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It’s Only Common Sense: Kindness is a Killer App

“There is only one rule I know of and that is to be kind.” – Kurt Vonnegut

And I agree wholeheartedly. Anything else is a complete waste of time. Fighting and feuding with people is not only counterproductive, but exhausting. Lawsuits are detrimental to your health. Holding a grudge is like drinking poison—it hurts you, not the person you are holding the grudge against.

There is no doubt that kindness is always the best way to go. It makes the people around you feel better and it makes you feel better and maybe even healthier as well. Try looking for the best in people you work with, you deal with, you play with. If you look for the best you will find it.

If you find that someone is too negative, then walk away. If you have a customer who is always complaining to the point that you can never please him, walk away. If someone is talking trash about you, walk away. The best way to handle someone who sends you a nasty email is to delete it immediately and forget about it. A few other tips about kindness:

• If you feel like talking trash about someone…don’t
• And when you get the urge to gossip about someone…shut up
• If you hear that one of your customers is having some trouble, show up
• If a friend or business associate is hurting personally, be there for them
• If a business associate is having some troubles with his company, try to help him
• If one of the buyers you are working with is having a hard time keeping up, offer to help

Being kind to people is not only a great thing to do as a human being, especially in these antagonistic days in America, it is also a smart business tactic as well.

Don’t get me wrong—being a kind person and being kind to the people around you is always the right thing to do for them, as well as the right thing to do for yourself. But one of the better byproducts of this kind of behavior is that it will create unbreakable bonds with the people in your life and that is a very good thing.

The golden rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” is still the best and most powerful rule in life as well as it is in business. Think about how wonderful it is that doing the right thing is also the best sales tactic you can use in your everyday sales career.

You can be a hero for life to a person if you are there when they most need you. When that buyer calls you, frantic because she forgot to order those boards that she needs in three days, and you take care of it for her at no charge, you are her hero for life. When that designer makes a huge screw-up on his design and you catch it but then do everything you can to quietly fix it and still deliver the boards on time, you are his hero for life. When that company president calls you to ask if you can possibly expedite the boards that were due in two weeks, but that he now needs in two days so that he can complete his demo machine for a team of investors coming in and you do it for him, you are his hero for life.

Now just think of how these people are going to treat you in the future. They will never forget what you did for them, and they will spend the rest of time doing whatever they can to help you do business with them out of gratitude for the kindness you showed them. Talk about an investment! No amount of advertising is worth as much as those acts of kindness. Now amount of price-cutting will be worth as much as what you did for those people in their time of need.

As you go through your daily life look for any opportunity to be kind. Look for ways to look out for people and help them in any way that you can. This I can guarantee…it will always pay off in the end.

If someone doesn’t like you, or has done you a disservice in the past, make sure you make a point of being kind to them when they are in a time of need and you are able to help them. It will freak them out and you’ll have a lot of pleasure watching it happen.

It’s only common sense.