Internal Business Storytelling

We talk a lot about using storytelling as an external marketing tool, but internal business storytelling is just as important. Your employees are your public face, whether by the nature of their jobs or simply because their friends and neighbors know who they work for. If they don’t buy into your company’s brand message—really take ownership of it—they won’t be the brand advocates you need them to be.

Employees who buy into their company’s brand will communicate the brand message clearly. I don’t know about you, but I’ve run into plenty of clerks at small businesses who don’t really know WHAT their employer does or why. When I ask them about services or products, I tend to leave more confused than I entered and will most likely take my business elsewhere in future. You need employees who not only know your company’s story, but who understand it well enough to pass it on clearly to your customers.

Employees who buy into their company’s brand are motivated. My brother has his degree from Yale and an extensive network of friends with high-paying jobs in NYC, Washington and L.A. He’s had plenty of amazing job offers from those friends since graduating, but instead he’s working his butt off for an IGO in one of the poorest countries in West Africa. Why? Because his belief in that organization’s message and goals is enough to motivate him to forgo a plump paycheck and take on hard work, disease, extreme temperatures and civil strife to do the job. You need employees devoted enough to your brand’s message that they’ll go that extra mile to EXCEL at their jobs, not just get by.

So how do you turn employees into your best brand advocates? The same way you convince customers that they need your product or service: By getting them to write themselves into your story and get behind the message. They need to understand the goals and aims of your brand, associate those goals with their own agendas, and find in that association the motivation to preach your gospel.