It's
tempting to open a conversation with a prospective client with a tale of your
epic vacation to Tahiti. You had a wonderful time, the weather was beautiful
and Tahiti is an exotic place few people get to enjoy. Who wouldn't enjoy
hearing about your epic vacation?
It turns
out, you will feel worse off after having told the story because people will
feel less like you. I've noticed this phenomenon in my own sales presentations
but didn't understand why this occurred. Epic tales (a large purchase or exotic
vacation, for instance) are extraordinary. To be extraordinary is to be
different, and social interaction is grounded in similarities. It runs counter
to what you would expect, but social research backs this idea up. Participants
in a recent study thought that sharing their extraordinary experiences would
make for an engaging conversation. But in fact, the opposite happened as the
people being told the extraordinary story felt more distant and less able to
relate to them.