What is pacing and leading?

Verbal pacing and leading is a simple, yet powerful, conversational language pattern that allows you to quickly gain agreement for your suggestions and ideas, bypass criticism and increase your level of influence. This is an outstanding technique for eliciting positive responses and lowering your prospect’s resistance. Curiously, it is not perceptible to the listener, it takes a little preparation and is an excellent tactic for increasing sales.

The process we follow when engaging with others is to make four statements. The initial three, referred to as pacing statements, are designed to be accepted without resistance and often without comment. The fourth leading statement is the suggestion for which we want unconditional acceptance.

As you continue reading and learning more about this technique, you are going to discover what makes verbal pacing and leading so compelling. When you think about it, language is universal. It cannot be avoided. Because of your newly acquired skills, you should be able to persuade anyone in any situation; it would be good to be able to do that, wouldn’t it?

As you study this technique, soon only a few might be able to escape your impressive persuasive skills. You could, naturally, persuade more prospects and clients and win more business than you ever thought possible. Before revealing the structure of the pattern enabling you to accomplish all of the above, let us examine the terms ‘pacing’ and ‘leading’ and clarify their meaning.

Pacing statements

When pacing someone, your conversation must be focused around obviously true, experientially verifiable situations or topics on which you both agree. We refer to these as ‘truisms’. When you make these statements, the listener is likely to be thinking, ‘Yes, that’s right’, ‘yes’ and ‘yes’ again. If you are familiar with creating ‘yes sets’, then I am sure you will agree this is a sophisticated form of that technique.

The listener does not even have to answer out loud as a non-verbal confirmation of the statements is all that is required. You will recognise the following examples as truisms.

These statements are obviously true:

• You have read the first four paragraphs of this chapter.
• You are learning about verbal pacing and leading.
• You have just read about truisms.

We use truisms because they:

• create a state of receptiveness in others;
• deepen rapport, remove resistance and raise responsiveness by establishing a series of ‘yes sets’;
• lead conversations towards your outcome;
• covertly prepare your prospect to accept leading suggestions.

Truisms are essential for building ‘response potential’. The more response potential we generate (and remember, your subject will be unaware this is happening), the more likely your leading suggestions will be accepted without resistance.

Leading statements

Having created ‘response potential’ by progressively pacing truisms, we continue by making a ‘leading statement’. This is the suggestion that you want your prospect to accept or think about your company, product or service.

There are two schools of thought concerning the most efficient words to ensure your prospect accepts your suggestions. Some believe people more readily accept suggestions when they imply there is a chance that what is being said will occur and use vocabulary such as, should, may, could and might. Others prefer to suggest certainty with words and phrases like, it is going to happen/take place, must and will.

As you start to create pacing and leading statements following the format outlined below, try switching between possibility and certainty. Carefully monitor the outcome and use whichever produces the best result for you.

Pacing and leading pattern structure

The structure of pacing and leading is surprisingly straightforward; we recommend preparing three pacing statements and one leading statement:

• Before delivering your sales presentation, prepare in advance and memorise your pacing and leading statements.
• Repeating language patterns improves your chances of success.

Review the following example pacing and leading statements:

To further encourage your prospect to agree with what you are saying, nod your head up to three times as you ask a tag question. Nodding, like yawning, is contagious. Try it.

Repetition of all language patterns is essential. Finally, we might say:

The three sets of pacing and leading statements we have just reviewed are, of course, the third and fourth paragraphs of this chapter and follow this overall pattern:

The above combination of pacing and leading phrases builds momentum in your subject. We hoped, as you read the third and fourth paragraphs of this chapter, that you became enthused about the technique you were about to learn, a method of persuasion that promised you would be able to persuade in any situation with any person. If you were, the pattern achieved its purpose and we speculated as you continued: you were unaware the paragraphs you were reading followed a precise, pre-determined structure, subtly and progressively leading you towards a conclusion we wished you to accept.

To establish a strategy for practising pacing and leading, first write down the objective or outcome you desire for a particular meeting. Then, prepare three statements, interspersing facts and suggestions about the company, product or service you want to relay to your prospect, using the format that follows. Remember, facts are pacing statements and suggestions are leading statements.

• Three facts followed by one suggestion.
• Two facts followed by one suggestion.
• One fact followed by two suggestions.
• Close.

Practise saying your statements and suggestions out loud. The more you practise, the more it will naturally flow.

Once you master verbal pacing and leading, you will find it easy to influence almost anyone you need to. Practise and enjoy this powerful technique.