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Concept

Talking in Terms of the Other Person's Interests

Talking in Terms of the Other Person's Interests is Dale Carnegie's principle that the shortest way to a person's goodwill is to talk about the things they care about most, so you prepare a conversation around their interests and let them do much of the talking.

Carnegie's best-known example of this principle in How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936) is Theodore Roosevelt. Visitors were struck by how much he knew about their own field, whatever it was, and Carnegie explains the secret: when Roosevelt expected a guest, he would read up the evening before on the subject he knew that guest cared about. The principle has a twin, being a good listener: encourage the other person to talk about themselves and their work. Together they reverse the usual order of a conversation. Most people arrive with what they want to say. Carnegie suggests arriving with what the other person wants to talk about, and holding your own topic back until goodwill has been earned. It works because attention is scarce and people remember who gave them some. A client who spends twenty minutes describing a problem he is proud of having solved leaves feeling that the meeting went well, even though you said little. The preparation matters as much as the listening. Ten minutes on the person's recent work, their company's news or their hobby gives you a first question that is about them, and a first question that is about them is rarely forgotten.

A real-life example

Gökhan sells packaging to food producers in İzmir and has a meeting with the owner of a family olive oil firm. Instead of opening with his catalogue, he spends fifteen minutes the evening before reading about the firm and learns that it has just shipped its first order to Japan. He opens with a question about that. The owner talks for half an hour about the labels the Japanese buyers demanded, and by the end has described exactly the packaging problem Gökhan's company solves.

How to use it

  1. 1Before an important conversation, spend ten minutes learning what the other person is working on or proud of.
  2. 2Open with a question about that rather than with your agenda, and follow their answer with the question it raises.
  3. 3Bring up your own topic only after they have talked, and connect it to what they told you.