People buy from people they like. People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. Nobody buys a product, they buy a feeling. Three sayings in circulation across American sales training, and all three make the same claim: the transaction runs through the person.
The thank-you note
After an American interview, a pitch or a meeting, a note follows. Its content is conventional and everybody knows it. Sending it is read as care. Not sending it is noticed.
The Super Bowl ad
American companies pay several million dollars for thirty seconds and frequently spend it on a story that barely mentions the product. The purchase being made is an emotional association, and everyone involved knows it.
Rapport
An American sales and negotiation term, taught explicitly, with techniques attached: matching pace, finding common ground, remembering personal details. It is treated as a skill that can be learned and improved, not as something that either happens or does not.
The dinner and the golf course
American business conducts a substantial amount of its work in settings chosen because they are not offices. The point is not the food or the round. It is the hours spent in a context where people are not performing their roles.
Relationship selling
An established American sales tradition holding that the relationship precedes the transaction and outlasts it. Entire sales organisations are structured around it — account managers who keep the same clients for years, whose job description is the relationship itself.
Tactical empathy
Chris Voss, formerly the FBI’s lead international kidnapping negotiator, teaches a method built on mirroring, labelling the other party’s emotions aloud, and calibrated questions. His book became a major American bestseller and his firm trains corporate negotiators. The technique is not to set emotion aside. It is to name it accurately and work with it.
How to Win Friends and Influence People
Dale Carnegie published it in 1936. It has sold tens of millions of copies and has never been out of print. Its argument is that business outcomes follow from how people feel about you, and its instructions are about attention, names, listening and genuine interest. An American business classic is a book about liking.
Tom challenges Jay
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925). In The Great Gatsby, Tom Buchanan, a man of privilege and power, confronts Jay Gatsby about his business dealings and relationship with Daisy. Tom challenges Gatsby to admit that his wealth is acquired through criminal means, asserting his dominance through aggressive, confrontational tactics.
Tom uses intimidation, personal attacks, and moral superiority to destabilize Gatsby and assert control over Daisy. He frames the interaction as a power play, showing how negotiation in American culture can be as much about positioning oneself as it is about the actual deal. The focus on personal leverage, assertiveness, and direct confrontation exemplifies the American approach to negotiation, where outcomes and power dynamics take precedence over decorum or structure.
personal influence
In Mad Men (2007-15), Don Draper exemplifies the American negotiation style in a scene where he attempts to secure a lucrative account with Heinz. Draper employs charm, confidence, and assertive language to pitch a new advertising campaign, positioning himself as the creative visionary Heinz needs. The scene is a masterclass in using personal influence and persuasive rhetoric to win over skeptical clients. Draper’s negotiation tactic is less about structure and more about emotional appeal, aligning with the American focus on persuasion and charisma.