Your story reflects the state of your business

If you find yourself constantly spinning different stories about your company in order to connect with new audiences, there’s a good chance that your business strategy needs an overhaul. Are you always searching for the Customer Story, the Investor Story, the Employee Story, or the Partner Story? In other words, do you feel like you are constantly groping for new ways to sell your company? Get a grip. Hone in on a business strategy and settle on one great story to convey it – to everyone. There’s one certainty in all of this. If you don’t ditch the pitch du jour, none of your stories will have happy endings.

Lists do not have universal appeal

There are countless opinions on what makes a good company story. However, you can rest assured that rattling off lists of products, capabilities, or projects won’t be a winning formula. If you’re focusing too much on what you do, you may be leaving out the most important pieces of your story and missing the key points that will get everyone charged up about your company. When you focus too much on the nuts and bolts of your business, to the detriment of the big picture, you’ll leave a lot of people in the dust. Your product manager might feel at home, but your investors won’t. They’ll need a framework for thinking about your company.

Know when to change course

Work hard to make sure that your vision hits the mark. People get excited by a vision and the passion to pursue it. In fact, they’ll generally want to hop on any train that looks like it’s going somewhere important. You just have to give them a reason, and make them feel like they can take part in some way. That is not to say that you shouldn’t tailor your presentations and proposals to address the specific hot buttons of your target audiences. Give them all the detail they need to address their requirements. But if you have to change your core story frequently, you have at least one of two problems: the wrong story or the wrong audiences. In either case, you’ll need to go back to the drawing board.

Everything is connected

There’s no way to avoid the inevitable information transfer between customers, investors, employees, and partners. The Internet pretty much fixed that forever. The days of information control are gone for most businesses. So you might as well face the facts. You need to develop one core message that works for everyone. Otherwise, you’ll waste a lot of time and energy, create endless confusion, and miss an opportunity to get the undying support of people who care the most about your company.