How to Be Likeable

Selling effectively still depends upon you being known, liked, and trusted. You want to be known for the value you create. You want to be trusted because of your character. And you want to be liked. That means you must be likeable.

• Presence: We underestimate the power of presence. “Being there” makes you more likeable. It allows a type of intimacy that is difficult to achieve otherwise. Showing up is a sign that you care, and caring about other people helps make you more likeable.
• Listening: There aren’t too many things that will make you more likeable than the ability to listen intently to what someone else is saying by giving them your full, undivided, phone-face-down-on-the-table attention. Listening is proof positive that you care. If you want the fastest route to likeability, listening is it.
• Engaging Conversationalist: You need to know things beyond your company, your product, and your solutions. You need to be well read. You need to be well versed in cultural references. Knowing what other people like and care about allows you to converse with people about the things that they want to talk about. You also have be interesting enough to engage people in conversations, allowing them open up.
• Sense of Humor: The great leveler. The ability to make people laugh makes you more likeable. Business is a serious game, and it helps to be able to bring some levity to conversations. If you present ideas, and you do just that if you sell, a sense of humor and comedic timing will make you more like able. A self-deprecating sense of humor is a sign that you can laugh at yourself, a key that unlocks many doors, likeability being one of them.
• Positive and Optimistic: The only people who like negative people are other negative people. They commiserate. They share their misery together. It is easy to like someone who is positive and optimistic. Positive people like to spend time with other positive people, and they especially like to work with them. Given the choice of working with a negative, cynical, pessimist or a positive, empowered, optimistic person, which would you find more like able.
• Respectful and Polite: Part of what makes you likeable is your polite and respectful disposition. Good manners will get you a lot further than you might believe. It displays character. It indicates a sense of class, refinement.
• Personable: This is about your appearance and your manners. Even if you want to wear a t-shirt and your ball cap backwards, or slant ways, or sideways, you are going to be judged by your appearance. Your appearance gives people an idea of who you are. It also suggests how successful you might be. How you present yourself is important to likeability.
• Collaborative: Inviting other people to contribute their ideas, regardless of whether it’s in a conversation or the design of a solution, makes you likeable. Collaboration proves that you care about what the other person wants, and that their ideas are important.
• Non-Judgmental: likeable people aren’t judgmental of other people. They don’t talk about them behind their backs, and they aren’t gossips. They also don’t assign blame to others. They assume others have good intentions and focus instead on finding solutions to challenges, regardless of the source.

Your dream client is basing their decision to buy from you, in part, on what they believe you are going to be like to work with once hired. Being likeable tilts the playing field in your direction.