PRACTICES AND EXERCISES

MAKE THE SECRETS YOURS

A secret has allure because the information is guarded and known only to a chosen few. Now that you have been exposed to insights about reading and using movements, vocal characteristics, and appearance in the context of a sales encounter, do you know body language sales secrets? Not exactly. The big secret is how to turn this knowledge into a skill set.

We have composed a series of actions you can take throughout the day to put your knowledge into practice and make discoveries about body language. Aside from the first one, these are not activities you should feel the need to do daily. They are go-to training exercises to rely on when you want to spend a few minutes honing your skill set. The benefit is being able to use that skill set naturally in the context of sales encounters so that body language consistently works to your advantage.

Some of the exercises are self-focused, but that does not mean you do all of them alone. Some of them involve observing strangers; others invite you to scrutinize friends and colleagues. We hope you will at least do the exercises involving television and movies with other people. Differing interpretations of body language and vocal responses will lead to useful insights, both about the characters in the shows and about your friends! Remember that our interpretations of body language commonly reflect our projections of meanings due to your own background and experiences.

We conclude with some quick exercises on self-discovery, self-control, and self-direction. Reading other people offers you a big plus in sales encounters, but shaping how other people read you also has immeasurable benefits.

A Daily Practice in Using Body Language to Your Advantage

A number of practices in the realm of self-improvement are valuable to help you focus your energy, feel calm, and lift your spirits. They can help you continue to evolve as a sales professional. One practice that we find useful and were able to build on for you is part one of a two-step process developed by Tony Robbins that he calls “priming.”

Try starting your day by setting aside 10 minutes in the morning for quiet reflection and breathing. Out of that will flow a one-minute exercise on body language that we designed.

During this time, spend the first three minutes thinking about three things you’re grateful for. Spend the next three minutes feeling at peace and thinking of people you care about. And lastly, spend three minutes envisioning three things you want to accomplish.¹

We recommend letting one of those three things you want to accomplish rise to the top. Identify three big emotions associated with it. For example, you have your first meeting with a potentially major client later that day and you want it be a success. The emotions you identify are joy, confidence, and determination. Get up with a lot of energy and put a genuine smile on your face. Stand up straight with your eyes focused forward. Stride across the room—that means walk forward in a deliberate manner with the smile still on your face. Your body is now communicating joy, confidence, and determination to you. If you can energize yourself to feel those emotions, then you can communicate them to other people!

To help you make the connection between certain actions and positive emotions, here is a sampling of movements (in alphabetical order, not order of importance) that you can refer to in preparation for doing the exercise:

Here are visual representations of selected movements.

The next sets of exercises can be done anytime and as often as you find them useful. Some involve working with another person, but you could also turn them into a “team sport” with multiple colleagues.

Exercises to Enhance Reading Others’ Behavior

The first set of exercises invites you to observe people around you or recall the behavior of people you know. None of them is about engagement; you simply watch. After that, we ask you to watch again, but this time your observational skills are focused on people featured on either the little or the big screen. The only aspect of these exercises that would engage other people is interacting with, and learning from, the people who do the exercises with you.

Real People Around You

Go to a public place like a restaurant or shopping mall and observe real people using the Big Four: illustrators, regulators, adaptors, and barriers.

•   Note how cultural and gender differences affect the expressiveness of the person.

•   Look at the movements in conjunction with the facial expression. Do they match? Name the emotion you think is being expressed.

Go where you are likely to see people on a date, like a restaurant or a bar.

•   Look for mirroring. People who want to be together will automatically start mirroring each other.

•   Look for barriers and other signs of distancing. People who have reasons to hesitate about being together will use barriers. Sometimes they will push their chair or bar stool farther away from the person to increase the separation even more.

•   Look for postures like the chest thrust or military stance described previously in which the man or woman is trying to be assertive. How is the other person responding?

Think of 10 people you have had repeated contact with in a business environment.

•   How would you describe their dress and demeanor: rigid, put-together, casual, or negligent?

•   Match the appearance with what you know about their behavior.

•   What would you do differently with each of them in trying to influence their behavior? How might you—or do you—dress different or act differently in trying to persuade them to do what you want?

At an internal company meeting, where people are far more likely to be honest about their emotions than at a client meeting, try to detect stress.

•   Jot down some notes of your perception of participants’ baseline behaviors.

•   Next to those notes, write down what you observe as deviations from baseline—that is, signs of stress no matter how minimal.

If writing notes makes it obvious that you are doing something other than listening to your colleagues, then just make mental notes.

Television and Movies

Watch television shows and videos with the purpose of connecting emotions with body language, spotting deception, and identifying conversation motivators.

Whether you are watching a scripted show or reality television, keep in mind that not all actors are created equal. You’re learning what not to do (that is, bad acting) when you know that a person is trying to express a particular emotion, but the body language doesn’t match. This can help you avoid being a “bad actor.”

Connecting Emotions With Body Language

Unlike the people you observed in the mall, with a show you have context and conversation to inform you judgment about the emotions being conveyed.

