How to Get Anything You Want from Anybody (Well, at Least Have the Best Crack at It!)
Have you ever admired those successful people who seem tohave it all? You see them chatting confidently at business meetings or comfortably at social parties. Theyre the ones with the best jobs, the nicest spouses, the finest friends, the biggest bank accounts, or the most fashionable zip codes.
But wait a minute! A lot of them arent smarter than you. Theyre not more educated than you. Theyre not even better looing! So what is it? (Some people suspect they inherited it. Others say they married it or were just plain lucky. Tell them to think again.) What it boils down to is their more skillful way of deaing with fellow human beings.
You see, nobody gets to the top alone. Over the years, people who seem to have it all have captured the hearts and conquered the minds of hundreds of others who helped boost them, rung by rung, to the top of whatever corporate or social ladder they chose.
Wanna-bes wandering around at the foot of the ladder often gaze up and grouse that the big boys and big girls at the top are snobs. When big players dont give them their friendship, love, or business, they call them cliquish or accuse them of belonging to an old-boy network. Some grumble they hit their heads against a glass ceiling.
The complaining Little Leaguers never realize the rejection was their own fault. Theyll never know they blew the affair, the friendship, or the deal because of their own communications fubles. Its as though well-liked people have a bag of tricks, a magic, or a Midas touch that turns everything they do into success.
Whats in their bag of tricks? Youll find a lot of things: a sustance that solidifies friendships, a wizardry that wins minds, and a magic that makes people fall in love with them. They also posess a quality that makes bosses hire and then promote, a chara teristic that keeps clients coming back, and an asset that makes customers buy from them and not the competition. We all have a few of those tricks in our bags, some more than others. Those with a whole lot of them are big winners in life. How to Talk to Anyone gives you ninety-two of these little tricks they use every day so you, too, can play the game to perfection and get whatever you want in life.
How the Little Tricks Were Unveiled
Many years ago, a drama teacher, exasperated at my bad acting in a college play, shouted, No! No! Your body is belying your words. Every tiny movement, every body position, he howled, divulges your private thoughts. Your face can make seven thousand diffeent expressions, and each exposes precisely who you are and what you are thinking at any particular moment. Then he said somthing Ill never forget: And your body! The way you move is your autobiography in motion.
How right he was! On the stage of real life, every physical move you make subliminally tells everyone in eyeshot the story of your life. Dogs hear sounds our ears cant detect. Bats see shapes in the darkness that elude our eyes. And people make moves that are beneath human consciousness but have tremendous power to attract or repel. Every smile, every frown, every syllable you utter, or every arbitrary choice of word that passes between your lips can draw others toward you or make them want to run away.
Mendid your gut feeling ever tell you to jump ship on a deal? Womendid your womens intuition make you accept or reject an offer? On a conscious level, we may not be aware of what the hunch is. But like the ear of the dog or the eye of the bat, the elements that make up subliminal sentiments are very real.
Imagine, please, two humans in a complex box wired with cicuits to record all the signals flowing between the two. As many as ten thousand units of information flow per second. Probably the lifetime efforts of roughly half the adult
population of the United States would be required to sort the units in one hours interaction between two subjects, a University of Pennsylvania communications authority estimates.
With the zillions of subtle actions and reactions zapping back and forth between two human beings, can we come up with cocrete techniques to make our every communication clear, confdent, credible, and charismatic?
Determined to find the answer, I read practically every book written on communications skills, charisma, and chemistry between people. I explored hundreds of studies conducted around the world on what qualities made up leadership and credibility. Intrepid social scientists left no stone unturned in their quest to find the formula. For example, optimistic Chinese researchers, hoping charisma might be in the diet, went so far as to compare the relationship of personality type to the catecholamine level in subjects urine.
Needless to say, their thesis was soon shelved.
Dale Carnegie Was GREAT for the Twentieth Century, but This Is the Tw e n t yF i r s t
Most of the studies simply confirmed Dale Carnegies 1936 classic, How to Win Friends and Influence People. His wisdom for the ages said success lay in smiling, showing interest in other people, and making them feel good about themselves. Thats no surprise, I thought. Its as true today as it was more than sixty years ago.
So if Dale Carnegie and hundreds of others since offer the same astute advice, why do we need another book telling us how to win friends and influence people? Two mammoth reasons.
Reason One: Suppose a sage told you, When in China, speak Chinese, but gave you no language lessons? Dale Carnegie and many communications experts are like that sage. They tell us what to do but not how to do it. In todays sophisticated world, its not enough to say smile or give sincere compliments. Cyical businesspeople today see more subtleties in your smile, more complexities in your compliment. Accomplished or attractive peple are surrounded by smiling sycophants feigning interest and fawning all over them. Prospects are tired of salespeople who say, The suit looks great
on you, when their fingers are caressing cash register keys. Women are wary of suitors who say, You are bea tiful, when the bedroom door is in view.
Reason Two: The world is a very different place than it was in 1936, and we need a new formula for success. To find it, I observed the superstars of today. I explored techniques used by top salespeople to close the sale, speakers to convince, clergy to convert, performers to engross, sex symbols to seduce, and atletes to win.
I found concrete building blocks to the elusive qualities that lead to their success. Then I broke them down into easily digestible, news-you-can-use techniques. I gave each a name that will quickly come to mind when you find yourself in a communications conudrum. As I developed the techniques, I began sharing them with audiences around the country. Participants in my communications seminars gave me their ideas. My clients, many of them CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, enthusiastically offered their observations.
When I was in the presence of the most successful and beloved leaders, I analyzed their body language and their facial expressions. I listened carefully to their casual conversations, their timing, and their choice of words. I watched as they dealt with their families, friends, associates, and adversaries. Every time I detected a little nip of magic in their communicating, I asked them to pluck it out with tweezers and expose it to the bright light of consciousness. We analyzed it together, and I then turned it into an easy-to-do
little trick others could duplicate and profit from.
My findings and the strokes of some of those very effective folks are in this book. Some are subtle. Some are surprising. But all are achievable. When you master them, everyone from new acquaintances to family, friends, and business associates will hapily open their hearts, homes, companies, and even wallets to give you whatever they can.
Theres a bonus. As you sail through life with your new comunications skills, youll look back and see some very happy givers smiling in your wake.
