Sellenthal: I've Never Met an Egotist Who Didn't Like a Compliment

Whether you sell for a living or not, you’ve got a tool at your disposal that’s both powerful and useful, something akin to an open net to a goal-hungry hockey player, or to a slider that doesn’t slide to a slumping baseball slugger. It’s called a compliment, and you should use it at will.

I’ve done so during my lengthy career in sales and it almost always works. Like the time I was running a trade publication and one of our writers trashed the author of a series of 16 books for young adults. The author was enraged, and retaliated by canceling a huge advertising schedule in my publication.

Don’t be confused. Our writer didn’t know that the author was using a pseudonym in his books and his real name as owner and chief executive officer of the company that was spending big bucks advertising with us.

Fortunately, I knew the author well enough to secure an appointment to discuss his cancellation.

A day later, I arrived at his office carrying a large box, and I began the meeting by encouraging him to continue the rant from the previous day. Clearly, I wanted him to purge the anger from his system — always a good idea when you’re in a selling situation with an angry customer. Next, I explained that the writer was a newcomer both to our publication and to our industry, and had no idea that the author of the books and the CEO were the same person. I then added: “I spoke to the writer. He told me that he actually thought the books and their author were brilliant, but that he was upset because he thought his 15-year-old son, the reader, should be absorbing books written for a more mature audience.”

I went on to explain that the writer promised me he would allow his son to finish the series. As I did so, I went about removing the last seven books in the series from the box I had taken to the meeting. “The son has not yet read these,” I pointed out, “so I bought them with the hope that you would sign each book before I delivered them.”

Now beaming, the author said, “I’d be delighted. What’s more, I believe I overreacted. Please forgive me and count on me to reinstate your advertising schedule immediately.”

End of problem.

This is the first installment of a new monthly column by Ira Ellenthal, author of The Last Book About Selling That You’ll Ever Need (Amazon, $16.95).