Telling stories is a great way to persuade people.
As soon as somebody knows they are being told a story, that part of the brain that is always wondering if something is true or not suddenly shuts off, and they simply go along for the ride.
Listening to a story is a very passive process, and unless your some kind of film critic or skeptic, you'll just relax and go with the flow.
This is precisely why some of the best sales letters of all time have been told in story format.
Some have been used for decades with massive results and incomes for those who've written them and are using them to sell their products.
Even before anybody was selling anything, even before money was invented, we humans were using stories to persuade and encourage each other.
We've had stories embedded in our culture, all human cultures, since the dawn of time.
Stories around the ancient campfire at night, all the way to the latest blockbusters opening up this weekend.
Some things are better said directly, others are better explained through metaphor.
It would seem that humans are hard wired to only understand certain "truths" if they are told in story format.
After all, Aesop could have gone around to all the Kindergartens in ancient Greece and told the kids that it's better to be consistent than run in fast spurts, or that preparing for a long winter is better than goofing off until the last minute.
But as I'm sure you know, had he done that, those great moral teachings would have gone in one ear and out the other.
But putting them in a story, with animal characters that interact with each others like humans, and people will remember them for the ages.
One powerful way to use stories is to overcome beliefs.
It's one to impart a simple truth, like be nice to your friends, but it's on a completely different level when you can weave a story that paces their current beliefs, and through a fascinating metaphor, shows them another way of thinking.
One of the reasons this is so powerful is they really won't have any idea what you're doing exactly.
They'll just think your rambling on with a pretty interesting story about something that happened to you back in the day.
Only when you're done, they'll suddenly have a different way of looking at things, and that old belief, or objection they had, will have vanished.