Tell to Win: Connect, Persuade, and Triumph with the Hidden Power of Story by Peter Guber

Description

Today everyone–whether they know it or not–is in the emotional transportation business.  More and more, success is won by creating compelling stories that have the power to move partners, shareholders, customers, and employees to action.  Simply put, if you can’t tell it, you can’t sell it.  And this book tells you how to do both.

Historically, stories have always been igniters of action, moving people to do things.  But only recently has it become clear that purposeful stories–those created with a specific mission in mind–are absolutely essential in persuading others to support a vision, dream or cause.
           
Peter Guber, whose executive and entrepreneurial accomplishments have made him a success in multiple industries, has long relied on purposeful story telling to motivate, win over, shape, engage and sell.  Indeed, what began as knack for telling stories as an entertainment industry executive has, through years of perspiration and inspiration, evolved into a set of principles that anyone can use to achieve their goals.
            
In Tell to Win, Guber shows how to move beyond soulless Power Point slides, facts, and figures to create purposeful stories that can serve as powerful calls to action.  Among his techniques:
 
*Capture your audience’s attention first, fast and foremost
*Motivate your listeners by demonstrating authenticity
*Build your tell around “what’s in it for them”
*Change passive listeners into active participants
*Use “state-of-the-heart” technology online and offline to make sure audience commitment remains strong

            
To validate the power of telling purposeful stories, Guber includes in this book a remarkably diverse number of “voices”–master tellers with whom he’s shared experiences.  They include YouTube founder Chad Hurley, NBA champion Pat Riley, clothing designer Normal Kamali, “Mission to Mars” scientist Gentry Lee, Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank, former South African president Nelson Mandela, magician David Copperfield, film director Steven Spielberg, novelist Nora Roberts, rock legend Gene Simmons, and physician and author Deepak Chopra.
           
After listening to this extraordinary mix of voices, you’ll know how to craft, deliver–and own–a story that is truly compelling, one capable of turning others into viral advocates for your goal. 

Editorial Review

Guest Reviewer: Tony Hsieh

Tony Hsieh is the author of the New York Times bestseller Delivering Happiness and CEO of Zappos.com, Inc.

In less than 10 years, Zappos has grown from no sales in 1999 to over a billion dollars in gross merchandise sales annually. Our philosophy is to take most of the money that we would have otherwise spent on paid advertising or paid marketing and instead invest it into customer service and the customer experience, and let our customers do the marketing for us through word of mouth.

In other words, we're really just in the stories and memories business.

From an early age, Peter Guber seems to have intuitively grasped what I slowly learned over my entrepreneurial adventures, which is that the most profitable companies are those that form personal, emotional connections (which we internally refer to as “PEC” at Zappos) with customers. In Tell to Win, Guber shows how the stories we tell — about our companies, our products, and ourselves — are what elicit people's emotional reactions and drive word of mouth.

The book includes plenty of examples and guidance for breaking down how a story gets created and delivered. As I read through the book, I repeatedly had to put the book down to think for awhile, because so many stories in the book sparked new ideas on how to improve our business at Zappos.

I hope this book inspires you to create your own “never-ending story” to help take your business to the next level.