Good Storytellers Create Good Business

As a writer and speaker, I love stories. I love to tell them, to write them, and I love to read them. I also like to read about stories, what makes them work, how they excite our imagination, how we use them to enrich our communications. Made To Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive And Others Die is about all that and more.

Good salespeople, advertisers, marketers, PR professionals, even managers wanting to motivate their employees and entrepreneurs needing to excite their investors can make good use of the techniques described in this book. The authors achieved their goal, "...to help you make your ideas...understood and remembered, and have a lasting impact...." In other words, they help you make your ideas "stick."

As the author of several books about persuasion in business, I took away several great points:

"Belief counts for a lot, but belief isn't enough. For people to take action, they have to care."

"We appeal to their self-interest, but we also appeal to their identities--not only to the people they are right now but also to the people they would like to be."

"One of the worst things about knowing a lot, or having access to a lot of information, is that we're tempted to share it all."

Chip and Dan Heath dissect everything from urban legends to ad campaigns to explain what makes a message resonate in the audience's mind. In the process, they not only show the reader how to use successful strategies, they do it in an entertaining fashion that makes the book a pleasure to read.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.