Getting the attention of your prospects and clients – and more importantly keeping it – is so tricky.

Not only are attention spans shrinking, but we all have so much on our minds and we're so busy multi-tasking we find it difficult to give our full attention to anything.

Yet if we want prospects to hire us and clients to continue to engage us, then we need their full, undivided attention.

Recently I was reminded of the power of an approach that most of us don't use anywhere near enough: storytelling.

When I was on holiday one of the books I read was Stephen King's “On Writing”. It's partly an autobiography, and partly his guide to how he writes.

Now I can't claim to be a big Stephen King fan – in fact I've not read any of his books. But he's very prolific and commercially successful – so worth paying attention to.

In the part of the book where he talks about good writing: vocabulary, grammar, style, etc. he introduces it by telling the story of his Uncle Oren's toolbox.

It takes him 3 and a half pages and just shy of 1,000 words to essentially make the point that it's useful to have a big “toolbox” to hand so that you always have the right tool for the job, no matter how hard your writing task gets.

Now I've got an embarrasingly short attention span these days, but his story of going out with his Uncle Oren and his giant toolbox to fix a broken screen had me hanging on every word.

I even found the diversions – the descriptions of the box itself, the cigarettes Uncle Oren smoked and his attitude to King's brand choices – quite fascinating.

King could have made his point in a few short sentences. But if he had, I'd have forgotten it hours later. Thanks to him bringing the message to life through storytelling, the point is still clear in my mind a couple of weeks later – and no doubt will be in months or even years to come.

Master salesmen are usually master storytellers too. They hold attention and get their points across much more powerfully through the use of stories and examples than by just stating the plain old facts. And even the most no-nonsense, “tell me like it is” executives listen intently. We're all programmed from birth to listen to and remember stories.

Veteran marketer Dan Kennedy is another master storyteller. His carefully crafted stories of “Al the Plumber” and the “Carpet Cleaning Guy” give perfect illustrations of how his magnetic marketing approach works in a way that's both memorable and intriguing.

You listen to the stories and they give Kennedy credibility without him having to boast or make bold claims. And they segue perfectly into his offer to provide the tools and templates to help you achieve the same great results.

You can use stories in many different situations. On my blog I've writen about how to use stories to explain what you do, or to answer tough questions from clients.

They work brilliantly in pitches and presentations, or in more informal discussions.

And the lovely thing is that you don't have to be a famous novellist to use them. You just need to put some thought in advance into preparing a set of relevant stories you can use to illustrate key points you often cover in your presentations.

Of course, most people don't put in the effort to do the preparation. So if you're one of the few that does, you're going to really stand out.