Sure, the book written in 1936 is old, but a lot of lessons Carnegie preaches in "How to Win Friends and Influence People" absolutely still apply! **See book lessons at conclusion of article.
Today, we continue down the path of developing meaningful relationships with our clients by implementing proven sales psychology (adapted for 2018). This is not "taking advantage" in a Svengalian way, rather using our understanding of how people behave and adapting our communications to more properly align to these findings.
In our blog "How to get raving clients", we discuss how people behave when buying a product or service. Hint: it's not rational, but emotional. It's not to say we are behaving irrationally, we actually believe we are acting out of reason. However, it's our value-judgements that we project onto data which is most important, and that's experiential/interpretative/emotional.
Okay, I digress. If we accept as a premise that people behave emotionally (as a hard-coded defense mechanism we've been largely unable to transcend), then ipso facto, TRUST becomes the most critical element of the sales process.
Wow! That's a lot of words to say, "We buy from people we trust".
We've discussed in our previous blogs how to create more trust in the sales process; a big one is by Reciprocal Selling. Now, let's discuss using online communications.
A social experiment was conducted by Harvard University that shows how to get others to like you more and it's simple, Ask Questions, particularly relevant follow-up questions about the other person.
So how can we adapt this proven concept into developing trust with our disembodied audience online? The key translatable element is "interest and engagement". Having genuine interest in your audience and actively seeking to engage them is what endears them to you (individually) and to your brand.
Here's a few tips based on the content you're creating:
• Blog: Start off with a Big Question that you get from your audience or that you KNOW is on their collective mind. Alternatively, have a Q & A and provide accreditation to the originator of the inquiries. You can even tag all who contribute when you post the blog on social media.
• Video: A similar format as a blog with either a pressing question you aim to answer or responding to viewer submitted inquiries. For live streams, take Q & A in the comments section and thank those that contribute to the cast. Short video interviews are a compelling way to show that you care about what your clients are concerned with.
• Forum: A forum is a great venue for bi-directional communications because where a blog is great for unilateral education, a forum is conversational. Also, a Forum helps position the company as "leaders in thought" even though the thoughts are largely crowd-sourced.
• Social Media: Engaging the audience on social media can take many forms. A great way to start a spark is to bring up a newsworthy question that relates to your business and ask for (feedback, help, ideas, contribution). People love to be a part of solving large problems, but be careful not to look incompetent. Also, try not to be to inwardly focused like "Which logo do you like better?". A more interesting way to approach this is, "When you were choosing your logo and torn between two, how did you decide? Pictures & stories please!"
• Live Events: Take a poll from your audience about "4 things we are going to do on our live cast" and follow-through. A big way to engage the audience is to allow them to participate in the generation of the content.
Brandon Bain is the founder of Because Marketing, a company dedicated to helping small businesses deliver big results! Married for 13 years to his wife Traci, Brandon is a proud father of 3: A 9-yr old boy and twin 5-yr old girls. Brandon loves helping companies boot-strap and develop business channels.
Six Ways to Make People Like You
Become genuinely interested in other people. "You can make more friends in two months by being interested in them, than in two years by making them interested in you." The only way to make quality, lasting friendships is to learn to be genuinely interested in them and their interests.
Smile. Happiness does not depend on outside circumstances, but rather on inward attitudes. Smiles are free to give and have an amazing ability to make others feel wonderful. Smile in everything that you do.
Remember that a person's name is, to that person, the sweetest and most important sound in any language. "The average person is more interested in their own name than in all the other names in the world put together."[5] People love their names so much that they will often donate large amounts of money just to have a building named after themselves. We can make people feel extremely valued and important by remembering their name.
Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves. The easiest way to become a good conversationalist is to become a good listener. To be a good listener, we must actually care about what people have to say. Many times people don't want an entertaining conversation partner; they just want someone who will listen to them.
Talk in terms of the other person's interest. The royal road to a person's heart is to talk about the things he or she treasures most. If we talk to people about what they are interested in, they will feel valued and value us in return.
Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely. The golden rule is to treat other people how we would like to be treated. We love to feel important and so does everyone else. People will talk to us for hours if we allow them to talk about themselves. If we can make people feel important in a sincere and appreciative way, then we will win all the friends we could ever dream of.
**Citation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influence_People