You have to learn to be more than your business…or your job…
‘PEOPLE BUY FROM PEOPLE’ — no exceptions.
It’s a wellknown business phrase and people, I’m sure, get sick of hearing it. Yet it’s one of the deepest and most profound lesson one has to learn in business, whatever your business or role within a business may be.
One of the best things I was taught by my coach was that everyone you meet professionally has a note stuck to their forehead saying ‘make me feel important’. And if you imagine for a second that you have that note on your forehead, you should realise how powerful it is and how it makes you feel when someone makes you feel important.
Equally when you feel unimportant, or you are humiliated, embarrassed or made to feel small — the way that makes you feel will stay with you. It won’t actually matter who is wrong and who is right, what you are buying or selling. That feeling will remain. Your relationship is soured.
Yet in business and in life we forget this far too often. There are, of course, times when we clash with someone, in both arenas and frankly we don’t care whether or not they feel important because we don’t want to be near them, or have anything to do with them. Even then though we’re making a conscious decision to let a relationship go — and we have to accept the consequences of that. On the odd…
