To Make More Sales, Try Making More Friends
by C.J. Hayden
Published on this site: November 29th, 2005 - See
more articles from this month
"Learn to love, respect and enjoy other people."
- Dale Carnegie
In 1936, Dale Carnegie published "How to Win Friends
and Influence People." Since then, his book has sold
more than 15 million copies and is widely credited as being
the first book in the modern self-help genre.
The core of Carnegie's simple philosophy is that one of the
greatest human needs is to feel important. If you want to
win people over to your way of thinking, they need to like
you. And the way to get them to do that is to take an interest
in them.
When learning how to sell better, we often hear the advice
to ask questions and listen to the customer. This advice,
though, is frequently given in the context of using questions
to gather information helpful to the sales process, and to
listen for clues that will help you convince the customer
to buy.
What Carnegie suggested was that the true path to being a
successful salesperson, leader, or well-liked individual was
not to focus on your desired outcome, but to put your attention
on the other person. Here are Carnegie's six ways to get what
you want by making people like you:
- Become genuinely interested in other people.
- Smile.
- Remember that a person's name is to that person the sweetest
and most important sound in any language.
- Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
- Talk in terms of the other person's interests.
- Make the other person feel important - and do it sincerely.
Notice the emphasis on being genuine and on sincerity. Despite
the fact that Carnegie was talking about how to persuade
people
to adopt your point of view, this really isn't some sort
of manipulative sales technique. It's a recipe for making
friends.
This idea wasn't just a personal theory of Carnegie's. To
write his book, he interviewed the most successful people
of his day, from Clark Gable to Franklin D. Roosevelt. He
studied the writings of philosophers from Confucius to
Benjamin Franklin, and the lives of famous leaders from Abraham
Lincoln to Henry Ford.
Carnegie spoke with many professional salespeople, and also
with many of their customers. Here's what he discovered:
"Thousands of salespeople are pounding the pavements
today, tired, discouraged and underpaid. Why? Because they
are always thinking only of what they want... The world is
full of people who are grabbing and self-seeking. So the rare
individual who unselfishly tries to serve others has an enormous
advantage. He has little competition."
All the great salespeople I know are people others refer
to with adjectives like "friendly," "nice,"
and "likable." When you see them across a room,
you are drawn to them. When you get on the phone with them,
you don't want to hang up. They seem to have the ability of
making you feel as if their conversation with you is the only
thing in the world that matters to them.
And they're not faking it.
What sort of shift might it create
in your selling if you took Carnegie's advice to heart? If
instead of trying to make
sales, you simply set about making friends? Imagine what
a difference it would make to how you dealt with everything
from cold calling to attending networking events.
Picture yourself on a cold call, smiling, talking about the
other person's concerns, and making him or her feel important.
Visualize yourself at a Chamber of Commerce mixer, getting
people to talk about themselves, and expressing your interest
in what they have to say.
Showing a genuine interest in others not only makes them
feel good, it makes you feel good. Instead of trying to
convince
someone of your point of view, your job becomes to see everything
from the other person's side. Conversations that used to
be
challenging sales situations can instead become opportunities
to make new friends.
If this approach appeals to you, here's what to do next in
Carnegie's own words: "So, if you desire to master the
principles you are studying in this book, do something about
them. Apply these rules at every opportunity. If you don't
you will forget them quickly. Only knowledge that is used
sticks in your mind."
C.J. Hayden is the author of Get Clients NOW!
Thousands of business owners and salespeople have used her
simple sales and marketing system to double or triple their
income. Get a free copy of "Five Secrets to Finding All
the Clients You'll Ever Need" at http://www.getclientsnow.com
|
