Your objective is what you want the decision-maker to THINK, FEEL, or DO.
This is different from what you want as a goal in your own story. An objective is framed in terms of the decision-maker’s goal. This helps you create language which expresses what you want in terms of what they want. When giving you what you want benefits the decision-maker… that’s when you’re likely to get it.
When you want the decision-maker to DO something, you’re trying to persuade. It’s more tactical. When you want the decision-maker to THINK or FEEL something, you’re trying to influence. More strategic.
The idea is that sometimes, you’ve got a pretty good idea of a call-to-action, a thing you can ask the decision-maker to do, which they can do and will actually want to do. Sometimes, it’s more like you need to prepare the ground, plant a seed, and lay the groundwork for an eventual request.
You want the decision-maker to think about a particular concept or feel a certain way because this, eventually, will lead to the action you want or give you the opportunity to make your request. This is often what’s happening when you’re socializing an idea.
You can have a specific objective or a directional objective.
A specific objective is what you want IN THE MEETING (or soon after).
Most of the time, people who are storytelling and pitching do not have a specific objective. They only know what they want overall – the sale, the budget increase, the “Yes.”
Especially in a storytelling for enterprise situation where there are so many meetings which need to happen for a deal to close, big, diffuse goals can be less helpful than specific, targeted ones.
Still, sometimes it’s hard to formulate a specific objective. This is when you can have a directional objective – not towards the end goal of a sale – more towards a state of being.
For example, you can have the directional objective of “discovery,” or “connection.” This can be helpful in early meetings where you’re meeting people, gathering information, and scoping initiatives. However, don’t take this as the easy way out. The more specific you can make your objective, the better.
Smaller, more specific objectives have a greater chance of success. It’s also easier to tell if you have succeeded or failed, which accelerates iteration and learning.