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

Former chairman of Sony Pictures and current CEO of Mandalay Entertainment Group, Guber illustrates how powerful storytelling—about yourself or your product—can be the ultimate tool to get the meeting, engage the listener, and close the deal. With brisk and readable anecdotes, the author relates what he's seen and learned in Hollywood, and how his celebrated friends—Bill Clinton, the Dalai Lama, Arianna Huffington, Nelson Mandela, and Frank Sinatra—impressed upon him the power of a well-crafted story or appeal. The celebrity name-dropping lends some glitter to Guber's very reasonable precepts: as he urges the reader to harness the power of metaphor in crafting the core narrative of a pitch or advertising campaign, he refers to how Michael Jackson taught him about drama by making him watch a python slowly stalk a helpless mouse, and how KISS frontman Gene Simmons, son of Holocaust survivors, used his backstory to fuel his ambition and his business strategy. This valuable and inspiring book will help readers deliver an authentic and meaningful story to customers, colleagues, or prospective clients. (Mar.)