Reading People Has Proven to be an Invaluable Skill for Successful Salespeople
In order for salespeople to succeed in today’s highly competitive marketplace, they must be able to effectively read their prospect in more ways than one to gauge where they stand with that prospect. Unfortunately, far too many salespeople lack this essential skill. Here are four of the 400 or so ways that you can become better at reading your prospect.
Observe Body Language Watching for body language could be the single most important way to read a prospect. These unspoken signals include power hints, insecurity hints, disagreement hints, boredom hints, evaluation hints, and indecision hints.
Power hints are apparent when the prospect displays confidence, superiority, and a dominant attitude through his or her touching fingertips, placing his or her hands behind the head, meeting you with piercing eye contact, or standing while you are sitting. The best way to meet this attitude is to allow the prospect to maintain his or her confidence and power.
Insecurity is signaled when your prospect wrings his or her hands, fidgets, bows his or her head, makes minimal eye contact with you, clears his or her throat, or twitches. The key strategy for you to follow in such a situation is to work to make the prospect feel more secure.
Disagreement hints are evidenced when a person’s body is angled toward or away from you, when the face is tense, or when the arms are crossed. Disagreement with what you are saying does not mean that the possibilities of making the sale are completely diminished. However, it is wise for you to discover what exactly your prospect disagrees with, and then to clarify what he or she said in order to ease that anger.
Hints of boredom are given away by ceiling watching, fiddling, shuffling papers, picking at clothing, foot tapping, a blank stare, or looking out the window. When you find yourself in a situation such as this, you should attempt to liven up your presentation, or involve the prospect more in the conversation.
Evaluation hints, which most likely indicate a level of interest in your product or service, include glasses in mouth, hand on chin, nodding, index finger to mouth, and good eye contact. All of these unspoken signals point to the possibility that the prospect is intrigued by what he or she hears.
Indecision hints, such as pencil in mouth, head scratching, head down, or cleaning of glasses, tend to mean that your prospect is unsure about what he or she is hearing. In this situation, you should continue to build value in the hope of convincing your prospect of the advantages of purchasing the product or service.
Listen Carefully Body language, while being a powerful indicator in terms of where you stand with your prospect, is not the only way that you can effectively read others.
Listening aggressively is another key skill that will allow you to maintain your “edge.” Listening not only to what the prospect is saying, but precisely how he or she says it, will give you insight into the thoughts that are going through the prospect’s mind. This will in turn help you to analyze where you are in regard to making the sale. Talk Less Talking less is an obvious tip, yet many salespeople continue to ignore it. You automatically read people better when you talk less. When you talk, you are obviously concentrating on what you’re trying to say. Therefore, it is impossible that you are giving your full attention to the spoken or unspoken signals that the prospect is giving off. Practice Discretion Being discreet is the final tip that you should take into account in terms of reading people. You should be careful what you do with the information that you have learned through reading your prospect.
Far too many salespeople today ignore the value of reading people in favor of their own methods of sales. They should keep in mind that selling is all about fulfilling the needs of the prospect, and if they fail to read the signals which show what the prospect wants to have happen, then these salespeople are most certainly selling below their potential. HBM
Bill Brooks is the founder and CEO of The Brooks Group, an internationally known sales and business development research, training, and consulting firm. He is the author of 14 books including, The New Science of Selling and Persuasion: How Smart Companies and Great Salespeople Sell, a 2004 bestseller published by John Wiley & Sons. If you would like to receive The Brooks Groups’ free monthly e-mail sales/and or sales management newsletter, e-mail or call 336-282-6303.
