01705: Leaving the Door Open

In the sales world, there's a concept known as Leaving the Door Open. It refers to the need to treat all customers with respect, especially when you aren't able to close the sale. This is important since you don't know when you may deal with them again. Plus it's just the decent thing to do.

But like most sales skills, this concept has some great applications in our daily lives. But people quickly dismiss most things that they learn in sales training if they don't go on in the field. There's a horrible perception for most people that has them thinking that they're "not sales people" even though these are often skills that people use all the time. For example, the same negotiating skills that helped us convince teachers not to flunk us or to beg the forgiveness of parents for some transgression play right into the same realm of interpersonal skills that people use in sales.

But back on point, I just want to talk about the importance of leaving the door open. You see, it's too easy to make other people angry on the internet. It's only normal given how social media brings us face to face with a lot of the idle thinking and thoughtless rambling that people resort to online. And then there's the even bigger stuff when you find yourself disagreeing with someone else about something serious.

It's too easy to mouth off online - to rant and rave about this thing or that. But when it comes to people, you better be prepared to put your money where your mouth is. No matter how secure you think your account is, the fact that other people can read it means that the message will eventually get to the person you're talking about. Whether good or bad, news just gets around. But the really bad stuff tends to get around faster because of the quirks of human nature.

Once upon a time we all trusted the thought that no one knows you're a dog on the internet. But more and more the notion of online privacy seems to be going away completely and the social media giants like Facebook and Twitter are training people to be a lot more open. Thus we have a lot of conversations that probably should have been private taking place pretty much in public sense to different social media networks.

On an individual basis, maybe you won't care. It's a free world and if you want to complain about something, you're free to do so. But when it comes to work or perhaps different social groups that you're involved in, social media ranting can totally get you in trouble when you're careful. Thus the importance of keeping a respectful tone when you mention other people. There's a world of different between providing constructive criticism that you can back up with evidence and of course the mindless ranting that is sadly a lot more common online.

If you're about to post something online that you wouldn't normally tell the person in real life, don't do it. Leave that door open and don't shoot yourself in the foot. Let's face it - sooner or later your words will get to the wrong people and then there'll be heck to pay.

No sale for you.