FBO: Treat Everybody You Meet as a Viewer

Sunday, October 19th 2008 by Shanel Yang

[For “FBO: Always Think of Ways to Help Your Viewers,” click here.]

This part of the “FBO” or “For Bloggers Only” series is actually NOT JUST for bloggers, but FOR ALL entrepreneurs, employees, and nonprofit organizations seeking to raise funds to support their goals.

If you want millions of viewers, readers, customers, clients, members, etc., then you’ll want to follow along as we go through, one by one, the rainmaking secrets provided by Jeffrey J. Fox in his book How to Become a Rainmaker: The Rules for Getting and Keeping Customers and Clients.

TREAT EVERYBODY YOU MEET AS A VIEWER

A. FOX’S TIP NO. 16 FOR ALL RAINMAKERS

Fox’s Tip No. 16 for how to become a great salesperson, or rainmaker, is the tip: “Treat everybody you meet as a potential client.” As he explains in his book:

Rainmakers see the world, and everyone in it, as their market. Rainmakers know the world is small. They know that everyone knows someone. They know that anyone can become a client, or refer a client, or recommend a client, or scuttle a promising relationship.

Rainmakers treat nonclients as they do existing customers. They are polite to everyone. Rainmakers view everyone as influential. They know that business can come from unexpected places. They know that something they did ten years ago might result in business today.

There are no “little people” to the Rainmaker. They do not berate the waiter because the kitchen is slow. They do not get angry with the person at the ticket counter because the airline delays or cancels a flight. Everybody is treated with courtesy. The Rainmaker is as respectful and polite to the guy who mows his lawn as he is to the president of the company that makes the lawn mowers.

A wire and cable salesman had a good relationship with the top management of a client company in Florida. The first person he met on every sales call at this customer was the company’s receptionist, an efficient, organized young woman. Part of her job was keeping the sales appointment schedule. Although she was not the person who bought wire and cable, and was never involved in the decision making, the salesman always treated her courteously. The salesman always waited patiently if there were delays, never making insistent demands—as did other salespeople. The salesman never implied his importance by dropping the name of the executive vice president, the person he was there to see, as did others. The salesman always thanked the receptionist for her help, and always made sure to say good-bye to her.

Eighteen years later, the receptionist is now the executive vice president of the company. With her influence, her company became the wire and cable salesman’s biggest account.

Don’t make unnecessary enemies. Why be unlikeable? Who is ever helped by unpleasant behavior? Pleasant people often appear self-controlled and confident. Customers like that.

The Rainmaker knows that anybody can help or hurt.

B. APPLYING FOX’S TIP NO. 16 TO BLOGGERS

If you want to become an A-list blogger, apply Fox’s Tip No. 16 above to your blogging business by treating everybody you meet as a potential viewer.

Pretty much every example that Fox gave above applies as well, or more, to bloggers. In the world of blogging, the opportunities can come from the least expected or most chance encounters with total strangers. You never know who you will meet who can and will want to help your blogging career, or, conversely, who will want to tank it because you were needlessly rude to them. Why risk it?

More importantly, it’s good for your mind, body, and soul—not to mention a genuine delight for your family and friends—to simply choose to pass on life’s smorgasbord of temptations to be nasty or stuck up to other people, no matter what the circumstances happen to be. You’re better than that. I know you are! You know you are! And, incidentally, protecting your mental, emotional, and physical health is yet another important way to ensure the long-term success of your blog, too!

Being decent, fair, and courteous to other people is just another way of being decent, fair, and courteous to yourself. Isn’t that how you want your viewers to see you? Isn’t that how you want to treat yourself and others? Try it! You’re gonna like the way you feel whenever you rise to the occasion and let a slight or annoyance go without making a big deal out of it. Then, you’ll get addicted to that feeling because just letting things go feels like freedom! No more getting pulled in all directions by petty distractions that turn into gnawing gripes if you let them.

Just breathe deeply, ask yourself how long you want to carry this negativity around with you, and then choose to consciously let it go. Visualize dropping it like rock into the Grand Canyon. Watch it fall away from you till you can’t see it any longer. You certainly can’t hear it hit the bottom. It’s gone from sight and sound. Let your mind let go of it, too. Then, go on caring about and working toward all the things in your life that are truly important to you—including your blog and your viewers!

CONCLUSION

You can’t divide the world into people you’re nice to and people you’re not. Maybe at one time this was possible, though I doubt it. But, now, the world is truly a small one after all. Globalization is here. The internet especially has grown into a “world wide web.” If you are a blogger, you already know what I’m talking about. There’s no place on earth you can be rude and not have the rest of the planet know about it almost immediately if you are newsworthy. Keep that in mind because, as a future A-list blogger, your future viewers could be anywhere and everywhere! : )

If you would like your own copy of Rainmaker someday, here’s what it looks like.

[For “FBO: Viewers Are Busy; Don’t Waste Their Time,” click here.]

[For entire “FBO” or “For Bloggers Only” series, click here.]

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