 1, it's a great prop
to it's really relatable.
We all understand loaves of bread.
We've had the experience that with
it going bad with it getting hard
and drying out, et cetera, and
recognition that to that plastic bag.
For that very simple loaf of
bread made it last longer.
Number two, really strong
word choice, right?
So this individual, he talked
about the complex and sophisticated
technology that went into that multi
layer plastic bag for that, the
for the bread loaf of bread, right?
So very deliberate word choice,
very strong word choice, right?
Because plastic bags are actually really
complex, carefully engineered products.
Something that you didn't, wouldn't
necessarily think of, right?
We've all got plastic bags
around our house being used in
various ways, shapes, and forms.
Very, but this, he used
very deliberate word choice.
To evoke the sense that, Hey,
this is actually, while it may be
cheap, it is really sophisticated.
It is critically important and
it's well thought out what the
product is and how it's used.
Right?
So simple prop loaf of bread,
very relatable, strong words.
And then he brought in the numbers
and part of the story was around how
plastics help reduced food waste.
So.
The story of the loaf of bread, how
much longer it lasts in plastic, right?
Two to three weeks versus two to
three days and food waste contributes
to approximately 8 percent of
all greenhouse gas emissions.
And if food waste were a
country, it would be the third
largest greenhouse gas emitter.
I'm ending that story there.
That was powerful.
It was supremely powerful, simple,
relatable, strong word choice, bringing in
facts and frankly bringing that narrative
to bear in the way that it created
and connected an emotional response.
Okay.
How relatable was it?
Five years later, I still remember this.
I also remember Going back to
my office after this event and
saying, is that really true?
Let me look up the facts.
Oh yeah.
Sure enough.
Food waste, if it were a country would be
the third largest greenhouse gas emitter.
I'm actually going to link something to
it just so that you guys know as well.
Compelling story, the power of
business storytelling to build
support, to create your narrative,
to instill your point of view.
And elicit some understanding, empathy,
emotion in your business, your facts,
your economics, your data, your story.
So go out and tell a story today.
Next time you're presenting information
about boring facts or information, think
about the story you can tell and how
you're going to weave your narrative in a
way that makes that emotional connection
and brings support to your point of view.
Remember, if you have a great example
of business storytelling, I want
to hear about it, head over to the
show notes to the speak pipe link.
And that'll be right there.
It'll be obvious.
You go from your mobile phone, hit that
link and leave me a recording of your
favorite business, storytelling example,
and why it captivated you and what the
hook was and what it made it stand out.
And we will be sharing some of those
stories in The Chemical Community.
We may be sharing some of those stories
on a future episode and would certainly
I'll be enjoying and appreciating and
sharing and listening to those stories.
Thanks for joining us
today on the chemical show.
Keep listening, keep following,
keep sharing, and we will
talk to you again very soon.
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