How to Win Customers and Influence People: Dale Carnegie’s Timeless Principles in Persuasion

If you have never heard about Dale Carnegie, you are missing on the wisdom of a legend! Every sales professional should be familiar with his principles from his book “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” which has sold over 30 million copies worldwide.

The core of Carnegie’s simple philosophy is that one of the greatest human needs is to feel important. If you want to win people over to your way of thinking, they need to like you. And the way to get them to do that is to take an interest in them.

When learning how to sell better, we often hear the advice to ask questions and listen to the customer. This advice, though, is frequently given in the context of using questions to gather information helpful to the sales process, and to listen for clues that will help you convince the customer to buy.

What Carnegie suggested was that the true path to being a successful salesperson, leader, or well-liked individual was not to focus on your desired outcome, but to put your attention on the other person. Here are Carnegie’s six ways to get what you want by making people like you:

Become genuinely interested in other people.
Smile.
Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
Talk in terms of the other person’s interests.
Make the other person feel important — and do it sincerely.

Notice the emphasis on being genuine and sincere. Despite the fact that Carnegie was talking about how to persuade people to adopt your point of view, this really isn’t some sort of manipulative sales technique. It’s a recipe for making friends.

Carnegie spoke with many professional salespeople, and also with many of their customers. Here’s what he discovered: “Thousands of salespeople are pounding the pavements today, tired, discouraged and underpaid. Why? Because they are always thinking only of what they want…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.”

All the great salespeople are people others refer to with adjectives like “friendly,” “nice,” and “likable.” When you see them across a room, you are drawn to them. When you get on the phone with them, you don’t want to hang up. They seem to have the ability of making you feel as if their conversation with you is the only thing in the world that matters to them.

How You Will Benefit

You can use the Dale Carnegie Principles to:

Identify and connect with decision makers
Leverage communication techniques when cold calling
Manage every step of the sales process
Ask for referrals
Build credibility
Ask the right questions
Use tactics to win commitment
Direct the conversation so that it reaches a mutually beneficial conclusion
Follow up in a way that creates additional sales opportunities

Dale Carnegie, legendary author of How to Win Friends and Influence People, is perhaps the most well known personal development author of all time, and he continues to influence generations of people through his organization, Dale Carnegie Training. It was founded in 1912 and is represented in more than 90 countries. More than 8 million people have completed Dale Carnegie Training. Among its most popular and enduring courses are its seminars on sales and selling.

About the Event

You can learn about “How to Win Customers and Influence People: Dale Carnegie’s Timeless Principles in Persuasion” at the 3rd National Sales Congress. This is a one-day conference featuring eight high-caliber sales and training experts who will share fresh insights, best practices, and real world experience to 300 sales professionals across different industries. Learn from the leading experts on how to use the science and psychology of sales!

The 3rd National Sales Congress will be held this May 15, 2014, 10:00am-7:00pm, at the SMX Convention Center, SM Aura Premier, BGC, Taguig City.

This year features a highly unique theme – “The Science of Selling” – that will help your sales team use both timeless principles as well as the latest trends in psychology to understand customers, become more effective communicators, and generate more sales.

The National Sales Congress is a joint project of Learning Curve, the leading producer of business and investing conferences and the Sales and Marketing Institute (SMI) Philippines, which runs the globally-recognized Certified Sales Professional (CSP®) program in the country. SMI Philippines (www.smiglobal.org) is affiliated with SMI International, with over 10,000 members worldwide.

Your Trainer

Doodz Policarpio, CEO of Dale Carnegie Philippines

Doodz Policarpio is the President of Executive Training Institute of the Philippines, the sole franchisee and sponsor of Dale Carnegie Training.

He is a licensed instructor of the Dale Carnegie Course since 1989 and Customer Relations Employee Engagement since 1990. He was certified to conduct Leadership Training for Managers in Albany, New York, USA in 1991 and High Impact Presentations in Manila in 1993. Doodz is also the President of the Integra Marketing Group Inc. and Agrippa Integrated Healthcare Consultancy Services and and sits in the board of eight other corporations.

Doodz will be joined by seven other experts who will help you learn how to use the Science of Selling!