I kind of agree with your assessment, and realize you’re making it off the very limited information of the blog post. (As in, it brings to mind, not that the author is necessarily).

I wonder if the answer to why they behave like you are wondering, is that the people who aren’t very good at it, behave that way because they’re so focused on trying to get something.

There’s an interview with Jim Lawler where he touches upon those same techniques. While I do think there’s still a level of … trying to get something (I think it comes across as sociopathy to some people ), I think the people who are more skilled try to get nothing (or appear to initially) and build social connection seemingly for the sake of social connection. Where it becomes hard (even for them?) to distinguish the difference.

I don’t think you need the seemingly.

Good sales people simply get to know and have relationships with a lot of people.

Eg, a salesman from LPKF happily traded emails with me after a decade of not speaking and only meeting a few times about a project idea I had… and when it became clear their product wasn’t a fit, offered to connect me with someone else in his network that would be better able to help. I don’t think he seemingly was interested, but rather, LPKF chose to hire someone who is actually interested in getting to know people and helping their projects succeed.

LPKF would have easily closed a sale with me, had their product been a fit — because if you’re someone people want to do business with, good products sell themselves. And people like doing business with people who help them.

I’m not saying there aren’t manipulative and fake sales people; but I am saying there are sales people who genuinely are just trying to make friends and do good business.

I agree entirely with what you’re saying.

When I think of the people who I know who are excellent at sales, what they’re really excellent at is relationship building, and they’re always pass on trying to sell something if they know it isn’t the right fit for the person/ business. Going so far as to recommend / build other connections.

The seemingly I had added was in my mind in the hypothetical context of someone working on behalf of a nation state actor. However, even then the seemingly might be incorrect… reading interviews from people who seem to have been top in their field, the “trick” seemed to be that there was no coercion involved with the most effective outcomes.

I'm very much bought into this framing. Deceased billionaire Jon Huntsman claimed in his book "Winners Never Cheat" that if you scam or lie as an exec you'll eventually get found out. He argues that it will always be easier for an honest person to be honest than a dishonest person to feign honesty.

But... I think it's more game-theory-esque where when you are playing many games you can't afford to defect or cooperate all the time. So the ideal strategy is to convince yourself your an honest person, focused on the customer, doing the right thing, but actually you just let your cognitive dissonance provide excuses for the handful of situations where you don't do that. If you cooperate in the majority of your interactions but defect rarely, that's likely the optimal pattern. Also, i don't really think you can train yourself into this pattern. It requires actually wanting to do the good thing, but sometimes not doing it, but still convincing yourself it is the good thing without being conscious of it.

I totally agree, it's the intent with which you engage in influence that dictates this. The best find a real reason to have a personal connection and then genuinely try to help the other person within the reasonable constraints of the relationship (example: salesperson & customer).

It can be difficult because almost everyone has an agenda, but you can choose to put it on the back burner.