An old woman found an empty jar which had lately been full of prime old wine and which still retained the fragrant smell of its former contents.
She greedily placed it several times to her nose, and drawing it backwards and forwards said, “O most delicious! How nice must the wine itself have been, when it leaves behind in the very vessel which contained it so sweet a perfume!”
The meaning of this Aesop’s Fable is that the memory of ‘good’ things is enduring. The moral of this blog however, is not so much about how the ‘memory of good lives on’, but the story itself.
Author of “Tell Me a Story”, Roger Shank, says: “We do not easily remember what other people have said if they do not tell it in the form of a story. We can learn from the stories of others, but only if what we hear relates strongly to something we already knew”.
The lesson here is that if you want to deliver a memorable sixty-second presentation, you have to do 3 things:
1. Tell a story;
2. Relate it back to your product or service; and
3. Attach it to a sound business value.
For example, the story about ‘The Old Woman and the Wine Jar’ could relate to the enduring nature of goodness or quality. People recognise the truth of the lesson. It resonates with them.
You can do the same. Relate quality (the value) to a customer service story or tenacity (the value) to a problem solving story.
There are as many ‘lessons’ as there are values (which we all already recognise or know), and they will all be very memorable.
