How to be a successful salesperson - or a manipulative bastard
Dear Reader,
How do you get people to do what you want? Nobody likes taking orders, so you'll need to negotiate. Dale Carnegie teaches you how. Now there's two kinds of bad negotiators: the too agreeable and the too disagreeable. How to Win Friends and Influence People is for the disagreeable.
How do I know whether or not I'm too agreeable? You're agreeable if you find it hard to say no, or to criticize people. A very agreeable person can't walk out of a shop without buying anything. Imagine you need a winter jacket, and a friendly young man shows you three different jackets in your size. But one doesn't fit you right, one has an awful colour, and one has no pockets. And all three cost more than you expected. If you're too agreeable, you'll buy one anyway. You can't look into that smiling shopkeeper's face and say no. You'll come home with a jacket that doesn't fit you right or that has no pockets or an awful colour and that cost way too much, and you'll get angry at yourself for being too nice. If something like that has happened to you, this isn't your book. You need to learn how to negotiate on your own behalf, and say no to things you don't want. You might like The Book of No: 365 Ways to Say it and Mean it - and Stop People-Pleasing Forever by Susan Newman.
If you're disagreeable, you have no problem saying no. You stand up for yourself. And you tell people honestly what they did wrong so they can do better next time. Instead, they get offended. You reason with them and they get stubborn. If that happens to you, this is your book. Dale Carnegie teaches how to get people to do what you want, and feel good about it. How to inspire people so they'll want to follow you.
Most of the book consists of real-life examples: stories from Dale Carnegie and his students, and some anecdotes from the lives of famous businesspeople and US-Presidents. You won't find any scientific studies nor statistics. Instead, you get hands-on suggestions on how to act nicely in various situations in order to get what you want. You learn to point out people's mistakes without hurting their pride; to change their minds without arguing; to get their attention in the first place. How far you go with these skills depends on your ambition: successful salesperson or puppeteer behind the throne? Both need to know the same.
Yours sincerely
Christina Widmann de Fran
Dale Carnegie: How to Win Friends And Influence People
first published in 1936
Available on Amazon.co.uk.
