How much would your professional life improve if the majority of your new customers were trusting and easy to work with? What would you be able to achieve if you could significantly increase the effectiveness of each and every one of the techniques you currently use? And what would you think if I were to tell you that it’s “easy” to accomplish all of this?

Well, okay…maybe it’s not all that easy but it’s certainly simple. Understanding and putting to use these four simple human relations basics will help us get it done. Of course, we’re talking about human behavior, and in human behavior there are no absolutes. But I have found that no matter what skill level we currently possess, by simply applying these four staples of human relations, we can dramatically improve our sales results.

The first and foremost of these principles, as I have said before and will undoubtedly say time and time again, is that the most basic of all human needs are to be valued and understood. That’s exactly what our little girl wants when she asks us to, “Watch this, watch me, Daddy!” It’s what our husband wants when he just has to tell us about how he handled his hard-assed boss today. And it’s exactly what each and every one of our customers want when they walk into our dealership door. You’ve heard it before: “Our customers don’t care how much we know until they know how much we care”. By becoming active listeners, by being conscious and present for our clients, and by seeking first to understand them and then to be understood ourselves, we will effectively pace our client’s need to be valued and understood. When we allow this principle to color the rest of our interactions and all of our dealings with our customers, we will be much more effective.

The second human relations basic is that facts are unimportant, the truth is irrelevant, and perception is everything. In face to face communication, it is what they hear; it is what they perceive that is important — not what we say. To help illustrate this point, I will relate to you this true story. Now, please try and project your consciousness into this story, and you will experience a paradigm shift or a change of perspective and perception.

It was a quiet Sunday morning in New York. I was riding in the subway alone. It was peaceful and serene. The subway car was, maybe, one-third full — very quite, very calm. Now, I want you to be there; empathize and experience this.

Next, a man walked in with a large group of his children and he sat down right beside me. Although he was silent and seemingly deep in thought, his kids were very loud and rambunctious, destroying the entire mood. They were screaming and throwing things, and the father just sat there and did nothing. The kids were running up and down and one child even grabbed another passenger’s paper, and still the father just sat there. How aggravating! How irritating, right?!

Finally, I turned to the man and said, “Excuse me, sir, but your kids are bothering some of the passengers. Do you think you could control them a little more?”

He slowly raised his head just realizing the situation and quietly said, “You know, I suppose I should. You see, we just left the hospital where their mother died not one hour ago. I don't know what to think or what I’m going to do, and obviously they don't know how to handle it either.”

Now, after hearing him say that, my whole attitude changed. Did yours?

I told you this story in first person simply for effect. It actually happened to author Stephen Covey. The message is still loud and clear, though. It is perceptions that create our feelings and behaviors, not circumstances. Facts are unimportant, the truth is irrelevant, and perception is everything in human relations.

Which leads us to the third human relation basic: 55/38/7.

In 1967, a professor from UCLA named Albert Merabian did a study about face-to-face human communication. What he and his team discovered has become a behavioral science staple. What he discovered was that some of our message is received through body language, some of it through tone, tempo and volume, and some of it through the actual content. Let me clarify this. How our message is perceived in face-to-face communication: 55% of what our customers react to or make judgments on are things that they can see (our body language, our gestures, facial expressions, breathing patterns, the dilation of our pupils, etc.), 38% of what our customers react to or make judgments on are things that they can hear (tone, tempo, volume, confidence in our voice, etc.), and 7% of what our customers react to or make judgments on are from content or the actual words we use. A full 93% of what influences how our customer feels about what we are saying has nothing to do with content or the word tracks we strive to master.

Let’s see if I can drive this one home to you.

A husband comes home from work. His wife is in the kitchen, and she is beating the daylights out of the pots and pans. She is making horrible racket and huffing and puffing. He walks into the kitchen and he says, “Honey, what's wrong.” She turns to him and says, “Nothing.”

He pauses and says, “Honey, look, I know there's something bothering you. Come on, share it with me.” She turns and says, “Hey, I said nothing’s wrong, didn't I?”

Now, what is the 7%, the content or the words she’s saying, indicating? Clearly that nothing is wrong. But what is the other 93%, her actions and her tone, indicating? That it’s going to be a long night, right?

It’s that other 93% that I want us to focus on. Remember, face to face communication is 55% body language, 38% tone, tempo, volume, and 7% words.

Finally, the last human relation basic that I would like us to remember is that it is our responsibility to be understood, not the customer's responsibility to understand us. It’s not enough to say or do the right things. We need to also be keenly aware of what our client hears and what they aren’t hearing, what they are feeling, and what they perceive of us. By simply asking clarifying questions about their thoughts and feelings throughout the entire transaction, we’ll not only be giving ourselves a clear picture of these things but we’ll also let our clients know we actually care about them too.

Now, I admit that these principles may not be all that easy to implement at first, but they’re simple to remember, right? And with practice, they can become second nature to us too. When we understand and put to use these four human relations basics, we will become much more effective husbands, wives, parents, friends, brothers, sisters, children, and oh yeah, sales professionals.

© 2016 by Michael D. Hargrove and Bottom Line Underwriters, Inc. All rights reserved.

Michael D. Hargrove is the founder and president of Bottom Line Underwriters Inc. and and My Success Company, which are success coaching firms serving the automotive industry for over two decades. You can find more of his work here: http://bluinc.com/free-stuff/articles/selling-skills/. He can be reached at Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Amazon, or e-mailed at mhargrove@bluinc.com.