Business Etiquette This book teaches individuals how to represent their

Business Etiquette: 101 Ways to Conduct Business with
Charm and Savvy
is for you—whether you’ve just landed an
entry-level office job, operate on the front lines with people
who use your company’s product or service, run your own
business, or hold any other position that involves maintain-
ing business relationships with others. Whether you work
for a multinational corporation, a local print shop, or a one-
person business, you have probably faced the same basic
question my clients have: How do I make sure I don’t say
or do the wrong thing in a business setting?
Often, I am challenged by seminar participants to pro-
vide a single, one-sentence answer to that question, an an-
swer that applies to any and all business situations. You may
be surprised to learn that such an answer actually exists!
The guiding principle
The guiding principle
The guiding principle
The guiding principle
The guiding principle
This book is full of practical advice that will help you
come across with charm and savvy in a wide variety of busi-
ness settings. Before you take advantage of this targeted
counsel, however, you may be interested in learning more
about the underlying principle that I believe is always—

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15
Introduction
repeat, 
always
—there for you to fall back on in business
situations. Here’s my one-sentence answer to that question
my clients always ask:
Make the individual with whom you’re dealing feel as
though he or she were the most important person in the
world.
When you come right down to it, that’s the secret to
managing business protocol and etiquette issues. Naturally,
there’s a lot more advice to bear in mind. Yet all of it, I
believe, relies on making the other person feel important,
attended to, respected. It’s a natural human tendency: We
like to spend time with—and will often go out of our way to
help—people who make us feel like a million bucks.
This guiding principle is simple, memorable, and—sur-
prise, surprise—capable of imparting just about everyone
with a new sense of confidence in approaching even com-
plex issues of etiquette and protocol in the workplace.
Conducting business with charm and savvy means mak-
ing an investment of attention in the other person, nothing
more and nothing less. That principle applies whether
you’re picking up an important executive at the airport, or
if you’re explaining an unfamiliar office policy to a way-
ward subordinate.
Conducting business with charm and savvy means mak-
ing an effort to learn more about others than you share
about yourself. It means learning to interact with others
more effectively by consistently putting a positive focus on
the person on the other side. It means being present for the
individual with whom you’re interacting and making sure
he or she feels great about the exchange.
Interest in and concern for others supports all “proper
etiquette.” In my own experience, undivided attention may
be the single best technique for banishing that queasy “what

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16
Business Etiquette
do I do now?” feeling many of us associate with social en-
counters related to our work.
The specific applications presented in this book—all 101
of them—reinforce the basic principle in ways that you can
easily use. When you 
know
you’re doing the right thing and
recognize how to do it, you feel more confident, better in-
formed, and better prepared for the challenges that come
your way during the workday.
So much for the etiquette jitters!
A simple, no-nonsense guide
A simple, no-nonsense guide
A simple, no-nonsense guide
A simple, no-nonsense guide
A simple, no-nonsense guide