How to Win Friends and Influence People in Agribusiness
How to Win Friends and Influence People, written by Dale Carnegie and first published in 1936, is one of the most influential books worldwide. The original book provided insightful wisdom of how to influence people, win friends, and be a great leader. In this article, I will share some thoughts of how to take Carnegie's time-tested prescription for relationship and business success and apply them to agribusiness. The core principles of the book are quoted below, together with relevant examples.
Fundamental Techniques in Handling People
Don't criticize, condemn, or complain. Human nature does not like to admit fault. If you go to a farm and try to sell the farmer some solutions to their problems. Be careful not to spend too much time telling all the bad things that the farmer did wrong, even if you are honest and with good intention. When people are criticized or humiliated, they often become defensive. If you talk too much negative things, the audience will associate negative feelings with you. In this scenario, it would be more effective to spend more time on the solutions you can provide to help their needs. To handle people well, we must never criticize, condemn or complain because it will never result in the behavior we desire.
Give honest and sincere appreciation. A person who feels appreciated will always do more than what is expected. When talking with customers, we should always appreciate the valuable time they give us and we should frequently stop by to appreciate their business and follow up their needs and issues. Appreciation is not flattery, it must be sincere, meaningful and with love.
Arouse in the other person an eager want. To get what we want from another person, we must see things from the point of view of others. Many people are under the pressure to sell products to customers, but we should always think from the view of customers. Why do they need the product? What problems can the product solve? Is the value of the product justifying the cost? Zig Ziglar once said there are 5 reasons why people don’t buy: no want, no need, no money, no hurry, or no trust. We really have to think through all the points from the view of customers and help them overcome all the hesitations before a sale can be made. When we can combine our desires with their wants, they become eager to work with us and we can mutually achieve our objectives.
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." When we make cold calls, it would be effective to spend the majority of time to ask questions about their farm business and family life. The more customers talk about themselves and their interests, the more effective the relationship building process will be. When I go to farm, I am always interested (genuinely) in their pets, kids, and livestock, and that helps to open up further conversations and build rapport. The only way to make quality friendships is to learn to be genuinely interested in them and their interests.
Smile. Smiles are free to give and have an amazing ability to make others feel wonderful. Smile in everything that you do. We should always smile to our customers, even if they are in a bad day.
Remember that a person's name is, to that person, the sweetest and most important sound in any language. We can make people feel extremely valued and important by remembering their name. People love their names so much that they will often donate large amounts of money just to have a building named after themselves. In cold calls, we should try to figure out and write down the names of the owner, spouse, and kids. In future visits, we should always address them by their names. Remembering a person’s name is a powerful tool to make your customers feel valued and important.
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. “When you are listening to somebody, completely, attentively, then you are listening not only to the words, but also to the feeling of what is being conveyed.” The top salesmen I know are always willing to spend time listening to customers and asking meaningful questions. The 80-20 rule applies here: we should spend 80% of time listening and 20% of time talking. Many times customers don't want an entertaining conversation partner; they just want someone who will listen to them, listen to their stories, concerns, and frustrations.
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 the interest of a cattle producer is to reduce feed costs, then we should try our best to present a solution that actually can help them save money. If the interest of a dairy farmer is to get more milk, then we should emphasize how we can help their cows increase milk yield. 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. The platinum rule is to treat other people how they want to be treated. We should value the opinions and judgments of our customers, even though we may have more technical knowledge on certain things than they do. No matter how many doctorate degrees you may have, you should always respect the people you work with, and respect their thoughts.
Ten Ways to Win People to Your Way of Thinking
The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it. Whenever we argue with someone, no matter if we win or lose the argument, we still lose. The other person will either feel humiliated or strengthened. In every field, there will always be some experts who have highly valuable technical skills but are not great at dealing with people. They oftentimes argue with coworkers or customers because they think they are the smartest in the world, and you have to either follow their ways or the highways. Granted even if you are right at an argument, you will still for sure lose the relationship or business. We must try to avoid arguments whenever we can.
Show respect for the other person's opinions. Never say "You're wrong." We must never tell people flat out that they are wrong. It will only serve to offend them and insult their pride. For example, you may want to sell a feed product to a dairy farm to help out their issues, and you have to get both the dairy producer and the dairy nutritionist on board. Imagine if you just go to the farm and tell them all the things they have done wrong with the nutrition program, I can assure you that you would offend them (especially the nutritionist) and they will not want to work with you. An alternative strategies would be to praise what they have done right and provide some suggestions for improvement in a gentle way. If we subtly and indirectly show people mistakes, they will be more likely to improve.
If you're wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically. Whenever we are wrong we should admit it immediately. Many years ago, a salesman in our company made a mistake by delivering the wrong product to a farm, even though the wrong product looked exactly the same as the correct product, he admitted it quickly and compensated the farmer. That farm has since been a loyal customer for over twenty years. When we admit that we are wrong people trust us and begin to sympathize with our way of thinking. When something goes wrong, taking responsibility can help win others to your side.
Begin in a friendly way. If we begin our interactions with others in a friendly way, people will be more receptive. Sometimes customers may not be friendly, especially at cold calling, but even if we are greatly upset, we must be friendly to influence people to our way of thinking.
Start with questions to which the other person will answer yes. Do not begin by emphasizing the aspects in which we and the other person differ. Begin by emphasizing and continue emphasizing the things on which we agree. We should lead customers where we would like them to go with questions that they will answer "yes". Don’t push them to make a buying decision in the beginning. Instead, ask questions like “do you want to save cost?” or “do you want to improve your profitability?” and get them say “yes” and show them how.
Let the other person do a great deal of the talking. People do not like listening to us boast, they enjoy doing the talking themselves. Even if it is your idea and you are trying to sell them that idea, it would be more effective if you can let them rationalize and talk about the idea, because it will taste much sweeter to them in their own mouth.
Let the other person feel the idea is his or hers. People inherently like ideas they come to on their own. If you are selling a new feed product to a farm through the dairy nutritionist, you need to let the nutritionist feel it’s his own idea of choosing to use the product rather than been sold. Ideas can best be carried out by allowing others to think they arrived at it themselves. If we want to influence people, we must learn to frame our desires in terms of others' desires.
Try honestly to see things from the other person's point of view and be sympathetic with the other person's ideas and desires. We must seek to understand other people. No matter how passionate you are about the product you are selling, your customers may have financial difficulties and simply cannot pay the bill. If we can sympathize with others, they will appreciate our side as well and will often come around to our way of thinking. In times of financial difficulties, your customers quit on you, instead of walking away, you should be sympathetic with them and continue to build up relationship by finding ways to help them get out of the difficulties. Success in dealing with people requires a sympathetic grasp of the other person's viewpoint.
Appeal to the nobler motives. Everyone likes to be glorious in their own eyes. People believe that they do things for noble and morally upright reasons. If we can appeal to others' noble motives we can successfully convince them to follow our ideas. If you are working with organic farm producers, you can understand that often times their nobler motives are to produce healthier foods for the public or use fewer chemicals on the farm that could potential harm the environment. If we can find out the noble motives of our customers, it would be easier to build rapport and sell them the right products that can serve their noble motives.
Dramatize your ideas. In this fast paced world, simply stating a truth isn't enough. The truth must be made vivid, interesting, and dramatic. Great sales people are great storytellers. A boring presentation can easily turn audience off, and a great presenter talking about the same product can easily get other people excited. If you are not excited about your products, how can you get other people excited about your products? Sometimes ideas are not enough and we must dramatize them.
Hopefully, with practice, we can better apply these principles to our daily life and our professional agribusiness field, and we will be more effective at communicating with people and serving customers.
