How to Win and Influence Customers — Lessons from Dale Carnegie

by Aida Khayatian

Back in 2018, I joined Opex (a division of Llamasoft) as a consultant. I knew that interacting with clients would be a huge part of my job, but I had limited experience with this kind of work. In time, I learned what I needed to know to get along by trial and error, observing my colleagues, and trying to learn from others indirectly by reading about working with clients.

One particular source in that latter category stood out: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. This book had a hugely positive impact on my customer relations abilities, and I still fall back on its principles on a regular basis. As a result, I’ve written this article to share with you some tips to help you more effectively deal with a client, whether that’s to sell your products or services or to just create and maintain a positive relationship with potential customers.

The Dale Carnegie Sales Approach

According to Harry A. Overstreet, a psychologist cited in Carnegie’s book, “the best piece of advice which can be given to would-be persuaders, [is to] first arouse in the other person an eager want.” For a customer-facing employee, this is the process of convincing your potential customer that what you’re talking to them about is valuable.

This persuasion can take many forms. An important distinction between effective and ineffective (and also ethical and unethical) sales efforts is whether the salesperson is attempting to genuinely influence the customer to give them consideration, or simply trying to manipulate them into a purchase. Sheer manipulation means twisting logic or facts to sway the potential customer’s opinion — selling the product or service without considering the facts or the customer’s real needs. Even if the salesperson is successful, when clients realize they’ve been swindled, any trust in the salesperson will evaporate.

By contrast, a better long-term approach to arousing Carnegie’s “eager want” is through honest influence. The only way to influence people effectively and ethically is to understand them and their needs, and then show them how to get what they want.

Truly understanding your clients’ needs helps you understand how your product or service benefits them and communicating this effectively is the essence of sales. Asking yourself the following questions can help you understand your potential customers’ needs:

• Why should they want to buy what I’m selling?
• How would the product or service help them?
• What might they find undesirable about the product, and why? How can I overcome these hurdles?

Only after salespeople understand a potential client’s needs can they sell effectively. Below, I’ll discuss how Carnegie suggests that we understand others and show them that we can help solve their problems.

Understanding Your Customer’s Point of View

Early on in my time here, I worked with a client to develop a custom product. The tool was designed to help the client to make better, faster decisions for their supply chain. During product testing, the client brought up some questions about its features and assumptions, I responded with mathematical reasoning. I could tell immediately that the client did not connect with my answer. Fresh out of grad school, I’d failed to contextualize the response, answering with math despite the fact that my client had fifteen years of experience and likely no longer viewed his work in purely mathematical terms. Luckily, my manager quickly stepped in to explain my answer using supply chain concepts instead of mathematical logic, and the client was able to relate to his answer easily. That was when I realized the importance of understanding your customers’ points of view to effective and cooperative conversation.

Reading this book taught me some effective techniques for understanding customers’ points of view. Some of the major methods are as follows:

Become genuinely interested in your customer. Learn about their business to better understand how you can serve them. If what you’re selling isn’t a fit, so be it; understanding this sooner rather than later saves time and effort. If you can help them, focus on learning how you can best do so.

Rather than trying desperately to make the customer interested in your product, encourage them to talk about themselves. One way to do this is by sincerely and honestly admiring their achievements. For example, before meeting with a client, do a quick online search to discover key facts about and important milestones for them and their organization. After doing so, you’ll be able to remark on what you sincerely admire about their business should a pertinent opportunity arise. This will encourage them to talk — we all like to talk about our own successes! You can then ask about the challenges they overcame to get this point, which can further elucidate their needs or overall strategy.

When someone is talking, listen actively. Active listening includes:

• Listening with exclusive attention to the person
• Letting them know you’re listening with appropriate eye contact
• Listening sympathetically, patiently, and with an open mind
• Giving responses that are truly relevant to what was said
• Confirming that you have heard them correctly

Doing these things sounds easy (and it is), but these tips are often ignored by people in all kinds of conversational contexts. Active listening not only helps you retain information more easily, but also usually results in increased trust.

Showing Customers How You Can Help

When talking with clients, find common ground and focus on points of agreement. Try not to spend much time on subjects on which you and the customer disagree. Respect their opinion, even if you don’t see eye to eye. Never outright tell customers that they’re wrong; if they’re off-base on a matter of pure fact, find a way to correct them diplomatically if necessary, but don’t kill a sale by focusing on a disagreement. Maintain the conversation in a friendly way by emphasizing that both parties want the customer to be better off, and that the only differences are about means, not ends.

Let me share an example from the book. A company that sells electric motors encountered a customer complaint about their motors being too hot. The customer was considering terminating the business relationship, but the company believed to be the complaint to be ill-founded: they had done extensive testing and felt strongly that their motors met temperature standards. Instead of arguing with the customer, the sales rep started conversation with series of questions emphasizing shared beliefs and goals: “You should not buy motors if they are running any hotter than standards, isn’t that so?” The client agreed. The sales rep then asked about the temperature of the room in which the motor is located, and then continued: “If the room is 75 degrees and the motor is 72, would not the motor get hotter because of the room temperature?” The customer agreed — hard to argue with basic thermodynamics. By gently and positively asking about the situation in an honestly inquisitive, perspective-agnostic manner, the company was able to reassure the customer that their motors worked as expected. By avoiding argument and looking at the problem from the customer’s point of view, the company was able to keep the account.

Make the customer feel like they’re actively buying the product. While nobody likes being sold to, people like to buy. Ask them to give you their ideal design. Describe your product in detail, and tell them that while it may not be a perfect fit for their organization, you’re eager to improve it. Then ask them to give feedback on how the product can be more useful to their business. Listening intently to this feedback will further build trust between you and the potential client, and it might even give you some fantastic ideas. If their feedback results in changes to the product/service, it’ll sell itself because it’s based on the client’s very own ideas and needs.

You may not have the exact same experiences using similar products or services to solve the problem they face, but try to share your own experience with the same (or related) challenges. Finding commonality with your customer will help them appreciate that you have a practical understanding of their problems and know what it takes to find a solution. This will help build trust between the two of you, making all future discussion easier and friendlier.

Takeaway

These principles from Carnegie’s book can improve the way you relate to your current and future clients. The best way to positively influence your (potential) clients is to understand their perspective and find ways to show them you can help. Keep their needs at the forefront and you’ll see success in no time!

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