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| Bob Hafer,
MIRM, CSP |
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Making a connection
Building rapport is the first step in selling. I believe everyone who reads this newsletter will agree with that statement. However, once you have established rapport, what then?
Certainly, one of your goals is to identify what is important to your prospect because you want to match customer needs to available homes. One way to identify whether or not this match exists is to know what and how your customer thinks.
How do you find out what and how your prospect thinks? You might think that the information is locked away in your prospects mind? And therefore, this information is difficult to retrieve. Yet, as you listen carefully, your customer’s words will tell you not only what your prospect thinks but how your prospect thinks. And when you know how a prospect thinks, you can explain and discuss needs and wants in ways the prospect is most likely to understand.
Ways of thinking
I want you to think back now to your last successful sales presentation. Take a few moments to remember it, so you can describe it to yourself.
Do you have a successful sales presentation in mind? What did you do? How did you remember it? You may have visualized the time of day and a specific customer. You may have heard your customer's voice. You probably felt good about the result and may have talked to yourself about it. However you remembered it the thing to be aware of is that you take information into your mind through your five senses: visual, auditory, feeling, taste and smell. Then you re-experience it, that is, you re-present parts of it to yourself when you think.
NLP takes the five senses – visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory, and gustatory – and examines how people use them internally to think, calling them representational systems. Thinking is a mixture of the five representational systems.
How we think is reflected in what we say. People who are thinking in pictures will use words such as ‘see’, ‘perspective’, ‘look’, ‘bright’, ‘vision’, and ‘scene’. They may use phrases like ‘I’m glad we see eye to eye’, or ‘That’s too vague’, ‘I need to see it in black and white’.
A person who is thinking in sounds or hearing an internal voice will use words like ‘say’, ‘tell’, ‘question’, ‘speak’, ‘tune’, and ‘demand’. People may use phrases like ‘I hear you loud and clear.’ And ‘Let’s talk things over’, or ‘listen to my proposal’.
Someone who thinks using feelings will use words like ‘touch’, ‘move’, ‘grasp’, ‘feel’, ‘smooth’, ‘solid’, and ‘balance’. People are likely to use such phrases as ‘It’s been weighing on my mind’. Feeling people will ‘touch upon’ topics or ‘carry the project through’.
Speaking your customer’s language
Now that you know what to listen for, the next step is to hear what your prospects say and notice when they use sensory-based words. After a few days you will start to see, hear and sense all of them more easily. Once you can do that, you can begin to match them in your response.
Although we all use different ways of thinking all the time, when you pay attention to the language your prospects use, you may find some prospects tend to use more visual words, others more feeling words, others more auditory words. When you know which words a prospect prefers, you can start to express yourself by matching their language preference. And the benefit to you is that people like people who think like they do.
A simple exercise
To find your own preferred way of thinking and language preference, talk for five minutes about your work into a tape recorder. Then go back over what you recorded and note the words you use. You may notice that you tend to use visual words and you also think visually. You might then notice that it is easier for you to get good rapport and better results with prospects that think and speak visually.
The important thing to keep in mind as you begin language matching is to relax and have fun with it. Take it slow and easy. There is no rush. In the beginning just be aware of the words your prospects select. Listen, observe and tune into what is being said. Then when you feel comfortable begin to match sensory words you hear. Watch how your prospect responds. The benefit to language matching is rapport. And I know you are looking for ways to instantly build rapport.
Send to a friend
Before reading the next two articles I have a favor to ask. I want you to send this newsletter to 5 people who you feel will benefit from the ideas and principles included. My goal is to send this newsletter to at least 1000 people monthly. To achieve this goal I need your help. At the bottom of the newsletter you will find a ‘Send to a Friend’ button. Just click and follow the easy introductions. Thank you in advance for helping me and your friend achieve their goals. It is appreciated!
