“Self-Relevance Effect”
What is the Self-Relevance Effect?
People remember things that they find relatable or that involve a personally relevant experience.

Business Relevance
Self-relevance is an important factor in modern day sales. “Sales through storytelling” is becoming a popular format for creating empathy in the sales process and getting the prospect to establish a larger emotional investment in your brand.
Difficulty
Everyone has a unique journey so you must dig deep to find elements of a presentation that can be universally relevant.
Everyday Application
If you’re targeting a specific industry, talk about your specific experiences as a user. This will conjure up self relevance from a prospect as they envision the same encounter from their perspective.
“I bought a car from a dealership and their sales tactics were completely paint-by-numbers. It made me feel like I was just a social science experiment to see what tricks could be employed to get me to buy sooner. I ended up shopping the deal to a competitor.”

Tom Waters
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