How to Win Friends and Influence People (7 page)

[You fool! You mail me a cheap form letter - a letter

scattered far and wide like the autumn leaves - and you

have the gall to ask me, when I am worried about the

mortgage and the hollyhocks and my blood pressure, to

sit down and dictate a personal note acknowledging your

form letter - and you ask me to do it “promptly.” What

do you mean, “promptly”.? Don’t you know I am just as

busy as you are - or, at least, I like to think I am. And

while we are on the subject, who gave you the lordly

right to order me around? . . . You say it will be “mutually

helpful.” At last, at last, you have begun to see my

viewpoint. But you are vague about how it will be to my

advantage.]

Very truly yours,

John Doe

Manager Radio Department

P.S. The enclosed reprint from the Blankville Journal will

be of interest to you, and you may want to broadcast it over

your station.

[Finally, down here in the postscript, you mention

something that may help me solve one of my problems.

Why didn’t you begin your letter with - but what’s the

use? Any advertising man who is guilty of perpetrating

such drivel as you have sent me has something wrong

with his medulla oblongata. You don’t need a letter giving

our latest doings. What you need is a quart of iodine

in your thyroid gland.]

Now, if people who devote their lives to advertising

and who pose as experts in the art of influencing people

to buy - if they write a letter like that, what can we expect

from the butcher and baker or the auto mechanic?

Here is another letter, written by the superintendent

of a large freight terminal to a student of this course,

Edward Vermylen. What effect did this letter have on

the man to whom it was addressed? Read it and then I'll

tell you.

A. Zerega’s Sons, Inc.

28 Front St.

Brooklyn, N.Y. 11201

Attention: Mr. Edward Vermylen

Gentlemen:

The operations at our outbound-rail-receiving station are

handicapped because a material percentage of the total

business is delivered us in the late afternoon. This condition

results in congestion, overtime on the part of our forces,

delays to trucks, and in some cases delays to freight. On

November 10, we received from your company a lot of 510

pieces, which reached here at 4:20 P.M.

We solicit your cooperation toward overcoming the undesirable

effects arising from late receipt of freight. May we

ask that, on days on which you ship the volume which was

received on the above date, effort be made either to get the

truck here earlier or to deliver us part of the freight during

the morning?

The advantage that would accrue to you under such an

arrangement would be that of more expeditious discharge

of your trucks and the assurance that your business would

go forward on the date of its receipt.

Very truly yours,

J----- B ----- Supt.

After reading this letter, Mr. Vermylen, sales manager

for A. Zerega’s Sons, Inc., sent it to me with the following

comment:

This letter had the reverse effect from that which was

intended. The letter begins by describing the Terminal’s

difficulties, in which we are not interested, generally speaking.

Our cooperation is then requested without any thought

as to whether it would inconvenience us, and then, finally,

in the last paragraph, the fact is mentioned that if we do

cooperate it will mean more expeditious discharge of our

trucks with the assurance that our freight will go forward on

the date of its receipt.

In other words, that in which we are most interested is

mentioned last and the whole effect is one of raising a spirit

of antagonism rather than of cooperation.

Let’s see if we can’t rewrite and improve this letter.

Let’s not waste any time talking about our problems. As

Henry Ford admonishes, let’s “get the other person’s

point of view and see things from his or her angle, as

well as from our own.”

Here is one way of revising the letter. It may not be

the best way, but isn’t it an improvement?

Mr. Edward Vermylen

% A. Zerega’s Sons, Inc.

28 Front St.

Brooklyn, N.Y. 11201

Dear Mr. Vermylen:

Your company has been one of our good customers for

fourteen years. Naturally, we are very grateful for your patronage

and are eager to give you the speedy, efficient service

you deserve. However, we regret to say that it isn’t

possible for us to do that when your trucks bring us a large

shipment late in the afternoon, as they did on November

10. Why? Because many other customers make late afternoon

deliveries also. Naturally, that causes congestion. That

means your trucks are held up unavoidably at the pier and

sometimes even your freight is delayed.

That’s bad, but it can be avoided. If you make your deliveries

at the pier in the morning when possible, your trucks

will be able to keep moving, your freight will get immediate

attention, and our workers will get home early at night to

enjoy a dinner of the delicious macaroni and noodles that

you manufacture.

Regardless of when your shipments arrive, we shall always

cheerfully do all in our power to serve you promptly.

You are busy. Please don’t trouble to answer this note.

Yours truly,

J----- B-----, supt.

Barbara Anderson, who worked in a bank in New

York, desired to move to Phoenix, Arizona, because of

the health of her son. Using the principles she had

learned in our course, she wrote the following letter to

twelve banks in Phoenix:

Dear Sir:

My ten years of bank experience should be of interest to

a rapidly growing bank like yours.

In various capacities in bank operations with the Bankers

Trust Company in New York, leading to my present assignment

as Branch Manager, I have acquired skills in all

phases of banking including depositor relations, credits,

loans and administration.

I will be relocating to Phoenix in May and I am sure I can

contribute to your growth and profit. I will be in Phoenix

the week of April 3 and would appreciate the opportunity

to show you how I can help your bank meet its goals.

