About this article

Read time:

4 minutes

Category:

Guests, Opinion

I hear what you say – or do you?

Today we’re featuring a guest blog post from Andrew Thorp, a speaker and communications skills coach and co-founder of MojoLife in Manchester. At Skout we believe the best PR results come from spending time finding, crafting and articulating a client’s best stories. This is very much Andrew’s ethos too, but in terms of general business communication, as you’ll see below.

A couple of weeks ago I was invited to a business networking event and had a memorable experience. It was in a private room in a busy restaurant and the noise from the downstairs bar filled the space and gave it a nice energy. I was introduced to someone who asked me what I did. I replied, “I tell stories.” Now that normally gets a reaction – it’s an unusual thing to hear – but on this occasion he seemed unmoved. I was a tad disappointed but I thought, “Hey ho, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, move on!” So the conversation went elsewhere until someone he knew came across. The chap I’d be speaking to introduced me to his friend. “This is Andrew – he sells storage.”

This reminded me of the reason I set up a concept called Speakeasy couple of years ago. It’s a mechanism for getting feedback from the audience when you present a pitch or an idea. That’s a rare thing of course. People don’t really feel it’s their place to inform you they didn’t ‘get’ what you were talking about, or that you’d scratched the side of your head all the time while presenting!

The psychologists refer to encoding and decoding. When you present an idea you’re the ‘encoder’ but the audience ‘decodes’ it through their filters – these might be past experiences, prejudices, expectations, or just plain-old hearing problems! The result is what you think you said is often not what the audience takes in.

So I suppose the simple message is that it’s important to ask for feedback if you want to be a better communicator. That takes a little courage, but it pays off in the end. But it also requires that we get better at GIVING feedback. It’s a tricky thing to do well and again this can be learned as a skill.

One final point – I’m always encouraging people to develop their own ‘story vault’ so they can use them in conversations and presentations. These ‘mini-stories’ are a terrific tool for building rapport and injecting some fun and personality into your communication. But a lot of people say they don’t have any. I don’t believe that – rather, it’s just a case of recognising them when they occur. Comedians who use observational humour are masters of this. There are things happening to you every day (and things you see happening to others) that could form the basis of a great story. The trick is to recognise them, craft them into a story that makes a point and get good at telling them.

Happy story-telling (or should I say storage-selling?).

About this article

Read time:

4 minutes

Category:

Guests, Opinion

Sustainability – how our team is crushing plastic and saving the planet

B2B thought leadership PR – everything you need to know

Browse more blog posts

Posted on
byClaire James
In B2B PR, thought leadership is one of those concepts that gets spoken about all the time. But do you actually know what thought leadership is? And do you have the right tools and skills in place to make it work effectively for you? In this post we aim to clarify what B2B thought leadership can do and help you gain greater benefit from it.
Posted on
byRob Skinner
In B2B PR, thought leadership is one of those concepts that gets spoken about all the time. But do you actually know what thought leadership is? And do you have the right tools and skills in place to make it work effectively for you? In this post we aim to clarify what B2B thought leadership can do and help you gain greater benefit from it.
Posted on
bySkout team
If you haven’t heard by now, Skout is under new ownership! No, we haven’t been bought out – in fact it’s quite the opposite. As of last week, Skout officially became an employee-owned business. This was achieved by the founding shareholders, Rob and Claire, signing 100% ownership over to a newly established Employee Ownership Trust acting on behalf of the...
Posted on
byClaire Lamb
A few weeks ago, the entire Skout team visited the beautiful and historic city of Palma, Majorca for our annual kick off event. It’s been a long time in the planning (pre-pandemic to be precise) and the first time we’ve been abroad for a kick off to the new financial year. We’ve always found kick off meetings a great way...
Posted on
byHonor Williamson
TikTok is increasingly being used as a platform for B2B companies to implement their marketing strategy, aiding in brand exposure, lead generation and profile building. But, where does paid TikTok advertising come into play? Is it an effective tool to engage with B2B audiences, or is the ROI just not worth it?  If you’re the least bit social media savvy,...
Posted on
byClaire James
In May I was fortunate to be able to attend the recent UK Construction Week at Excel in London and see the strides forward an industry, that has become recognised as one of the biggest contributors to carbon emissions, is making in tackling the thorny issue of achieving Net Zero. In his keynote on day one, Lord Callanan, Under Secretary...
Posted on
byJames Weaver
In the world of B2B marketing, it is essential that you have a solid B2B marketing strategy in place to effectively connect with your target audience.
Posted on
byHonor Williamson
Why was PR your chosen career?  PR is all about storytelling, with so much opportunity for creativity and content creation. Since I’ve always loved writing and always had a big imagination, I thought that PR would be the ideal career to channel my creativity. I’m all about communication, and PR really allows you to foster meaningful relationships. I’m already learning...
Posted on
byJack Doyle
As a smaller business, it can be hard to know where to start when it comes to sustainability. Sure, we all do our best to use the right recycling bin at home, and bring our re-usable coffee cups to work. But with serious pressures now mounting from the government – which pledged to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 –...
Posted on
byLee Simpson
Another week, another round of mass layoffs in the tech sector. With Amazon (AWS) and Meta cutting thousands of jobs, and further layoffs at Salesforce and of course Twitter, it has felt a bit like the tech world has been imploding of late. This is of course concerning for us working in B2B tech PR, but more importantly for the...

Send us a message

Download The B2B business relationship report

The B2B relationship renaissance – did digital kill it? The importance of relationships throughout the customer buying journey. Please complete the form below and receive a download link via email.