Selling really is everything. Whether you are selling a product or an Idea, to stay ahead at work you need to be convincing. Telling a good Story – one that moves hearts and minds – is the key to winning people over, explained Carmine Gallo, author of The Storyteller’s Secret: From TED Speakers to Business Legends, Why Some Ideas Catch on and Others Don’t, to be published in February.

Drawing from interviews with top Business leaders, including Virgin Group founder Richard Branson and Starbucks chief executive officer Howard Schultz, Mr. Gallo found that storytelling played a strong part in their success.

The Human brain, he argued, citing research from Dan McAdams, a professor of human development at Northwestern University in Illinois, is hard-wired to process information in the form of a narrative.

Storytelling, Mr. Gallo said, applies to everything from job interviews to sending e-mails, and it need not be complicated.

So how do you tell a story? Mr. Gallo suggested that good stories have a “villain” and a “hero,” but in the business world, the villain is the problem and the hero is your solution. Don’t forget to include a personal story to add a human element to any data and stick to “the rule of three.”  

Simply put, people can’t store more than three messages in their short-term memory, so don’t inundate them with too much information.

“There’s a reason why Goldilocks saw three bears and why there were three musketeers or three ghosts who appeared to Mr. Scrooge. Three is most important number in narrative,” he said.