Sincerely,

Barbara L. Anderson

Do you think Mrs. Anderson received any response

from that letter? Eleven of the twelve banks invited her

to be interviewed, and she had a choice of which bank’s

offer to accept. Why? Mrs. Anderson did not state what

she wanted, but wrote in the letter how she could help

them, and focused on their wants, not her own.

Thousands of salespeople are pounding the pavements

today, tired, discouraged and underpaid. Why?

Because they are always thinking only of what they

want. They don’t realize that neither you nor I want to

buy anything. If we did, we would go out and buy it. But

both of us are eternally interested in solving our problems.

And if salespeople can show us how their services

or merchandise will help us solve our problems, they

won’t need to sell us. We’ll buy. And customers like to

feel that they are buying - not being sold.

Yet many salespeople spend a lifetime in selling without

seeing things from the customer’s angle. For example,

for many years I lived in Forest Hills, a little

community of private homes in the center of Greater

New York. One day as I was rushing to the station, I

chanced to meet a real-estate operator who had bought

and sold property in that area for many years. He knew

Forest Hills well, so I hurriedly asked him whether or

not my stucco house was built with metal lath or hollow

tile. He said he didn’t know and told me what I already

knew - that I could find out by calling the Forest Hills

Garden Association. The following morning, I received

a letter from him. Did he give me the information I

wanted? He could have gotten it in sixty seconds by a

telephone call. But he didn’t. He told me again that I

could get it by telephoning, and then asked me to let

him handle my insurance.

He was not interested in helping me. He was interested

only in helping himself.

J. Howard Lucas of Birmingham, Alabama, tells how

two salespeople from the same company handled the

same type of situation, He reported:

“Several years ago I was on the management team of

a small company. Headquartered near us was the district

office of a large insurance company. Their agents were

assigned territories, and our company was assigned to

two agents, whom I shall refer to as Carl and John.

“One morning, Carl dropped by our office and casually

mentioned that his company had just introduced a

new life insurance policy for executives and thought we

might be interested later on and he would get back to us

when he had more information on it.

“The same day, John saw us on the sidewalk while

returning from a coffee break, and he shouted: ‘Hey

Luke, hold up, I have some great news for you fellows.’

He hurried over and very excitedly told us about an executive

life insurance policy his company had introduced

that very day. (It was the same policy that Carl

had casually mentioned.) He wanted us to have one of

the first issued. He gave us a few important facts about

the coverage and ended saying, ‘The policy is so new,

I’m going to have someone from the home office come

out tomorrow and explain it. Now, in the meantime, let’s

get the applications signed and on the way so he can

have more information to work with.’ His enthusiasm

aroused in us an eager want for this policy even though

we still did not have details, When they were made

available to us, they confirmed John’s initial understanding

of the policy, and he not only sold each of us a policy,

but later doubled our coverage.

“Carl could have had those sales, but he made no effort

to arouse in us any desire for the policies.”

The world is full of people who are grabbing and self-seeking.

So the rare individual who unselfishly tries to

serve others has an enormous advantage. He has little

competition. Owen D. Young, a noted lawyer and one of

America’s great business leaders, once said: “People

who can put themselves in the place of other people

who can understand the workings of their minds, need

never worry about what the future has in store for

them.”

If out of reading this book you get just one thing - an

increased tendency to think always in terms of other

people’s point of view, and see things from their angle

- if you get that one thing out of this book, it may

easily prove to be one of the building blocks of your

career.

Looking at the other person’s point of view and arousing

in him an eager want for something is not to be

construed as manipulating that person so that he will do

something that is only for your benefit and his detriment.

Each party should gain from the negotiation. In the letters

to Mr. Vermylen, both the sender and the receiver

of the correspondence gained by implementing what

was suggested. Both the bank and Mrs. Anderson won

by her letter in that the bank obtained a valuable employee

and Mrs. Anderson a suitable job. And in the

example of John’s sale of insurance to Mr. Lucas, both

gained through this transaction.

Another example in which everybody gains through

this principle of arousing an eager want comes from Michael

E. Whidden of Warwick, Rhode Island, who is a

territory salesman for the Shell Oil Company. Mike

wanted to become the Number One salesperson in his

district, but one service station was holding him back. It

was run by an older man who could not be motivated to

clean up his station. It was in such poor shape that sales

were declining significantly.

This manager would not listen to any of Mike’s pleas

to upgrade the station. After many exhortations and

heart-to-heart talks - all of which had no impact - Mike

decided to invite the manager to visit the newest Shell

station in his territory.

The manager was so impressed by the facilities at the

new station that when Mike visited him the next time,

his station was cleaned up and had recorded a sales increase.

This enabled Mike to reach the Number One

spot in his district. All his talking and discussion hadn’t

helped, but by arousing an eager want in the manager,

by showing him the modern station, he had accomplished

his goal, and both the manager and Mike benefited.

Most people go through college and learn to read Virgil

and master the mysteries of calculus without ever

discovering how their own minds function. For instance:

I once gave a course in Effective Speaking for the young

college graduates who were entering the employ of the