•   Turn off the sound. Given what you already know—or think you know—about the characters and how they feel about each other, are the illustrators and facial expressions effectively conveying emotions? If not, then are they bad actors, or are the characters perpetrating some kind of deception about how they feel?

•   Turn the sound back on. How much does the tone of voice affect your conclusions about the emotions present?

Spotting Deception

Make a list of statements that you think are blatantly false or exaggerations. Make a note when it seems to you that some key information is missing—that is, you hear a lie of omission.

•   Try it with both comedy and drama. With sitcoms, some kind of lie generally happens every couple of minutes since hyperbole is one of the standard techniques of comedy writing. In this exercise, log it as a lie.

•   Rank the lie from one to three. One would be “It’s barely a lie.” Two is “Oh, come on. That can’t be true.” Three is “Obvious lie.”

Identifying Conversation Motivators

Crime shows and legal dramas involving some kind of interrogation or cross-examination are prime candidates for this exercise.

•   Your aim is first to spot the use of the eight conversation motivators we described: direct questioning, offering incentives, enhancing emotional appeal, boosting ego, deflating ego, easing fears, creating certainty or uncertainty, and silence.

•   After you identify the use of a conversation motivator, pay attention to the effect it has on the other person.

This exercise focuses only on direct questions and the ways that people often avoid them. It is particularly applicable to politicians, but you will notice some of the same patterns of evasion with celebrities on late-night interview shows.

•   Watch a press conference or an interview show with a politician, diplomat, or other person who is likely practiced with media interviews.

•   Is the person giving direct answers to direct questions? That is, does he say yes or no in answering a yes-or-no question?

•   Does the person evade the question to make it more palatable to answer? For example, “Senator, do you think California should secede from the United States?” The senator begins, “Well, I have always enjoyed the beaches in Southern California....”

•   When the person evades a question, what body language do you see? Note also any changes in pitch, tone, or pace, and the use of other vocal characteristics that he is not quite comfortable with the question and/or the answer.

Exercises to Enhance Understanding Your Own Behavior

Just as you involved other people in determining your own baseline, involve people you trust in ascertaining your rituals related to emotion. Recruit a couple of people who have seen you in multiple circumstances and know what you’re like when you experience certain feelings.

•   How do you telegraph your anger? Have your friends or associates consider the full spectrum, from annoyed to furious. Recognize what you do from head to toe, such as scowling, putting your hands on your hips, clenching your teeth, and putting rigidity into your legs.

•   What signals do you exhibit when you are nervous? Again, have the observations relate to the spectrum of mild tension to high anxiety. Consider not only your adaptors, but also the energy level in your illustrators, the degree to which you barrier and how you do it, and any other detectable displays of stress.

•   How do you display defensiveness? This can be a tough one, but if you can nail it, then you have important information for your sales encounters. Regardless of what kind of selling you do, it is highly likely that you will feel defensive at some point. The more accurate you are in knowing how it shows up, the more you can control the expression of it.

Exercises to Elevate Your Skills

The two exercises in this section relate to stress responses and listening. You achieve a great deal—and have huge advantages in both professional and personal situations—if you can mute your expression of stress and amplify your ability to listen.

Managing Stress Responses

People typically have unique ways they ease discomfort in a new situation. You walk into a reception, sit down at an important meeting, or get in front of an audience of any size to deliver a presentation, and your body defaults to one or more actions to make you feel better. Do you clutch your glass, rub your fingers together, shuffle your feet, or do some other idiosyncratic gestures to make yourself feel better?

Be aware that you are entering a new situation and, whatever you’ have determined to be your default response, just don’t do it.

Sit still or stand still. Focus on someone else in the room. Ask a question and then just practice active listening.

Practicing Active Listening

Although listening is a skill that should come naturally to anyone who wants to have meaningful communication with another person, modern technology has made many people rusty. Short blasts of information substitute for conversation many times.

We have said it before and we will now say it the final time in this book: Listening is one of your most powerful skills in both connecting with and influencing people.

The first time you do this exercise, try it for just three minutes. Increase the time as much as you like when you repeat it.

•   Choose a topic you know nothing about but the other person knows a lot about.

•   Listen and learn. Ask questions to help yourself learn.

•   Recount what you learned from the person at the end of the three minutes.

The next exercise is the opposite in an important way.

•   Choose a topic you know a lot about—much more than the other person—and force yourself to listen without jumping in or correcting.

•   During the three minutes, roughly how many times did you want to interrupt? How many times were you thinking, “That’s totally off base!”?

In a situation like this, it’s easy to prejudge what the other person is going to say and be wrong. It’s also highly likely that the person will be wrong about a few things. The challenge is to wait until the person has finished speaking, and then figure out (a) which points really need to be addressed, and (b) how to express them in an informative rather than a critical way.

One more thing: Note well what your body was doing when you heard “bad” information coming from the other person.

We want to give you every possible advantage to achieve great success as a sales professional. Build on the information in the chapters and do the exercises.

What we have shared with you can be life-changing.