All of us are constantly selling. You are selling yourself to customers, employees, partners, general well-wishers, journalists, peers in the industry, etc. Every time you talk about you, your business, your work, your passions, you are selling yourself. When we talk about yourselves, we typically talk about where we are working, our last job or where we went to college. Well, so does everybody else. This is even more pronounced in a professional setting where most introductions about people or what they do for work is banal at best.

So, how should one introduce oneself or one's work?

Well, we should do it as a story.

Since the story of your life so far is going to be shared hundreds and thousands of time, it doesn't hurt to figure out how to tell your story. I happened to be at a kids birthday party over the weekend and there was "professional" story teller, Sowmya Srinivasan who had about 2 dozen kids under 10 years enthralled in a storytelling session. I sat in for a bit myself and observed her. Since I believe you can learn something from everyone, post the session, I promptly asked her what story telling lessons one can apply to the professional world.

Here were her responses:

• Be authentic - You need to have 120% conviction in your story. If there are any parts of the story that are not true, or lack conviction, children will see through it. As will people you are talking to. In fact, legendary investor Chris Sacca talks about authenticity as being very rare even in the otherwise high conviction startup world.
   
• Articulate the twists and turns - Stories are interesting because there are not linear. There are lots of twists and turns. They make you experience a variety of emotions. Rather than say I left company A to join that company B, what if one said, what was the reason for that choice? Was it a good choice or did you later regret going to company B? Focussing on the key decision making points, dare I say even creating some drama and then resolving it makes it more memorable. Legendary communicator, Nancy Duarte has this amazing TED talk where she dissects the structure of all great speeches. Every great speech, like every story, has a beginning, a middle and an end.

Further, very great speech creates an emotional roller coaster between what the current state of the art is and what it could be. By the way, this is a fantastic way to pitch new ideas, esp. startups. Some of the best entrepreneurs such as Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Reid Hoffman paint this incredible picture of what the world is today and what it could be with their invention or creation. Go see them talk (again!) about the new products they are launching or their companies and you will see what I mean.

• Use appropriate metaphors, examples and analogies - most of talk in plain facts. Facts are good but they don't make our story memorable. Remember, just like you are pitching everyone you meet, everyone is being pitched a gazillion times, every day. I'm not saying don't state the facts. Articulating facts with metaphors or analogies helps people visualise and remember them far more vividly. For example, if you are pitching a startup and everyone wants to know what the "secret" sauce is for it to be differentiated. You could just state we're different because of this "implicit but invisible" feature X or you could say that X is like the salt in a dish; or X is the water that "binds" the cooking flour together.
   
• Prepare, prepare, prepare (5+5) - this professional storyteller suggested having 5 personal/professional stories prepared with the nuances listed above. She also suggesting investing some time to picking up 5 stories from common folklore. These stories should be relevant to your story, handy and well rehearsed. You can then draw upon this arsenal depending on whatever context presents itself.
   
• Be pithy (this one is my gratuitous addition) - There's this whole new movement called Six Word Stories. You can think of writing your own six word memoir of your life so far using these tips [video]. You need to get to the punch line at the end. Let that be your six word memoir!

What are favorite techniques for telling your story? What has worked well for you? When you are being pitched, what are some of the most memorable story telling techniques you remember and why? As always, please do share your thoughts in the comments below.

About the Author -

(Amit Somani is a Managing Partner at Prime Venture Partners, an early stage Venture Capital firm based out of Bangalore, India. Prime VP invests in category creating, early stage companies founded by rock star teams. Prior, Amit has held leadership positions at Makemytrip, Google and IBM. He is also deeply engaged with the early stage startup ecosystem in India and actively volunteers with iSpirt, TiE and NASSCOM. He tweets at @amitsomani)

This article was originally published on Linkedin