1. How To Avoid the Credibility Problem

Did you ever have lunch with an old friend who called…

And you spend a wonderful couple of hours catching up on husbands, children, the problems, the good things, like…

Your friend has lost 35 pounds since you last saw her a few years ago, and she tells you how she did it with this wonderful product that finally worked for her. And you are delighted for her of course, and so on and on.

At the end of the lunch, your friend tells you that she is selling the weight loss product she was chattering about.

Question: How do you feel now, about all the gushing she did about the product?

Readers say words like “used a little” or “Maybe the lunch was really just about selling the product” or “Oh THAT’s why she called…” come to mind.  Does it feel good or not?

Notice the problem is not that the product didn’t work. It did. But because she didn’t tell you up front she was selling it, before all the gushing, the truth itself is now suddenly suspect.

Moral: If you start gushing about any product (or company) without letting the listener know up front that you are selling it, you risk your credibility.

This is not like recommending a restaurant or a movie. You don’t have a financial interest in those. But with a product or business you market, you do. And when it finally comes out, everything you said, even if true, comes into question. BECAUSE YOU ARE SELLING IT. And you didn’t tell up front.

And how will you react next time the same friend calls you to chat?

Avoid the credibility problem. ALWAYS tell up front.

2. Richard Price writer of books and movies. FOCUS ON YOUR DIFFERENCE (or weirdness)

Mr. Price was insecure because he was different. He decided to focus on THAT. It worked so well, he got $1.7 million for the film rights to his novel…

When Mr. Price first started writing he confided that he was insecure because he thought he should write what ‘they’ wanted to read or hear. Or what he was supposed to say.

“You know, when you start writing, you write about stuff that you think people want to hear, or stuff that you had to read in school.  And you thought, “Well this is literature!”…but it was intimidating – and so my writing was very self-conscious.”

Hmm. Sound familiar? He continues:

“I was at Cornell University, the only guy from the Bronx. It made me feel insecure. I was surrounded by people who weren’t from the Bronx, who couldn’t care less about it. Yet that’s the only thing I had to keep my head above water in this strange new environment where everybody was either from the Midwest or from wealthy suburban families. So I started acting very Bronx, like “This is who I am.”

Then it leaked over into my writing. I began writing as a way of preserving my ego, to say, “Well this is the thing that makes me special: I’m from the Bronx.”

If you feel that strongly about your product or business, like it’s an extension of who you are, could you do that too? Focus on what makes you different from those around you the way he did?  Anyway, after that is when Mr. Price’s success started coming fast…

“I started writing about it and I realized, for the first time, I was writing what I really felt. I wasn’t thinking about, Well gee, how did [some mucky-muck] do this?” It was like, “This is my experience.”
“I didn’t do it for literature, I was trying to make myself special. And…my voice has never been a problem for me (since) and only got better because it came out a a particular place (within me) rather than just drifting around all over.” p 78-79, American Screenwriters

Instead of hiding that he had different values and experiences from others around him, he decided to focus on the very things that made him different. Why not you?  If you love the values your product represents, or the business, go right ahead and start talking from the basis of YOUR interests, YOUR values and YOUR story. Isn’t that who YOU are?  That’s what makes you stand out – and reach an audience who appreciates who you are. And buys from you.

Learn how to lead with who you are.  Product here.  Business here. Click around and get a taste. Or find out about training sessions I might do for your group.  Or join a December tele-class here.