FBO: Sincerity Is Always Better than Flattery

Sunday, November 9th 2008 by Shanel Yang

[For “FBO: Get to the Bottom of Your Viewers’ Needs,” 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.

SINCERITY IS ALWAYS BETTER THAN FLATTERY

A. FOX’S TIP NO. 28 FOR ALL RAINMAKERS

Fox’s Tip No. 28 for how to become a great salesperson, or rainmaker, is: “If you don’t care about the answer, don’t ask the question.” As he explains in his book:

This is about sincerity.

If you don’t really want to hear all about every shot the customer took on her recent golf vacation to St. Andres, Scotland, then don’t ask. If you don’t really give a hoot about the brilliant babblings of his new baby, then don’t ask. If the customer’s bronzed rugby shoes are not relevant to the sale, don’t ask about them. Don’t waste precious selling time—yours and your customer’s—on matters not pertinent to helping your customer improve his or her situation.

If you ask about the picture of the sailboat, you may get an answer. And that answer will include every tack, every wind shift, every storm from San Diego to Fiji. And the customer will deliberately or unconsciously scuttle the call. Unless you are selling sailcloth, ask about the sailboat on your way out.

Rainmakers don’t squander sales calls with unnecessary chitchat or entertaining conversation. Rainmakers are nice, engaging, informed, interesting, and interested … and always sincere.

Asking a question to flatter the customer is a form of insincerity, and is usually transparent to the customer. Customers are more impressed by intelligent, legitimate get-to-the-problem questions than they are by a phony inquiry.

B. APPLYING FOX’S TIP NO. 28 TO BLOGGERS

If you want to become an A-list blogger, apply Fox’s Tip No. 28 above to your blogging business by remembering that sincerity is always better than flattery.

When deciding whether to leave a comment on someone else’s blog, follow this rule: “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” If you must say something, as when replying to emails to you or comments on your blog that require responses, follow this rule: “If you can’t be kind, at least be vague.” (The latter is a quote from Judith Martin, also known as Miss Manners. For more sarcastic quotes, see “125 Sarcastic Quotes.”) However, false flattery is a bad idea in any situation. Only a tiny percentage of the general population is good enough at faking it to play with that fire and not get burned. Being on the receiving end of false flattery is awkward and sometimes painful. It’s sort of like receiving a beautifully wrapped unexpected birthday gift from someone you don’t know that well, feeling wonderfully surprised and grateful, then opening it and finding a cheap old used gift inside. That kind of thing tends to really sours relationships. No need to risk it.

Having said that, whenever you can give sincere appreciation to people for anything at all about them that you genuinely admire, then, by all means, let them know it! We all love to feel important and appreciated. See the eye-opening examples that Dale Carnegie shares in his excellent book How to Win Friends and Influence People, that really bring this point home and helps us to understand the amazing power of this simple tip, in Part Three of my summary of his great book.

You can also foster and develop genuine interests in a wide variety of subjects by keeping an open mind and staying curious about anything and everything. Even if you already know a lot about a subject, you don’t know what this viewer or this blogger thinks about it. Life can be so much more fun and exciting if you approach everything in this way. And, rewarding, too, because if you are sincerely interested in other people, they will naturally and irresistibly be interested in you, too!

CONCLUSION

Being bloggers make us citizens of the world because our chosen line of work puts us directly in touch with people all over the world. It’s thrilling to get emails from different countries and to discover that we are all basically the same on the inside, yet with so many varied and fascinating backgrounds and cultures. I’m constantly humbled by everything I don’t know but grateful whenever someone takes the time to share what they know with me. With our constant give and take of helpful information, we bloggers do our part to enlighten and empower our shrinking world!

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

[For “FBO: Always Choose Your Words Carefully,” click here.]

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

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