I talk often about the need to put some of yourself into your stories.

Today I’m going to beat on that drum again, but perhaps from a slightly different angle…

Not putting yourself into your stories commodifies your business and raises your cost of sale.

Remember, people buy from people. Even in the most rational of B2B sales, in the end there’s still a person buying from another person, and that person wants to know what kind of person he or she is dealing with. If you don’t give the other person some data, you are a risk, and risk suppresses prices.

You don’t need to go to the extreme and talk about how you found God while sitting in your underwear on the edge of a bed in a cheap, dimly-lit motel room out in the middle of nowhere, head in hands, crying over a half-empty bottle of whisky.

But by succumbing to the misconception that “professional” business communication needs to be stripped of you, you commodify your business and raise your cost of sale.