Over the years I’ve heard countless business professionals talk about the services they are selling. But the ones I remember the most are those who spent time telling me something personal about themselves as well as what they do.
I try to embody this whenever I hit the road on a speaking tour. Life coaching has as much to do with the person speaking as it does the person listening, and I’ve noticed whenever I used personal anecdotes the percentage of people engaged increases significantly.
It’s all about establishing personal connections with people. We don’t merely prefer to trust the individual selling us products or services; we need to trust them.
I have 5 daughters. They, along with my wife, mean everything to me. So whenever I am speaking, if I can find an effective and truthful way of including them in my personal story, I will. The audience sees how much I love my family and I can see how it resonates with them. Sometimes the men in the audience will even approach me afterwards and jokingly comfort me for having a 6-1 gender ratio working against me in the household. Often, these individuals become regular clients and come out to more than one of my talks.
“People don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it.” – Simon Sinek
Find something in your life that speaks to who you are and the passions you embody. You’ll soon find your most loyal clients will be asking about those passions on the regular.