{"id":1237,"date":"2010-09-03T14:03:04","date_gmt":"2010-09-03T14:03:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/?p=1237"},"modified":"2010-09-03T14:06:04","modified_gmt":"2010-09-03T14:06:04","slug":"extend-your-influence-by-extending-trust-a-social-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/2010\/09\/extend-your-influence-by-extending-trust-a-social-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Extend your influence by extending trust: a social story"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A stranger walks into your store and tells you about his problem. After asking him a few questions to help you understand the problem, you hand him a brand new pair of shoes and tell him to try them for couple weeks. \u201cIf they work,\u201d you say, \u201cjust come back and pay for them. If they don\u2019t, we\u2019ll try a different pair.\u201d Typical? Probably not.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s exactly what <a href=\"http:\/\/northcentralcardinals.com\/sports\/2009\/2\/18\/MXC_0218094757.aspx?id=85\">Jeff Milliman, the 1980 NCAA cross country champion<\/a>, did in 1998 for <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/thebrandbuilder\">Olivier Blanchard<\/a>. Olivier wrote about his experience with Jeff in a 2005 blog post called <a href=\"http:\/\/thebrandbuilder.wordpress.com\/2005\/10\/25\/that-bond-called-trust\/\">That Bond of Trust<\/a>. I caught up with Jeff today at his new home at Go Run, a part of <a href=\"http:\/\/gotrisports.com\/\">Go Tri Sports<\/a>, in downtown Greenville, South Carolina.<\/p>\n<p><center><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/14597959\" width=\"400\" height=\"225\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/vimeo.com\/14597959\">Social Story: Tell me about Olivier. A story of trust.<\/a> from <a href=\"http:\/\/vimeo.com\/treypennington\">Trey Pennington<\/a> on <a href=\"http:\/\/vimeo.com\">Vimeo<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><\/center><\/p>\n<p>Please note a few really cool things about this social story:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li> Jeff just did what he always does: listens to people and then applies his knowledge to try to help solve their problems.<\/li>\n<li>Jeff is willing to take a risk in order to fulfill his passion.<\/li>\n<li>Jeff did the unexpected and went the extra mile and SEVEN YEARS LATER the object of his generosity, Olivier Blanchard, wrote about it. (How many shoe salesmen have people writing glowing stories about them seven years after the sale, or seven hours?)<\/li>\n<li>Jeff\u2019s act of generosity and Olivier\u2019s act of gratitude enabled an long lost friend to reconnect with Jeff after nearly 20 years apart.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That means you never can tell when the harvest of your generosity will come.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Olivier wrote about Jeff five years ago. I\u2019m writing about Olivier\u2019s 1998 experience with Jeff today. Olivier says he\u2019s sent many people to see Jeff. I\u2019ve already sent several folks to him, too, because of Olivier. Jeff\u2019s generosity and trust makes him incredibly influential. However, if you go see Jeff, you will KNOW he doesn\u2019t care at all about how much influence he has. He doesn\u2019t need a score, or his avatar in a magazine, to tell him he\u2019s influential. He just doesn\u2019t care about his influence\u2014he just wants to make sure you have the shoes you need to do whatever it is you want to do. That\u2019s all.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Seems like a good way to extend one\u2019s influence is to take a risk to ensure customers succeed.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>_______________<\/p>\n<p>To see Olivier Blanchard in person and hear more about developing and delivering memorable stories, <a href=\"http:\/\/socialstorygvl.eventbrite.com\/\">register to attend the September 24th Social Story Conference<\/a> in Greenville, South Carolina.<\/p>\n<p>To get the perfect running shoes for you, visit Jeff Milliman at <a href=\"http:\/\/gotrisports.com\/\">Go Run<\/a>, 400 E McBee Avenue, Greenville, SC 29601 or call him at 864-232-9400.<\/p>\n<p>Thank you to Verizon Wireless for helping make video vignettes of Social Story available.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A stranger walks into your store and tells you about his problem. After asking him a few questions to help you understand the problem, you hand him a brand new pair of shoes and tell him to try them for couple weeks. \u201cIf they work,\u201d you say, \u201cjust come back and pay for them. If &#8230; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/2010\/09\/extend-your-influence-by-extending-trust-a-social-story\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[137,54],"tags":[647,648,455,310,178,103],"class_list":["post-1237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-posts","category-treypennington","tag-customer","tag-extend","tag-influence","tag-story","tag-success","tag-trust"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1237"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1240,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1237\/revisions\/1240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}