The buzz around business storytelling is real—but many strategic narratives miss the mark. Here’s how to shift from fact dumps to narratives that move people.

The Storytelling Disconnect

Everyone is talking about storytelling. And some B2B teams are doing it well—using narrative to breathe life into strategy, win over internal teams, and connect with customers. But in many cases, what’s presented as a “story” ends up being just a timeline of facts or a string of product features.

The culprit? A combination of self-focus, data overload, and a lack of narrative tension. Businesses often spotlight themselves—their company, product, or origin story—without centering the actual hero of the story: the customer. What’s more, these kinds of “stories” rarely build to a problem worth solving or convey any emotional resonance.

1. What Great Strategic Storytelling Requires

Fixing this gap starts with three essential shifts:

• Make your audience the hero. Whether pitching to customers or to leadership, the story should be about their unmet needs, their challenges, and their world—not your product roadmap.
• Center your story on real tension. Every compelling narrative contains a problem or an unresolved challenge. In strategy, this is often an unfulfilled customer need or an emerging competitive threat. A great strategic story names that tension—and shows how your company will resolve it.
• Deliver emotion with insight. Facts support a story, but they aren’t the story. Make room for how customers feel when things go wrong (or right), and use storytelling to create shared understanding—not just to deliver information.

2. Tailoring the Story by Segment

Advanced storytellers take this further by adapting their story to different customer segments. Each segment experiences tension differently. Some may care most about outcomes, others about trust, or efficiency, or innovation. The best storytellers adjust how they frame the problem, the stakes, and the resolution—without reinventing the entire narrative each time.

This segmentation-based approach also applies internally. When strategy teams acknowledge that markets are made up of different needs-based segments—and tailor their story accordingly—they demonstrate greater command of the market and greater confidence in their approach.

3. What’s Getting in the Way

One of the most common reasons teams struggle with strategic storytelling? Many of the professionals responsible for building these narratives are trained in technical or analytical disciplines. They’re more comfortable with product specs and data tables than narrative arcs and emotional hooks.

We’ve seen it often: a high-potential product underperforms—not because the product is flawed, but because there’s no story around it. No compelling problem, no emotional tension, no connection to the customer’s world.

4. Strategy Should Drive the Story—But Storytelling Can Refine Strategy

It’s worth stating clearly: storytelling is not a replacement for strategy. The most powerful business stories are grounded in solid strategic thinking. But storytelling can also help expose gaps in that strategy—areas where value isn’t clear, or where customer pain points haven’t been fully considered.

In this way, storytelling doesn’t just communicate strategy—it strengthens it.

5. A Strategic Storytelling Mindset

Here’s the good news: you don’t have to become a novelist or copywriter to tell better stories. You just have to think like one. Ask yourself:

• Who is the hero?
• What unresolved problem are they facing?
• Why does it matter?
• How will they feel when the problem is solved?

From internal pitches to external sales conversations, viewing your strategy through this lens unlocks clarity and momentum. Don’t just present the facts—frame them in a story that sticks.