If You Don’t Shape the Narrative, the Market Will

When you stay silent, three forces step in to write your story for you. And none of them are working in your favor.

So in the last newsletter, I talked about a story that’s been around for thousands of years. One of the other types of stories we tend to love as a people is the tragic romantic love story, and this one’s been around for a couple hundred years.

The Story We All Know But Don’t Remember

The tragic and romantic tale of Cyrano de Bergerac, 1897, by Edmond Rostand. I myself fondly remember the Steve Martin version back in the day, but this story is still being made into films as recently as 2021.

For those of you who don’t remember, here’s the plot: Cyrano is a great swordsman and poet. The only curse is his incredibly long nose. He’s head over heels in love with the beautiful Roxanne, but is sure she would never go for somebody like him, so he keeps his feelings to himself. Instead, he gives all his romance and poetry and words to Christian, his good-looking friend.

Isn’t it always the way the good-looking guy gets all the breaks?

Over time, Roxanne falls in love with Christian, but it’s really Cyrano’s words and feelings that do it. Through many twists and turns, Christian ends up dying. Cyrano keeps his secret, and only on his deathbed does Roxanne figure out that it was him all along.

It’s a beautiful scene, sure to tear you up and make you feel that deep sense of longing in all great romantic tragedies.

Who Wants Their Business to Be a Romantic Tragedy?

Here’s the deal: who wants their business to be a great romantic tragedy though? That’s not why you got into business. That’s not why you’re here. But it happens all the time.

You didn’t build a business to be anything but a success, to please your customers, take care of your employees, and grow your net worth.

That’s the lesson I try to teach so many of my clients, that it’s deadly to your business when you don’t take charge of your own narrative, to tell your story honestly and publicly in the market and to your potential customers.

Three Forces Writing Your Story For You

There are three forces working against you when you are not out there actively sharing your story, your unique value, and how you improve your customers’ lives.

First, The Competition

Every one of my clients underestimates the competition. You see them as the enemy, but here’s the thing: your customers don’t. If your competitors are sharing their story more actively than you are, they’re the ones connecting with the hearts and minds of your customers. They’re the ones in the consideration set. Not you.

While you do nothing, they’re happily filling the vacuum you’ve left for yourself. That’s worse than trying and getting it half right.

Second, Negative Customers

Reputation is easily lost when you’re not out there actively telling a positive story. Negative reviews and comments get unfair volume, repetition, and amplification. And you can’t rely on your loyal customers to be your active champions — most of the time, they won’t even know there’s a fight.

Third, Indifference

These first two are expected. The real reality is indifference. The market doesn’t care. If you’re not actively sharing your message and telling your story, the market will put you under the least amount of information their brain has to carry. That’s how we’re designed.

And here’s what makes indifference so deadly.

With competitors, someone tells a story against you. With unhappy customers, someone tells a damaging story about you. With indifference, nobody tells a story at all.

You get a generic heading. A blank file. And no one will remember you — especially when it comes time to buy.

A Client Who Took Charge of Their Story

Not actively telling your story means you’ll stagnate. And eventually, things will take a turn beyond when and where you can fix them.

Now let me tell you a story about a client who did something completely different.

TTN Learning was one of the early pioneers in learning management systems platforms. They came to us because their business had stagnated. They weren’t growing. Where they once had been a pioneer, they were now lost amongst the crowd.

So we brought everybody in that small company together. Everyone spent an afternoon with us sharing their stories — what made the company good in the first place, and what they were doing that made a difference in their customers’ lives today.

From there, we crafted a stronger, tighter narrative. We identified areas of weakness in the overall brand and story that they could easily fix. We repositioned them to stand out from their competition and become more relevant.

We gave them a new name and a new promise:

Brainier.
Educate, engage, and empower.

This enabled them to reintroduce themselves to the market, stand out versus their competition, and get new customers. The results: three years of back-to-back record sales, and eventually an attractive offer at a very nice premium.

That’s the power of having a clear story in the market.

You didn’t build your business to be a tragic poetic failure. You built it to win. So go tell them why you’re The Obvious Choice™.