Tell to Win: Connect, Persuade and Triumph with the Hidden Power of Story

Stories have always had the power to move, but it has only recently become clear that purposeful stories - those created with a specific mission in mind - are essential in persuading others to support a vision or cause. For Peter Guber, what began as a knack for telling stories as one of the world's leading entertainment executives has evolved into a set of principles that anyone can use to achieve their goals - whatever you do in life, you need to be able to tell a good story.

In Tell to Win Guber explains how to move beyond PowerpPoint slides and spreadsheets to create purposeful stories that can serve as powerful calls to action. He reveals the best way to get noticed, how to turn passive listeners into active participants, and how technology can be used to ensure audience commitment. Featuring wisdom from Guber's meetings with (and lessons from) everyone from Nelson Mandela to YouTube founder Chad Hurley, and Muhammed Ali to Steven Spielberg (who he tutored in making films), Tell to Win entertainingly shows how to craft, deliver and own a story that is capable of turning others into viral advocates for your goal.

Guest Reviewer: Tony Hsieh

Tony Hsieh is the author of the New York Times bestseller Delivering Happiness and CEO of Zappos.com, Inc.

In less than 10 years, Zappos has grown from no sales in 1999 to over a billion dollars in gross merchandise sales annually. Our philosophy is to take most of the money that we would have otherwise spent on paid advertising or paid marketing and instead invest it into customer service and the customer experience, and let our customers do the marketing for us through word of mouth.

In other words, we're really just in the stories and memories business.

From an early age, Peter Guber seems to have intuitively grasped what I slowly learned over my entrepreneurial adventures, which is that the most profitable companies are those that form personal, emotional connections (which we internally refer to as "PEC" at Zappos) with customers. In Tell to Win, Guber shows how the stories we tell -- about our companies, our products, and ourselves -- are what elicit people's emotional reactions and drive word of mouth.

The book includes plenty of examples and guidance for breaking down how a story gets created and delivered. As I read through the book, I repeatedly had to put the book down to think for awhile, because so many stories in the book sparked new ideas on how to improve our business at Zappos.

I hope this book inspires you to create your own "never-ending story" to help take your business to the next level.