minds, metaphors and (ethical) manipulation
Archive for February, 2011
The many skills of listening
Feb 22nd
I’ve just had a fabulously inspiring conversation with my friend Linda Schneider of Openhanded Selling.
She’s not only an expert sales trainer, she’s an ace training designer too. So I was interviewing her about how she trains salespeople in questioning and listening skills* and how she breaks the process down into bite-size chunks.
It seems that there are at least six (and possibly as many as eight) distinct, learnable skills encompassed by the phrase “questioning and listening” – which for Linda is by far the first and most important part of the sales process. Asking great questions comes in at number five!
Like me, she’s amazed by how little training most sales people receive in that part of the process: all the emphasis seems to be on presentation skills.
And she points out that it also takes thinking, preparation and practice to develop excellent questioning and listening skills.
So, if you “sell” as any part of your work role, I have a couple of questions for you.
Have you been trained to ask great questions? Do you in fact ask great questions? And, most crucially of all, do you listen to the answers?
*Yes, I recorded it: watch this space for news
More >Make more money – parrot phrase!
Feb 18th
Want a fast and easy way to earn more cash? Researchers have proved that this simple technique increased one waitress’s tips by 70 per cent – instantly. In this clip from her forthcoming video, Discover the Secrets of Intelligent Influence, Judy Rees explains the theory and practice of parrot phrasing and gives practical examples of how it can be put to use.
How can you tell if someone’s body language is “real”?
Feb 16th
I blogged yesterday about how you can use someone’s gestures to influence them. It’s a fascinating, easy and fun technique that really works.
Why does it work? Because in normal circumstances, a person’s gestures are outside their conscious awareness. In other words they come directly from the unconscious mind, from the “Elephant” rather than the conscious “Rider”.
And when you keep track of where they “put” important things they are talking about, and show that you know where they are by looking at them or gesturing towards them, it’s usually their Elephant, not the Rider, that notices.
So it’s their Elephant that gets the message that you really understand them. And since it’s their Elephant that largely drives the person’s behaviour, that’s a powerful way of influencing someone.
Of course, there are circumstances where this approach doesn’t work so well. On the phone or Skype, for example.
And you can use it to help you notice that a person is making gestures which seem to be under the Rider’s control. They suggest the person may be trying to control their body language consciously and presumably purposefully.
What could this mean? Well, it might mean that they are nervous. (Watch a few “beginner” videos on YouTube and you’ll see what I mean.)
But More >
How to influence the thinking body: gestures
Feb 15th
We think with our bodies as well as with our brains. Scientists are finally waking up to this fact, as I reported in a recent post.
And some of us have known about this for years, and have been using that knowledge to influence others.
David Grove, creator of Clean Language, used his knowledge of embodied cognition to devise a therapeutic process called Clean Space, which I’ll write about some other time.
But he also had a particular take on the gestures people use – which you can use to build rapport with people and so set the stage for influencing them.
All you do is watch their gestures, noticing where they ‘put’ the things they are talking about in the space in and around themselves.
Then when you mention those things, look at, and/or gesture towards, exactly the same place as they did. Not the same place in or around your body: the same place they did.
As one delighted student put it, “it’s as if you agree to treat their imaginary friends as real.”
They’ll soon believe you see the world in exactly the same way as they do.
And what happens next is up to you…
Warning: If you know some NLP, please don’t mistake what I’m More >
