#27 - Sincere compliments (President's Day Edition)

"Man will stand a great deal when they are flattered" - Abraham Lincoln. Working in sales (like I do) you pretty much find that you can have the best, highest quality, most sensibly priced product for the value, but for most people, this is, ultimately, of little consequence. The best way to make a sale is to someway, somehow find some commonality, so as to build rapport and start the beginnings of trust. Once you've done that with a prospect it's almost always a good idea you find some way to genuinely (ideally) compliment them on something. Their taste, their obvious wisdom to buy what you're selling, their shirt, anything as long as you mean it. From that point, it's only the most disciplined, or hardened person who won't respond positively to you and what you have to offer by way of product or service. They may or may not buy, but at least they'll listen and consider what you have to say, which is farther than you ever would've gotten if you had just plowed ahead with the features and what-not of what you're offering.

Go ahead and try to be closed off and hostile to someone who admires and genuinely seems interested in you. For 99.9% of us, our favorite person and subject is ourselves, so when we have a chance to meaningfully talk to someone who seems as interested in or admires us as much as we do ourselves, we are compelled, almost by an invisible hand, to soften our stance and be more pliable to what someone has to offer us. It's as if our egos override any common sense or intellectual reasoning whatsoever. It's virtually the same idea as when you were a kid and you waited until mom and dad were in a good mood before asking them for something. The odds of them going along with it were much better.

The next time you have to deal with a difficult person, remember this principle, and "kill em' with kindness". Find something good about them and milk it for all it's worth. Due to the law of reciprocity it's nearly impossible to return human caring and kindness with invective and difficulty. It's not so much much phoniness, so much as verbal akido. See if that "tough cookie" doesn't get a little softer.