In David Mattson’s book “The Sandler Rules”, he obviously goes through a numerous amount of ideas that he displays as his rules to selling. Recently, we discussed in class the fourth rule, which is expressing feelings through a third party story. When we discussed this in class, a couple ideas were discussed on why it can work. First Third party stories can make situations less threatening, less personal, and less intimidating. Also, story-telling is an age-old method for breathing through emotional and psychological clutter. Stories are something that can get a conversation going, lighten things up. People are usually all ears when listening to stories.
We are specifically discussing third party stories. Actually, during last class someone used a third party story in his sales pitch. When discussing vending machines on a golf course with the owner, he discussed how over the years his grandfather would play golf and enjoyed the owners course that was being discussed. I thought this was good, because while it was not a direct personal connection, it was a nice way to get the conversation started and have the two people in discussion feel more comfortable.
I actually had a recent interview that I was very nervous for, and the person who was interviewing me asked me about passions of mine. When I discussed my passion for golf with him, he actually told me a story of one of his high school friends and his crazy path to the PGA tour. It really lightened up the situation and made the interview very comfortable for both of us.
Overall, I believe that third party stories can be very beneficial to a discussion.
BoweryJE22
I really enjoyed that you brought a personal story into your post about the application of using stories. Sometimes you want to tell someone something, but you don’t want to be offensive, so using a third person story is a great way to de-escalate almost any situation. Great post!