If you boil it down Selling 101, is all about figuring out what is your customer’s false belief?

What’s the story they’re currently telling themselves?

Figure out a story that trumps theirs.

And if your story is better than theirs, it will rewrite their story and your truth will become their truth, and then they’ll follow you to the end of the world.

And this is true for just about anything.

For example, if I want to convince you to come to a movie and you are thinking, ‘I don’t know if I want to see that movie.”

Then I tell you a story about, “This is why.” And if my story is better than yours, you’ll think, “Alright cool. That does sound good. Let’s go to the movie.”

Or let’s say, you’re going out to eat, and the others want to go somewhere and you want to go somewhere else.

They want to go to their place and they have a story in their head about why they want to go there, or why they don’t want to go to where you want to go.

You have to tell a story that trumps their story. If your story trumps theirs, they will rewrite their story and they’ll come with you.

So that’s the whole notion.

Basically, this is selling versus persuading.

“Selling is when you’re trying to get somebody to do something for your reasons, where persuading is getting them to do something for their reasons.”

So, the core foundational principle of persuasion is story telling.

How do I or you for that matter tell a story that gets them to change their story?

Not every time are you going to be able to convince somebody.

If you could you would have a 100% closing rate, which obviously would be insane,

In truth, if you can get 3%, 5% or 10% of the people who hear your story to shift their story, that’s gradually how you build a substantial business through marketing.

We simply have to become better at telling stories.

Start by thinking about your everyday situations.

Look at your spouse or your kids or your co-workers, or your friends. Start looking for opportunities where they want to do something and it’s different from what you want to do. And then, this is the time for you to start flexing your story muscle, start building it up, give it a workout.

Okay, “They want to go see this movie, I want to go see that movie.”

Or my partner wants to go here, and I want to go there. How do I tell the story about what I want to do?

Let me try to tell it in a way that inspires and motivates and persuades her or him or whatever, to change their beliefs and to follow me.

And the more you practice that, the better for you.

Again, to do this think…

What’s the story someone’s telling themselves and how can I come in and trump it.

I’m not talking about one upping their story. You guys all know those people, the one uppers, where you tell a story like  “I went and swam 30 km and I did it in an hour and a half and it was really, really cool. I’m really proud of myself.” And they’re like, “I swam 35 and I did it in 40 minutes.” You’re like, “Alright. Jerk.”

That’s a one upper, and that’s not what I’m talking about.

I’m talking about your partner saying, “Hey, tonight I would really love to just stay in and watch TV because I’m tired and I don’t really want to go out.”

And you in your mind are like, “I really want to go out. I have this plan.”

So it’s coming back and saying something like,

“Cool, we can do that, or I was wondering, what would be super, super cool. Imagine this, we arrange a sitter for the kids, we call so and so, she comes over and she’s going to watch the kids and we can leave.

And then I thought it’s been a while so let’s dress up a bit, and then when we go to the Westin and try that new place. You know that place that is hopping and apparently the menu is to die for …”

You get the picture describing and explaining how amazing it’s going to be.

“And after that we drop into the Crown. There’s this duelling piano competition, we could go listen to them for a while. And then I think it’d be fun to go on a late night walk and just look at the moon and the stars. It’d be super awesome. So that’s what I kind of visualised. Or we could stay home. What would you rather do?”

Now, if you tell the story right, they’re in the middle of this thing and they’re envisioning like, “Oh my gosh, that would be cool. And the pianos would be super fun. And the kids would be taken care of from the babysitter. This could be romantic.”

That story alone would give them the motivation and the energy to be like, “Yeah, you know what, let’s not just stay home and do nothing. That does sound amazing.” And all of a sudden, boom, their story has been rewritten and now I have persuaded my partner to do what she really wanted to do anyway.

So that’s it my friends. Story trumping.

Start practicing it in your everyday lives.

Start looking at the stories that your friends, your family members, your customers are telling themselves, and then start building that muscle.

Start practicing just telling better stories.

Again, you’re not going to win every single time, but the more you practice, the better you’ll become and the better you’ll become at persuading people. Because persuasion in my mind is all about understanding the story they’re telling themselves, and telling the new story that’s more exciting, it’s better and gets them to rewrite their story and believe your truth.

That’s all it is.

That’s how I am building my business, that’s how I constantly market.

That’s how I package my client's messages, basically everything in my professional life is all about that, it’s me really becoming clear, what’s the story they are telling themselves, and what’s the better story that I can look at and research and find, that’s going to trump their story?

And, I’m going to tell it in a way that inspires them and makes them be like, “Oh my gosh, you’re right. That does sound way better. I’m in. Let’s go.”