Feed Their Curiosity - The No. 1 Key to Successful B2B Storytelling
- Kralingen
- May 30
- 3 min read
Some years back during a short lecture before a group of finance business people, I laid down the most important storytelling principles, emphasizing embracing friction and The Journey. The speaker after me contradicted my point, which sparked a debate. Most of the 'suits' in the audience got my point, but expressed fear implementing it in practice. Afterwards during the drinks, no one approached me, except a fully tattooed, denim-dressed, double gold-chain and baseball cap wearing guy with the heaviest of Rotterdam folk accents. Little did I know he was worth 60 million euros.
He didn't tell me of course. I only learned that fact weeks later. At that moment at the lecture, for almost an hour, he just drilled me with question after question on storytelling and crowdfunding. It was a fun conversation, fueled by some good beers he kept insisting on buying me. Only after that hour of cross-fire questioning, he finally revealed his own origins into business. It was impressive.
At the age of fifteen, with no education, he had started working in the Rotterdam harbor as an errant boy. Being a street-smart young lad, he started noticing all kinds of things that were constantly going wrong. One can imagine that in the second largest port of the world, that's a lot of stuff. After a while, he just started offering all these different companies if he could fix some things here and there for a small fee. About 25 years later, he had build a port utility company worth 60 million, helping his clients generate even more.
By just being curious and observant.
Now, I'm by no means a great businessman. I just write stories for the business world, as well the cultural and artistic niches and my own science fiction. That's it, that's me. For business people I tend to concentrate on the personal story, used for publicity or networking. Through the years I've noticed a pattern: all successful entrepreneurs are highly curious. They just ask you a thousand and one questions. That's the secret.
The effect of curiosity is that it creates trust. In another article of mine, we've explored the numbers on why B2B brands do so much better marketing than B2C (read it on Medium here or my own storytelling book-website here). The conclusion is that B2B is all about building long-term relationships, that fuel ESG goals, and thus add so much value, that purchasing decisions are often made beforehand.
After that article, I wanted to dive even deeper into the 'why'. Why are the B2B foundations so much stronger? When I thought about it, I feel it is the difference between 'sender and receiver-centric' communication. In B2C (with exceptions) the emphasis is on pushing messages ad-infinitum, and as such it is sender-centric. In B2B it's all about receiving the most crucial information first.
It's all about pull. Created by a thousand and one questions.
This works the other way around too. The least successful B2B people I've met are consistently those who push their own messages or ideas first. They give the kinds of presentations where they show their brand logo a hundred times in five slides (quick storytelling tip: don't do that). It's a salesman-in-a-bad-suit attitude, that rarely leads to fundamental success, despite appearances. And the most successful B2C business people are those who display curiosity and are willing to learn about people and their challenges. In short, they are willing to embrace friction, and be honest about it.
We live in a world where the norm has now become to constantly push as much messaging out as possible. It has led to lower attention, lower margins, AI-slop, and in most cases a race to the bottom. The shining exceptions in that world are girls and guys who have a willingness to listen for the signal first, through all the noise.
It felt like an honor and a big compliment back then, when what appeared to be just a folksy guy, with no visible finance links whatsoever, was deeply interested in me and my ideas. I felt seen and understood. And it's funny to think that he was probably worth more than all the sales-y men combined in that room, who each were afraid to ask questions and learn.
All by just being curious. And that makes any communication strategy and storytelling in the B2B world start with one principle and once principle only:
If you want to attract the right kind of people, feed their curiosity.
The good ones will flock to you naturally.
Love, as always,
Rogier
Curious too? Check out my book The Whole Story - The Ultimate Guide to Storytelling if you too want to learn more!
And check out the corporate storytelling question list right here!
