There’s no point in pretending otherwise, there are some rude and obnoxious people out there on the Internet.
And if you’re a successful Internet entrepreneur you’re bound to encounter a few of them every now and again.
I believe in the Law Of Attraction so I tend to attract nice, intelligent, kindly (and modest!) people, but occasionally I will hear from someone who obviously flunked Charm School.
If someone is just trying to be provocative I will simply delete their email as replying to it would just rob me of valuable time that could be better spent elsewhere.
But if it’s someone who is potentially a good business partner, I find the best way to disarm them is to find some way of agreeing with them.
Better still is to find a way of telling someone they are right.
Even better is to find a way of telling someone they are right and you are wrong!
It has to be done sincerely, of course, but you’ll find that even the most difficult person melts when someone admits to being in the wrong.
Dale Carnegie, in his book How To Win Friends And Influence people which I’m currently studying in my online marketing course tells a great story about letting his dog run free in an area where a sign clearly said that dogs were to be kept on a leash, on penalty of a fine.
He was stopped by a policeman and instead of making excuses or pleading for mercy, he said to the officer that he’d caught him red-handed and he knew what he had done was against the law and that there was no excuse for it.
In order to assert his authority over Carnegie, the policeman was then put in the position of having to defend him when Carnegie began to condemn himself!
As Carnegie himself says, “just suppose I had tried to defend myself – well, did you ever argue with a policeman?”
The matter ended with the policeman telling him that it was only natural to want to let his dog run free and instructing him to go over the hill where he couldn’t see him.
It makes sense if you think about it because if you enthusiastically tell someone you’re in the wrong before they have chance to, their only remaining avenue if they want to preserve their feeling of one-upmanship is to spring to your defence!
