Letting someone else speak for you
If you’re in business or if you’ve chosen something as a career it’s probably a path that you’re passionate about and an area where you have knowledge and experience. Naturally you want to tell the whole world about it and share that passion and knowledge.
The problem is you don’t want to appear to be biased and self promoting and risk potential customers disliking you and worse not believing you.
A good way round this is to find someone who can speak on your behalf, at least as an introduction. This could be a work colleague or someone who knows you well or even a paid professional who can present the case. The key is to have someone who your audience will see as being a qualified witness to your expertise in the subject and evidence suggests that people will not be influenced by whether this person is paid or otherwise.
Authors Noah J.Goldenstein and Steve J. Martin carried out a psychological experiment to prove this. Participants were asked to imagine themselves in the role of senior editor for a book publisher, facing the task of dealing with an experienced and successful author. They were asked to read excerpts from a negotiation for a sizeable book advance. One group read excerpts talking about the author’s accomplishments spoken by the author’s agent and the second group read the same identical comments made by the author himself. The resulting data confirmed that : “Participants rated the author more favourably on nearly every scale – especially likeability – when the author’s agent sang his praises as compared to when the author tooted his own horn.”
This is a technique we’ve recommended to clients at Recorded Devilery, where we’ve made short video clips using comments from experts and satisfied customers in a documentary format, rather than in house glossy self-promoting videos.
