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One Story Can Instill Trust.

Hi I’m Brian Pombo welcome back to Grants Pass Oregon and another episode of Brian J. Pombo Live. Every day we bring you a new tip, idea, perspective, ways to think and act in your business strategies. Hopefully that’ll be helpful to you somewhere along the line.

Today we’re going to talk about stories.

Again, we talked about them yesterday, how stories can change the message of your business, how you can use them in your marketing and advertising. I’m going to relate with you a story that was related to me years ago and I’ve heard it a couple times since from somebody that’s in the direct marketing field.

He had this story that he likes to tell at the end after discussing a business opportunity with somebody. At the very end, he’ll tell this story and supposedly it’s a true story yet honestly, I heard it from one of the people that was involved in it. So I believe it to be true.

And how it went was he was driving along one time with somebody else and the guys said, hey, you gotta make sure you put your seatbelts on. And he said, well, I don’t know, we’re not going that far. I don’t wear seatbelts that often.

And he said, no, no, no seatbelts saved me and my wife’s life. He said, oh, really? Tell me about it. So then this guy tells him the story. He says, listen, my wife and I, at one time, we never wore seatbelts. And one time we were going out and all of a sudden she said, we’ve got to put our seatbelts on. And so I listened to her, I said, because it seemed right. It was just weird because we never wore a seatbelt. So we put our seatbelts on and sure enough, within a few minutes later down the road, we get hit and the car flips over, totals the car.

And what ends up happening is we’re left there and fine. We were fine, a few scratches here and there, and they told us that if we wouldn’t have been wearing seatbelts, we would have been dead. So he says, from that point on, I always wear my seatbelt because seatbelt saved my life.

And my friend says to him, you know, it’s a very good story, but seatbelts did not save your life. He says, no, did you just hear me? I just told you the whole thing. Seatbelts totally saved my life. They said, it happened.

Everything else, I am certain the seatbelt saved our life. And he said, it was not the seatbelt that saved your life. It was that little voice on the inside of you and your wife that told you to put the seatbelt on that saved your life.

How my friend use this as he would say. Now if you put yourself in the same perspective, if you’re looking at this opportunity, there’s going to be a small voice that says yay or nay and you got to listen to that voice one way or the other.

Either you move ahead with us or not, but you’ve got to make sure you listen to that small voice. Now just take it from the perspective regardless of whether the story was true or whether the story within the story was true or whether this person was even well-meaning to bring up this story. While he’s in the process of talking to someone about a business opportunity.

Set all that aside as if as if none of that mattered and just look at it strategically.

What is happening psychologically with a person when they hear a story like that from somebody?

For one thing, it’s an engaging story.

It’s one of those that kind of sticks with you. If you’ve listened to it and I said it correctly, it’ll probably stick with you for awhile. It was one of those that always stuck with me because I had heard it years ago and every once a while it’ll pop back up.

Not only in my mind but I’ll hear other people bring it up. It’s one of just one of those that has a stickiness to it. There’s just something innate, whether it be an innate truth or something about it that just makes you want to pay attention to it.

So it has that going for it. It also has the fact that it puts you back on yourself to make a decision versus any type of trickery on the, if a person was selling something or anything like that, trying to push you one way or the other and decision.

It puts you back on yourself to make the decision that automatically makes the person that’s talking about the process, almost like a third person and not an unengaged partner in a sense.

And it leaves you feeling okay about the whole matter that you can go one way or the other and that’s okay.

Whereas if a person’s too salesy and too pushy to try and get you in, sometimes you recoil at that and you want to go the opposite direction.

Or if a person is extremely, you know, kind of a jerk about it, like they don’t even want you to purchase it, then you’re kind of weirded out by that too.

But if a person’s kind of just solid in how they say, hey you can take it or leave it, but look on the inside for it, that innate truth. When you put something like that on your side via a story, all of a sudden that gives great power.

There’s a power behind that because you’re relating with the goodness of the story, whether you’re good or meaning right or not.

Using a good story like that can help relate the right message and put a person in the right frame of mind and give a person kind of the good feelings associated that you would want them associated with you if you’re going to have any type of long-term relationship or if you’re going to sell them on something or anything of that sort.

So this is the value of a powerful story, a powerful story like that I could take and pull that out in any time and use it to fit a certain scenario.

Listen to stories and pay attention to the ones that hit you.

The little parables, the quick little jokes, the little things like this that had meaning, which ones stick with you and which ones don’t and why and how would you go about using that as a way to communicate your message to your audience.

So that’s just one concept. That’s one little idea. One little example of how to use a story to be able to touch people and to be able to make that connection so that you can reach them via the market, whatever you’re wanting them to do.

It’s a great way to be able to break the ice, if nothing else.

Tomorrow I’m going to tell you the story of this chair. This chair is shaped like a hand. You can’t see it that well right now, but tomorrow we’ll look a little closer at it.

I’ve got a story behind this and why after 20 years I still own a large plastic chair shape like a hand.

We’ll talk about that tomorrow. Hopefully it’ll be helpful to you just like today and we will see you then get out there and let the magic happen.