Create Buy-In With More Employee Storytelling

Create Buy-In With More Employee Storytelling

In business, you spend a lot of time focusing on your buyers. How can you get more people in the store? What can you do to attract more customers? How can you boost sales?

One overlooked strategy of growing your business and creating a loyal base of buyers is employee storytelling.

What is Employee Storytelling?

Employee storytelling is using your employees backgrounds and personal interests to create a stronger connection with your buyers.

Your employees are often the first in-person interaction your buyers have with your customer. Sharing their stories and background helps shape your brand’s story. It gives people something positive to say when talking about your business.

How to Use it to Create Buy-In

Telling your employees’ stories is only half the battle. Once you have their attention (and the attention of your customers) you can use these stories to create buy-in among your team and your loyal buyers. Here are a few ways how.

Get to Know Your Team

Before you can know which stories you’ll tell, you need to get to know your team. This is an important step in generating the employee’s buy-in with your company.

Schedule one-on-one meetings with each employee. These are not only great for getting feedback from your employees but also for getting to know what makes them tick.

Showing your team you care about their individual needs and differences invests you in them. It shows your employee you want to get to know what makes him tick so that you can match his interests with the best jobs with your company. You’re putting your employee first – not your business or customer.  

Create Differing Employee Personas

As you get to know your team, you’ll soon discover everyone has a unique story to tell. Every buyer you have is searching for that unique aspect when trying to decide where to go. The more you can differentiate your employee personas, the more you can show your buyers that you have what they’re looking for.

Use your employees stories to show off these unique aspects. Map out which personas you want to highlight based on your customer personas. Then, tell your employees’ stories to match with each buyer’s interests and wants from your brand. You can do this for each location, showcasing the various people working in your stores, or as a whole for your entire company.

Keep it Interesting

Boring is, well, boring. People don’t want to read about your employees’ academic accomplishments and how many years he worked at a competitor. Your buyers want to know what makes each employee tick.

The more you can keep your employees’ stories interesting and light, the easier it will be for your buyers to relate. Make the stories compelling by bringing out ultra unique aspects of each person. Forget the professional backgrounds. It’s the personal, interesting stuff that gets attention.

Takeaways

Meet with your employees. Get to know more about why they’re with your business and what they are like outside of work. Then, share the story with your customers so they can see what a diverse, insightful group of employees you’ve hired.

Author Profile Jon Forknell is the Vice President and General Manager of Atlas Business Solutions, Inc., a software marketing company specializing in employee scheduling software, including ScheduleBase employee scheduling software, and other business software solutions. In the past, Jon has been recognized by the U.S. Small Business Administration as a SBA Young Entrepreneur of the Year. Atlas Business Solutions was named as one of Software Magazine’s Top 500 Software Companies in 2004 through 2007 and again in 2010, 2013 and 2014.