One of my closest friends is business and branding guru Steve Yastrow. You know him as the lead guitarist in our Teffilah Band. Steve and I are writing partners. Sometimes we sit and write together, sometimes share ideas, sometimes wage a friendly competition of whose book will see the light of day first. His third book is called Ditch the Pitch. In his blog last week he wrote:
One of the main reasons we need to ditch the pitch is that our customers really don't want to listen to us talking about ourselves. Customers are much more interested in talking about their own stories than they are interested in hearing the stories we tell about ourselves. How do you make your story relevant to a customer who is not predisposed to hearing it? Your challenge when communicating with a customer is to evolve from "your story" and "my story" to "our story." "Our story" is a shared story, in which your customer comes to see you as integral to her own story.
http://yastrow.com/category/ditch-the-pitch/
The shared story! Indeed, the spiritual life is one that connects the dots, making sense out of the empty spaces.
Rabbi Karyn Kedar