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Human beings are not good at separating fact from fiction. But surely hard-nosed B2B professionals are different? Our research suggests otherwise.
In two experiments with 622 B2B sales professionals, we gave participants a negotiation scenario in which a buyer either lied or told the truth. We then gave half the participants a story from the buyer — a brief anecdote about their company helping a farming family in need. The other half received no story.
Salespeople who read the story were 17% more willing to make concessions and developed 10% more trust in the buyer’s integrity. Surprisingly, the story worked just as well even when the buyer had lied.
Why? Psychologists call it narrative transportation: When people become immersed in a story, they momentarily lose sight of their context and their skepticism. Think of crying at a movie you know is fictional.
This vulnerability may become harder to guard against as AI tools proliferate. In a separate unpublished experiment, only 17% of 308 participants recognized that their negotiation counterpart was a bot. The inability to distinguish human from AI, coupled with our vulnerability to narrative persuasion, points to a risk that warrants attention as AI becomes more capable.
Together, these findings suggest that in negotiations, we are vulnerable to deceptive storytellers — human or not. Here are three things managers should do differently.
1. Don’t decide in the shadow of a story. Stories are most persuasive the moment they’re told, because that’s when human judgment is most impaired. Introduce a simple rule: No pricing or concession decisions during or immediately after listening to a storyteller.
2. Separate persuasion from verification. Assign someone on your team the explicit role of checking facts in real time, not participating in the negotiation. Their job is to surface inconsistencies while the main negotiator is in the flow.
3. Verify your counterpart, not just their claims. Don’t assume that you’re interacting with a human. For high-stakes negotiations, move to a video call or incorporate checks that require human judgment.
In a world where machines can negotiate on someone’s behalf, knowing when you’re being told a story — and by whom — has never mattered more.