“If some people are so hungry for a feeling of
importance that they actually go insane to get it, imagine what miracle you and
I can achieve by giving people honest appreciation this side of insanity.”
― Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People
― Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People
A couple of years after I joined TriFactor, we were given copies
of the famous book “How to Win Friends and Influence People”, written by Dale
Carnegie. At the time, I had known who
Dale Carnegie was and the famous book he wrote but I had never read it. So dutifully I read it and it made absolute
sense to me, making the complexity of interpersonal relationships simpler to
grasp and digest. I enjoyed it so much I
first gave it to my two older sons and asked them to read it and then paid my
two younger sons to read it. You know
how that goes, but in the end I was able to make sure they all read it.
The book is full of wonderful lessons and historical examples of
their honest and effective use. I am
gravitated to the chapter of the book that begins with the statement “He who can do this has the whole world with
him. He who cannot walks a lonely
way” It speaks to me and the book continues with “So the only way on earth to influence other
people is to talk about what they want and show them how to get it” How
true it is in our everyday lives when we meet customers and get so excited to
talk about our competence and our list of accomplishments which are important
to us and important in general when really it is our customers that should be
doing the talking.
We should strive for our customers to do the talking. How else will we know what is important to
them? In a distribution environment,
there are many variables and definitions of success which are unique to the
customer and unique to the main person responsible for the project. You may deal with the owner who is interested
in reducing labor, increase efficiency or stay in his facility longer to avoid
the expense of moving to a bigger facility.
You may be dealing with a Distribution Manager who wants to improve
customer service, improve the performance on company operational metrics and
prove his/her worth to the company. No
matter what it is that our customers want, we can’t give it to them if we don’t
make it our first priority to find out what it is.
Difficult as it may be, sometimes we must suspend what we want in
order to influence our customers to walk our way.
For more information from Greg, view his page at www.trifactor.com/greg
