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Comment by c0nsumer | Hacker News Reader

Interestingly, this is what the book "How to Win Friends and Influence Others" gets at. While it's ostensibly a sales book, the very basis is how to be genuinely nice to people so they want to talk to you and be around you. And from those relationships come sales opportunities.

As another person for whom relation stuff does not come naturally, this was incredibly helpful because little pieces of advise really do work, because they really are nice things to do/say.

A favorite example of mine, when starting to talk to someone who probably already doesn't care for you is to find something -- anything -- that it's clear they like or chose, which you also happen to like, and pay it a genuine positive complement. And perhaps talk about it a little bit.

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I've heard a lot of negativity around this book, and haven't read it yet. Did you feel like it was positive in the sense of genuine niceness, or negative in the sense of trying to be manipulative, etc.?

What the others have said, and also, there are folks who take and implement the advise wrongly. Like, one of the other points is that people like knowing their name was remembered and hearing it used. I take this as "remember people's names, and when you haven't seen them in a while, say 'Hi, name!'" or so.

Some folks take this over the top and do a weird, false-feeling thing like sprinkle the person's name into conversation over and over, or at the start/middle/end. And it makes the conversation feel stilted, fake, and like a situation is being forced. And that casts a negative light on the overarching idea that people like being remembered, and their own name is a big part of that.

It's really more of a dated manual on social etiquette. The negativity is mainly that it seems every salesperson is gifted a copy and implements the same techniques. Similar to how Chick Fil A has ruined the phrase "My Pleasure". The author himself states that it's genuine interest that forms connections, but ultimately the goal is to get something like a deal closed, the employee complying or the customer buying. Just depends on how you frame it.

I am certainly guilty of general negativity to that book. There are plenty of legitimate gripes, like the content is simplistic and overly repetitive. It really could have been a 10 page pamphlet.

But let's put that aside, the negativity really comes from the fact that every time I have seen it brought up in real life, it is being wielded like a cudgel by a person not practicing what is in the book. It is effectively corporate short hand for "you need to learn how to be a better servant".

The negativity is from people who only read the title. The book content's are about skills to be friendly. Some people over index on the skills to being off-putting because it's such a popular book that many can tell when you're using "skills" from the book

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