How many times have you felt like an organization was assaulting you with its story, trying to tell you about itself rather than giving you something you want to hear? It’s sad to say, but it happens so often that most of us don’t even notice anymore. We just tune them out.

Ask any good salesperson and he or she will tell you that you that you must answer two questions before any kind of business relationship can begin:

1. Do I like you?

2. Do I trust you?

These are the two human triggers. When addressed genuinely, they help propel an engagement forward.

When your competition spends all their time talking about themselves, it opens the door for you to win the day by addressing the two triggers.

How to address Trigger 1: Do I like you?

Addressing Trigger 1 is all about building a rapport with those we hope to engage. This is why savvy marketers quickly move to storytelling. Storytelling is irresistible to us humans. It’s been around since the most ancient times. We do it almost unconsciously in our everyday interactions. We recount events with a story of what happened. If we’re trying to explain something, it’s not unusual for us to say, “It’s like this…” And then we’ll invent a story to illustrate. We love stories. It’s why there are Harry Potter books and movie theaters. When we tap into the foundations of storytelling in our marketing, we access an ancient mechanism that has unrivaled powers. That aids in helping our prospects to accept us. But to get them to like us, there is a critical orientation our stories must have. They must not be about us. We are not the hero of the story. Our prospects are the heroes. So the story is about them. If we want to them to like us (and we want it to happen quickly), we must tell stories with them as the hero.

How to address Trigger 2: Do I trust you?

To establish trust, we must signal that we are genuinely interested in their betterment. We do this by being generous. We generously offer our help. We generously offer our knowledge. For a bank client, we put together a simple guide on how to easily save to create an emergency fund. When we give away knowledge and tools, we quickly build a trust that, otherwise, could take years to establish. While our competitors are blathering on about their industry-leading whatever, we can be winning the day by simply giving our prospects the help and knowledge that will make a real difference in their lives. And make us their trusted choice next time they need a product or service like ours.

The monumental shift

In the old days, it was all “tell and sell”. Times have changed. If we want people to like and trust us, we must shift to a model of “empathize and help”. There is incredible opportunity right now. Just look at the massive amount of organizations that continue to assault us with the old “tell and sell” model. Most of your competitors are probably stuck in that old way of thinking. Now’s the time to move. The triggers are there. What are you going to do?