Your Story Is Being Told Everywhere. Is It the Right One?
By Michael Turcsanyi, CEO, Goose Digital
Last night, about 25 people joined us at the Vintage Conservatory on King Street in Toronto for Storytelling That Moves Buyers Forward, an evening on brand storytelling for sales teams, hosted with our partners Tanja Coughlan of AURI Learning Co and Mike Leon of Brand Heroes. The room had sales and revenue leaders, business owners and senior marketers, and there was good food and good wine. The conversations kept going long after the slides were done.
I want to share what stood out, because it applies to almost every business we work with.
Everyone is telling your story, just not the same way
We started with a simple question: what happens when every person and every touchpoint explains your value a little differently?
Nobody in the room needed convincing. Everyone had lived it. A new product launches and each rep describes it their own way. A new hire builds their own slides because they didn’t know the approved ones existed. A campaign looks great in the plan and then falls apart once it’s actually running.
Each small inconsistency adds friction. Buyers get confused, they ask more questions, and they trust you a little less. The person championing you inside their company has a harder time selling you to their boss. Deals slow down, and sometimes you win the wrong deal.
Brand storytelling for sales: consistent, not scripted
Nobody wants a sales team reading from a script. Good salespeople build relationships, and that’s where a lot of the magic happens. The goal is to give them a set of true, on-brand stories they can weave into their own conversations in their own words, so they aren’t making things up as they go.
We call it a shared storytelling system:
- Align the story with what your brand truly believes and promises.
- Understand the buyer: what matters to them and what’s holding them back.
- Reframe your message as a story, not a list of features.
- Increase its impact by making it specific, believable and easy to retell.
- Activate it everywhere the buyer might run into it.
Same truth, different moments
The last step is where most plans break down. A strong story shouldn’t live only in the sales deck. The same core idea might show up as a quick story in a discovery call, an example on your website, a case study sent after the meeting, a proof point in your proposal, or a follow-up email.
Each of those moments is different. You have to think about what the buyer needs right then, who is reading it, and what that piece is supposed to do. The story stays true, and how you tell it changes. That’s why the three of us work together on this: AURI teaches the system, Brand Heroes shapes the story, and Goose Digital puts it to work across sales tools, campaigns and channels.
What does AI say about your business?
In several conversations after the session, one topic kept coming up. More and more buyers ask ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude about a company before they ever visit its website. Those tools answer with whatever they can find. If your story isn’t clear and consistent online, they may fill the gaps with outdated or plain wrong information.
That makes the AI assistant one more storyteller, and one you don’t control directly. The storytelling system gives you a way to handle it. Once your core stories are defined, you can build a content plan that does two jobs:
- Serves real people. It’s clear, helpful content your buyers want to read.
- Teaches the AI tools about you. It’s consistent, well-organized and easy for them to find and understand, so they describe your business accurately.
It’s the same principle we talked about all evening. Tell one true story, and tell it consistently everywhere your buyers are listening, including the places where a machine is doing the talking.
Let’s keep the conversation going
Thank you to everyone who came, and to Tanja and Mike for a great partnership. If you’re wondering whether your team, your website and the AI tools are all telling the same story about your business, I’d be happy to talk it through. Reach out anytime.
