This story is a little old now but it says so much about how a company becomes trusted and wins new business.

Steph Curry is among the best basketball players in the modern era, likely of all time. He’s led an unfashionable NBA team to titles and is maybe the most famous three-point king.

Back in 2013 he was merely very good, rather than great. He was already wearing Nike kit but there was a famous meeting where Nike pitched him on becoming one of its front-line stars.

The story goes that Nike didn’t send its top execs to the meeting, and one of those who was there mispronounced Curry’s first name.

Lastly, the presentation deck contained the name of another famous NBA player, giving away the company’s reuse of slides. According to reports at the time, this led Dell Curry, Steph’s father, advisor and a former NBA player himself, to say: “I stopped paying attention after that.”

KYC

We’ve written about Nike many times and are generally big followers and fans of how it builds its business, even if it faces many challenges right now.

But the lesson from the above is that you have to know your customer. Or prospect. Or, in fact, anyone you’re doing business with.

There is basic respect, which we should all have, at all times. But then there is really showing someone that you know them.

We always say that this goes beyond knowing an industry. Stopping at ‘industry expertise’ is the mistake many make. You have to know the company you’re engaging with and information about the person and their role.

Some have called this the ‘show me you know me’ approach.

In sales, it can open doors. But we’d argue that for most companies this is about more than initial interactions. It’s forever.

TTU

The reason is that deep understanding leads to trust. And trust is at the centre of all that’s good.

Whereas many of you reading this will know the abbreviation ‘KYC’ that I used above. It means ‘know your customer’ and it’s used a lot in financial services, for example when someone signs up for a new service.

At Collective Content, we use ‘TTU’ as shorthand for ‘trust through understanding’, which is our tag line.

By understanding, and demonstrating that understanding, over a long period of time, you stand a better chance of winning over time.

A better chance than Nike with Steph Curry, anyway. He famously ended up going with Under Armour.