The politician’s guide to creating trust and goodwill

Technology makes it very easy to learn crucial business lessons from many politicians.  While not all politicos are equally good teachers, the best ones will model behavior that’s guaranteed to have a powerful impact on your business success.  Here are some important lessons to be learned from them.

Say whatever you think your prospects want to hear.

The important thing is getting paid, right?  So make whatever promises you need to make to get their money.  After that, they’ll just have to wait and see if you can deliver on those promises.  On the incredibly slim chance that you faked your way into signing the client, make use of Lesson #2.

Use “Yes, but…” to shuffle responsibility to someone else.

A skilled communicator can always find a way to avoid responsibility for his or her actions.  “Yes, but…” is an excellent way to confuse and confound the client by pointing out how they created the outcomes they’re whining about, even though you were the one doing the work.

Always deny any wrongdoing.

If anyone accuses you of failing to meet your obligations or not delivering what you promised, deny that the outcome is poor; deny that you failed to do everything possible to meet their expectations; then deny that you’re denying anything.

Never apologize for mistakes or bad behavior until forced to by outside pressures.

Occasionally, a particularly obnoxious client will try to involve others—Facebook friends and fans, business colleagues, judges—in their petty complaints about your “poor performance.”  Until and unless these outside parties start hounding you, don’t even think about admitting you did anything that wasn’t of the highest quality.

Apply double standards to your treatment of clients.

Don’t let yourself get sucked into the goody-two-shoes idea that all deadlines and commitments are created equal.  Make sure that the big-ticket clients are the ones you really devote yourself to, even if that means the small fry get ignored.  Hey, if they were good enough to deserve you, they wouldn’t be small fry, now would they?

Use character assassination as a way to make yourself look good compared to your competition.

This is so much easier than looking for legitimate ways to distinguish your products and services from those of your competitors.  Just remember to focus on personality traits and other non-business-related factors, and you’ll be much more likely to keep prospects and clients from asking pesky questions about why you’re really better than those losers calling themselves your competition.

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So there you have it: six business lessons you can take away from the political arena.  By applying these, you’re bound to get some spectacular results, so please be sure to share them with us!

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