Philosophy · Richard Mulholland
What Richard Mulholland Taught Us About Persuasion
The Short Version
Richard Mulholland is a South African speaker and author, and the founder of the presentation company Missing Link. His book Here Be Dragons is about what he calls storyselling, and his work centres on one idea: people are persuaded by stories, not by feature lists. We agree, and the evidence on what makes marketing effective backs him up. We also think it matters that this idea comes from a South African voice. It proves the principle works in our market, with our buyers, not only in American case studies.
What Mulholland Argues
- Storyselling over selling. The most effective way to win a deal or change a mind is a well-constructed story, not more data or a longer list of benefits.
- Every pitch is a presentation. A proposal, a post, a quote, and a sales call are all the telling of an idea. The craft of the telling decides whether it lands.
- People remember the feeling. They forget most of what you said. They remember how you made them feel, and the story that explained it.
Where We Agree
Emotion is not soft. It is effective. Les Binet and Peter Field's long-running analysis of advertising effectiveness found that campaigns built on emotion tend to outperform purely rational ones over time. Mulholland arrived at the same place from the stage and the boardroom: facts inform, stories move.
Proposals are marketing too. A business can have a beautiful website and then send a quote that is a spreadsheet with a logo on it. Every document a buyer reads is part of the story. We treat proposals, quotes, and follow-up emails as seriously as campaigns.
A story needs a point. Storytelling is not decoration or a long "about us" page. A good business story has a customer, a problem, a turning point, and a result, and it exists to make one decision easier.
Where We Build on Mulholland
Tell the story of the buyer's risk. Rory Sutherland and Katelyn Bourgoin both show how much buying is driven by fear of making the wrong call, especially for bigger purchases. The most persuasive story is often not about how good you are, but about how safe the buyer will be in choosing you: who else chose you, what happened, what you do if something goes wrong.
Let the customer tell it. The story you tell about yourself is useful. The story a customer tells about you is worth far more. We look for real customer moments, with permission, and build content around them.
Short stories travel further. Social media rewards a story told in fifteen seconds or three sentences. The structure stays the same: problem, turning point, result.
How It Shows Up in Our Work
- AI Dose: every post has a job, and many of them tell a small story: a problem a customer had and how it was solved.
- Creative Dose: we shoot real people and real work, so the stories are true and recognisable.
- Signature Dose: we help shape pitches, proposals, and presentations, so the story a buyer hears in a meeting matches the one they saw online.
What You Can Do This Week
- Think of your favourite customer result. Write it in four lines: who they were, the problem, what changed, the result.
- Open your most recent quote or proposal. Does it start with the customer's problem, or with your company history? Swap the order.
- Ask one happy customer if you may share their story. Most will say yes.
- Before your next pitch, decide the one feeling you want the buyer to leave with. Build the story around that.
Questions People Ask
What is storyselling?
Using a well-constructed story, rather than a list of features, to persuade someone. It works because people remember stories and the feelings they create far better than facts.
Does emotional marketing really work for small businesses?
Yes. Research on advertising effectiveness shows emotional campaigns tend to outperform purely rational ones over time, and the principle applies at every size of business.
How do you tell a business story without bragging?
Make the customer the main character. Tell their problem, what changed, and the result. Your business appears as the help, not the hero.