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Your name matters to ‘Swim with the Sharks’ authorYour name matters to 'Swim with the Sharks' author

“Swim with the Sharks” author and syndicated columnist Harvey Mackay built a multimillion dollar envelope company in Minnesota by learning people’s names and humanizing his selling strategy, the entrepreneur said Feb. 17 at Thunderbird School of Global Management.

“People buy from other people because of chemistry — because of people skills,” Mackay told an audience of about 150 students, faculty and staff at the graduate business school in Glendale, Ariz. “When you not only remember a person’s name, but some of the individual characteristics about that person, you’re going to get the order and the reorder.”

Mackay has written five books, including his New York Times No. 1 bestsellers, “Swim With the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive” and “Beware the Naked Man Who Offers You His Shirt.” His syndicated columns for United Feature Syndicate appear weekly in 52 U.S. newspapers.

He said the sweetest sounding word in any language is a person’s name on someone else’s lips. Mackay makes sure his account managers at MackayMitchell Envelope Company in Minneapolis understand this concept. He sends his employees into the field with a 66-question customer profile that they complete over time.

“You wouldn’t believe how much we know about our customers,” Mackay said. “I’m not talking about their taste in envelopes, either. We know — based on routine conversations and observations — what our customers are like as human beings.”

Read the full story on the Thunderbird Knowledge Network.