The Executive Voice

Why Storytelling is Sometimes A Very Bad Thing (Part 1)

As a born storyteller, I believe that crafting a great and fabulous story that emotionally resonates with your audience can go a long way toward influencing them. But sometimes it fails spectacularly, alienating the people you want to bring into your fold.

This week, we’ll explore one way storytelling can turn poisonous, and we offer a cure. [More coming up in the next 3 weeks.]

The Better The Story, The Bigger The Credibility Risk

The Company Story: Your website and socials tout you as a firm that values employees, cares about the environment, and treats customer needs as sacred. These aren’t just claims; you back them up with stories: videos of employees talking about their roles and the sense of purpose and meaning they bring. You show your contribution to protecting the environment through stories of employees, and even your leaders, planting trees, cleaning ocean trash, feeding the homeless, etc., while well-written customer success stories highlight your problem-solving superpowers.

Then a former employee posts a damning TikTok about hellish working conditions, and it goes viral, racking up millions of views. Elsewhere, it’s revealed your CEO burns more fossil fuel than most because he often uses his private jet; a customer sues you over a perceived failed implementation and makes it public. The real stories of who you are (messy and complicated) surface, and they’re in direct contrast to the polished narrative you’re desperate to put out there and control.

The Cure: Have the courage and self-deprecating humour to tell genuine, authentic stories that reveal the scars, missteps, wrong turns, and mistakes, and then what you learned and how you changed. This, of course, requires nuanced storytelling skills because protecting your reputation and standing still matters, and it means knowing what to reveal and how to present it. Realistic stories build loyalty among employees and customers. Authentic, even raw – narratives, not ones polished to the nth degree, are the antidote.

Communication That Earns Influence

Your Best Sales Story Could Be Your Biggest Liability

I work closely with sales teams and have the greatest respect for sales execs who know how to tell a compelling story, the right way, and many do. In fact, the best of them have taught me a lot about winning a complex deal.

Unfortunately, some B2B tech sellers tell prospective customers a great story about supposed outcomes (our promise of value), but it’s just smoke and mirrors or gross exaggerations of ‘envisaged’ benefits. Dare I say, sometimes it's outright fabrication.

Sellers often roll out one significant ‘story’ to prospective customers because it’s juicy: a real story about a similar client, similar challenge, similar industry, successful implementation of complex technology, and now a long-term client. Nice and all squared away. But the true nature of the relationship is kept under wraps.

If and when the true facts come out, this story can become a liability, a thorn in the seller's side, and can poison a deal dead.

The Cure

First, properly examine the true relationship you currently have with the client you’re using as your success story and reference. Most sellers do this but in a shallow way. They check with the account manager (AM) or, if it’s a large client, the account general manager (AGM), that this client isn’t sour on us right now.

But often they don’t do their proper due diligence if it comes back, “Yep, all good”. What you should do is ask to speak with a few people at the client (with permission and your AM present) to find out how they really feel about us.

This conversation requires sophisticated communication skills to gently draw out the truth; the client may be reluctant to reveal it, especially with your AM or AGM present. This also means you must ask for a second meeting without your people there.

A ‘customer story reality check’ is crucial. More often than not, it will also reveal positives, like how we’ve supported the client since the initial success story, and we can include these value-adds to the original story: authentic problem-solving examples and new projects we’ve successfully delivered that have genuinely helped the client cut business costs or enabled growth.

Second, we should work with this client to align on how we want to communicate our relationship. Yes, it’s often done, but superficially. What’s usually missing is giving the client permission to talk about missteps, times when we haven’t met their expectations, and how we resolved them, together, to forge a stronger bond. Because authentic relationships, both personal and professional, have ups and downs, negatives and positives.

When prospective buyers are given the unvarnished story of your relationship with clients, they’re more likely (not less) to want to do business with you.

Is it time to check your polished customer success stories and case studies? Their shallow charm may be poison to your deal.

Firmus: From Blockbuster Float to Withdrawal

Firmus began the week preparing for one of Australia’s biggest-ever floats: a roughly AU$7 billion raising at $11 a share, valuing the AI infrastructure company at almost AU$44 billion. Backing from Nvidia and prominent global investors helped sell the proposition. Bankers had signalled that indicative demand already covered the offer. Tuesday’s bookbuild began testing that confidence against actual commitments. Investors learnt that more than half the shares could potentially trade from day one, raising concerns that early shareholders might sell into the float. By Wednesday, investors were withdrawing orders as news of the collapsed CDC development partnership compounded doubts.

By Thursday, bankers tried to salvage the deal with lower pricing, with reports suggesting around $8 a share. Fund manager Roger Montgomery questioned the earlier demand signals: “If that were true, why has the price been cut to get the deal away?” Ten Cap’s Jun Bei Liu criticised the limited disclosure and the risks involved in delivering capacity that largely remained unbuilt.

The objections went beyond price. Plato Investment Management’s David Allen said his team had identified 30 red flags, publishing 10. These included a valuation heavily dependent on future growth; a focus on earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation that obscured expensive equipment replacement and financing costs; limited management experience delivering developments of this magnitude; customer concentration; planning and power constraints; and substantial potential selling by existing shareholders. Nvidia’s backing was a significant positive, he acknowledged, but also a source of dependence.

What I Noticed

The language of the coverage, of course. It let us know that things were unravelling, and we all knew how it would end. The AFR moved from “float meets reality” to a “36-hour spiral of doom”. Its Chanticleer column called the episode a “tale of hubris and arrogance”, arguing that Team Firmus had overestimated its believers' support. On Friday 9 October, Firmus withdrew the proposed listing, citing “market volatility and prevailing market conditions”. It would seek private capital instead. The message contrast was striking. Investors and commentators were discussing valuation, disclosure, financing and execution risk. Firmus’s explanation posited external conditions, without acknowledging those objections.

Still, they must be feeling the humiliation of rejection.

Phrase of the Week

Hype Meets Scrutiny: The distance between the story an organisation tells and the evidence supporting it. For Firmus, the pitch asked investors to value an ambitious future. Investors wanted more confidence in the price, financing, and ability to deliver.

Better Storytelling: Show Enough of the Struggle for Success to Mean Something

The central premise of any notable movie is a hero who must overcome an obstacle.

Likewise, useful business stories must include the tension between what someone wants and what stands in their way.  

If you give your audience only an uninterrupted sequence of successes, they won't just be bored; they won’t believe your story. Nothing good comes without some pain and difficulty.

Here are three ways to build better stories:

If this helped you think differently about communication, forward this newsletter to someone who leads, sells or explains complex ideas in tech.