Why the Narrative Policy Framework is great for persuasion

Sam was having a communications problem. Despite presenting a logical and complete case for a new marketing strategy, the board was not persuaded. Sam had explained the full picture, setting out the relevant characteristics of a market they were all familiar with, and then filling in the gaps to show how packaging products and services into one offer would work better. There would be a small but positive impact on sales volumes but a much bigger impact on profits. This would also require a reorganisation of the operations teams. The board seems to understand all of the data and the projections, but the message was not landing. Somehow the facts on their own were not compelling. It was time for a new approach.

Sam had recently learned about a persuasion technique called NPF which stood for “Narrative something Framework” but meant essentially persuading using carefully designed stories. It had to be worth a try.

The narrative framework approach suggested dividing the task of persuasion into two stages: first change the audience’s world view, then engage them to make them act. Here are the two stories Sam told the board.

There are people in this company who make a good living earning commissions from selling our products, and others who sell our services to earn their bonuses. These people cooperate pretty well, sharing details of customer needs and contacts details.  We recently ran a workshop with top performers from both teams to see how we could improve cooperation and customer experience. Everyone in the room agreed that some of our competitors – in particular EnemyCo and ChallengerCo – have started working together to package services and products into one offer. Customers are taking interest, and we are losing sales. They like the soup-to-nuts character of the combined package. They also like the single procurement cycle of buying services to match each product from the start. The workshop attendees all agreed that because we deliver both products and services we could exploit this developing industry trend. A good idea from the team in the field who know our customers. It makes perfect sense.

However, over lunch after the workshop, Jo Bloggs – one of our top services sales guys – told me that this great idea had a very personal downside. Though the combination was a great idea and had been fairly obvious to the field ops team for some time, the company structure acted as a barrier to cooperation between teams. The commissions and bonus structures for product and service sales are different. Up-front revenues from product orders are where the product team make their money. For the service guys repeat revenues are the key. They are incentivised to sell separately to maximise their earnings. Nobody on either side wanted to sell packages and lose most of their bonus to the other guy.

Once Sam shared these stories the board demanded data to establish the size of the opportunity and a plan to effect the required organisation and incentives changes. Fortunately, Sam had the information ready to close these knowledge gaps and turn this energy into action.

Sam was persuaded too, from now on the NPF approach will be their default. Engagement changes minds better than cold hard facts.

This is how you might sell NPF using an NPF approach. Compare this to the previous post which promotes the NPF using the KDM structure. 

NPF Vs KDM. I’ll be very interested to hear your feedback.