Robert E. Hafer Seminars
To learn more about Robert E. Hafer seminars and workshops and purchase Building Results – The Ultimate How-To Guide For New Homes Sales, visit click here, email Bob at Send Emailor call 972-795-5926.
Good Luck and Good Selling!
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Thinking and speed of speech
Words are one way that thinking manifests itself. There are others. Imagine thinking in pictures. Pictures in the mind happen quickly and have a lot of information in them all at once.
Stop now and imagine a lion in the jungle. What did your picture look like? Was your lion standing or resting. Was your lion alone or where there other lions? Now imagine your lion running through the jungle. Was your lion chasing another animal or was it just running? Each person who stopped and thought about a lion saw something different. The important thing to consider is that you pictured something.
People who think a lot in pictures – and you may be one yourself – tend to talk quickly to keep up with the pictures. Thinking in feelings is usually slower, because feelings need time. People who listen and internalize their thoughts by carrying on an internal conversation think and process information at a slower pace.
So a visual thinker talking to a feeling or auditory thinker can be a disastrous mismatch. What follows are three examples; see, hear or feel which you prefer.
- A visual thinker talks fast, saying things like, "Come and look at this new design. This new floor plan shows beautifully. I can’t wait for you to see it."
- A feeling thinker talks slowly, saying things like, "I don’t want to be rushed. My new home must make me feel comfortable. Let’s go slowly and make sure your plans satisfies all my needs and wants."
- A auditory thinker appears quiet because they are constructing and hearing their response before speaking out loud. An auditory thinker may sound something like this, "It sounds like a good floor plan to me, and I hear what you are saying. Before I get too excited let me hear all about the homes features. If what I hear rings a bell, I will move forward. How does that sound?"
Take a moment and consider your preference. Do you think you have a visual, auditory or feeling preference. By recognizing your preference you are now becoming aware of that your prospects also have a preference.Once you develop an ear for sensory-based words, its value becomes obvious. It's not what people say – it's the words they use to say it.
Figures of speech
As you now know, people think in different ways, prospects will use different phrases which you can match.
Here are some examples:
Visual:
‘I see what you mean.’
‘The future looks bright’.
‘Let me shed some light on this new floor plan.’
Auditory:
‘That rings a bell.’
‘In a manner of speaking.’
‘You are talking so loud I can’t hear myself think.’
Feeling:
‘I’ll be in touch with you.’
‘I can’t put my finger on it.’
‘I’ll be in touch with you.’
A simple exercise
For the next couple days listen carefully to your prospects sensory-based words and figures of speech. What I want you to do is raise your level of awareness. The benefit to you is that you gain a clear insight into how a prospect is thinking. Then after a couple days begin matching back using the same language preference. Pretty soon you will begin to notice how easy it is to align and be like your prospects. And one sure-fire way to develop rapport is to be like the people you are attempting to influence.
Send to a friend
Before reading the last article I have a favor to ask. I want you to send this newsletter to 5 people who you feel will benefit from the ideas and principles included. If you have already sent it, thank you, if not, please do it now. My goal is to send this newsletter to at least 1000 people monthly. To achieve this goal I need your help. At the bottom of the newsletter you will find a ‘Send to a Friend’ button. Just click and follow the easy introductions. Thank you in advance for helping me and your friend achieve their goals. It is appreciated!
Robert E. Hafer Seminars
To learn more about Robert E. Hafer seminars and workshops and purchase Building Results – The Ultimate How-To Guide For New Homes Sales, visit click here, email Bob at Send Emailor call 972-795-5926.
Good Luck and Good Selling!
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Watch the eyes
It’s easy to recognize if someone is thinking in pictures, sounds or feelings. There are visible changes in the body when we think in different ways. The easiest way to observe a change in thinking is to watch the eyes.
Consider this question, "What is the first thing you see as you walk into your model home sales office?"
Take a few seconds now and picture your office. To answer my question you probably looked up and to your left. Looking up and left is how most right-handed people remember images.
Now, I want you to experience something different. How would it would feel to have a soft feather moving slowly over your skin? With this experience you probably looked down and to your right, which is the way the majority of people get in touch with their feelings.
A remarkable discovery
During the early development of NLP, researchers made a remarkable discovery. They noticed that people move their eyes in different directions in a systematic way depending on how they are thinking. This discovery provides you with some clues as to how your prospects are processing questions. Consider the following possibilities and how it might impact your selling strategy.
- When a person visualizes something from past experiences their eyes tend to move up and to the left.
- When constructing a picture from words or trying to ‘imagine’ something never seen, eyes move up and to the right.
- The eyes move across to the left for remembered sounds and across to the right for constructed sounds.
- When accessing feelings, the eyes will typically go down to the right.
- When talking to ourselves, the eyes will usually go down left.
- Defocusing the eyes and staring straight ahead, can denote visualization.
Learning to recognize eye movement is difficult. This is a skill that takes lots of practice and awareness. Some people barely move their eyes. Others often use exaggerated eye movements as part of their pattern of expressions. Also, some people blink when their eyes move and the movement actually takes place beneath the eyelid. But the reward of knowing how your prospect is thinking is worth the effort.
What's in it for me?
It's possible that right about now you might be asking, "Is watching eye movement worth my valuable time?" In the first and second article you learned people have a language preference (visual, auditory, kinesthetic). Well, eye movements, provide you with more clues as to what thinking preference your prospect is experiencing at that moment. The more evidence you have the more accurate you will be with your communication. Therefore, there are three key times to notice a prospect's eye movement:
- Immediately after you have asked a question.
- During a pause, when your prospect is searching for a thought.
- Immediately before your prospect speaks.
With observation, timing, and skillful wording of questions, you can help a prospect tell you exactly what you need to know. And that moves you toward rapport, openness, clarity and congruity. Understanding eye movements can be a powerful tool in developing and maintaining rapport.
A simple exercise
You might like to try out the following exercise with a spouse, friend or co-worker. Sit down in a quiet place, and ask the following questions and watch for eye movement.
Visual remembered: (eyes up to the left)
What color is your front door?
Which of your friends have the longest?
Visual constructed: (eyes up to the right)
What would your bedroom look like with bright pink flowered wallpaper?
Imagine a red triangle inside a blue square.
Auditory remembered: eyes centered to the left
Which door slams loudest in your house?
Can you hear your favorite piece of music in your mind?
Auditory constructed: eyes centered to the right
How loud would it be if ten people shouted at once?
Think of your favorite tune played at double speed.
Internal conversation: eyes down left
What tone of voice do you use when you talk to yourself?
What do you say to yourself when things go wrong?
Accessing a feeling: eyes down right
What does it feel like to put on a wet swim suit?
Which is warmer now, you left or right hand?
Remember it is the thought process that matters, not the actual answers. Don't get wrapped up in what is being said. Your job is to watch eye movement. The founder of NLP, Richard Blander, was asked, "What where the most important NLP skills?" He answered, "Watch and listen."
Your customers will actually tell you how to sell them if you listen and watch carefully. It is my experience that everything you need to be successful happens right in front of you. Open your eyes and ears and align your sales presentation to what you see and hear and sales and income will increase.
Send to a friend
Before filing this newsletter I have a favor to ask. I want you to send this newsletter to 5 people who you feel will benefit from the ideas and principles included. If you have already sent it, thank you, if not, please do it now. My goal is to send this newsletter to at least 1000 people monthly. To achieve this goal I need your help. At the bottom of the newsletter you will find a ‘Send to a Friend’ button. Just click and follow the easy introductions. Thank you in advance for helping me and your friend achieve their goals. It is appreciated!
Robert E. Hafer Seminars
To learn more about Robert E. Hafer seminars and workshops and purchase Building Results – The Ultimate How-To Guide For New Homes Sales, visit click here, email Bob at Send Emailor call 972-795-5926.
Good Luck and Good Selling!
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