92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationships (20 page)

No sale!

Match your personality to your product. Selling handmade suits? A little decorum please. Selling jeans? A little cool, please. Selling sweat suits? A little sporty, please. And so on for whatever you’re selling. Remember, you are your customers’ buying experience. Therefore you are part of the product they’re buying. 05 (171-198B) part five 8/14/03 9:18 AM Page 176

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45
How to Make Them

Feel That You’re

Like “Family”

Have you ever been gabbing with a new acquaintance and, after a few moments, you’ve said to yourself, “This person and I think alike! We’re on the same wavelength.” It’s a fabulous feeling, almost like falling in love.

Lovers call it “chemistry.” New friends talk of “instant rapport,” and businesspeople say a “meeting of minds.” Yet it’s the same magic, that sudden sense of warmth and closeness, that strange sensation of “Wow, we were old friends at once!”

When we were children, making friends was easier. Most of the kids we met grew up in the same town and so they were on our wavelength. Then the years went by. We grew older. We moved away. Our backgrounds, our experiences, our goals, our lifestyles became diverse. Thus, we fell off each other’s wavelengths. Wouldn’t it be great to have a magic surfboard to help you hop right back on everybody’s wavelength whenever you wanted?

Here it is, a linguistic device that gets you riding on high rapport with everyone you meet. If you stand on a mountain cliff and shout “hello-oh” across the valley, your identical “hello-oh” thunders back at you. I call the technique “Echoing” because, like the mountain, you echo your conversation partner’s precise words.
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It All Started Across the Ocean

In many European countries, you’ll hear five, ten, or more languages within the language. For example, in Italy, the Sicilians from the south speak a dialect that seems like gobbledygook to northern Italians. In an Italian restaurant, I once overheard a diner discover his waiter was also from Udine, a town in northeastern Italy where they speak the Friulano dialect. The diner stood up and hugged the waiter like he was a long-lost brother. They started babbling in a tongue that left the other Italian waiters shrugging. In America we have dialects, too. We just aren’t conscious of them. In fact we have thousands of different words, depending on our region, our job, our interests, and our upbringing. Once, when traveling across the country, I tried to order a soda like a Coke or 7-Up in a highway diner. It took some explaining before the waitress understood I wanted what she called a “pop.” Perhaps because the English-speaking world is so large, Americans have a wider choice of words for the same old stuff than any language I’ve encountered.

Family members find themselves speaking alike. Friends use the same words, and associates in a company or members in a club talk alike. Everyone you meet will have his or her own language that subliminally distinguishes them from outsiders. The words are all English, but they vary from area to area, industry to industry, and even family to family.
The Linguistic Device That Says “We’re

on the Same Wavelength”

When you want to give someone the subliminal feeling you’re just alike, use their words, not yours. Suppose you are selling a car to a young mother who tells you she is concerned about safety because she has a young “toddler.” When explaining the safety fea-05 (171-198B) part five 8/14/03 9:18 AM Page 178

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How to Talk to Anyone

tures of the car, use her word. Don’t use whatever word you call your kids. Don’t even say
child-protection lock
, which was in your sales manual. Tell your prospect, “No toddler can open the window because of the driver’s control device.” Even call it a
toddler-
protection lock
. When Mom hears toddler coming from your lips, she feels you are “family” because that’s how all her relatives refer to her little tyke. Suppose your prospect had said
kid
or
infant
. Fine, echo any word she used. (Well, almost any word. If she’d said my
brat
, you might want to pass on Echoing this time.)
Echoing at Parties

Let’s say you are at a party. It’s a huge bash with many different types of people. You are first chatting with a lawyer who tells you her
profession
is often maligned. When it comes your turn to speak, say
profession
too. If you say
job
, it puts a subconscious barrier between you.

Next you meet a construction worker who starts talking about his
job
. Now you’re in trouble if you say, “Well, in my
profession

. . .” he’d think you were being hoity-toity.

After the lawyer and the construction worker, you talk to several freelancers—first a model, then a professional speaker, finally a pop musician. All three of these folks will use different words for their work. The model brags about her
bookings
. The professional speaker might say
bookings
, but he is more apt to boast of his
speak-
ing engagements
. A pop musician might say, “Yeah, man, I get a lot of
gigs
.” It’s tough to memorize what they all call their work. Just keep your ears open and echo their word after they say it. Echoing goes beyond job names. For example if you are chatting with a boat owner and you call his boat an
it
, he labels you a real landlubber. (He reverently refers to his beloved boat, of course, as a
she
.) If you listen carefully, you hear language subtleties you never dreamed existed. Would you believe using the wrong synonym for a seemingly uncomplicated word like
have
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labels you a know-nothing in somebody else’s world? For example, cat lovers purr about
having
cats. But horse people would say
owning
horses. And fish folk don’t
own
fish. They talk about
keep-
ing
fish. Hey, no big deal. But if you use the wrong word, your conversation partner will assume, correctly, that you are a stranger in his or her hobbyland.

The Peril of Not Echoing

Sometimes you lose out by not Echoing. My friend Phil and I were talking with several guests at a party. One woman proudly told the group about the wonderful new ski chalet she had just purchased. She was looking forward to inviting her friends up to her little chalet in the mountains.

“That’s wonderful,” said Phil, secretly hoping for an invitation. “Where exactly is your cabin?” KERPLUNK! There went Phil’s chances for an invitation to the lady’s chalet.

I couldn’t resist. After the conversation, I whispered to my friend, “Phil, why did you insult that woman by calling her chalet a
cabin
?” Phil scratched his head and said, “What do you mean insult her?
Cabin
is a beautiful word. My family has a cabin in Cape Cod and I grew up loving the word, the associations, the joy of a cabin.” (In other words, the connotations of
cabin
.) Well, fine, Phil. The word
cabin
may be beautiful to you, but obviously the skier preferred the word
chalet
.

Professional Echoing

In today’s sales environment, customers expect salespeople to be problem solvers, not just vendors. They feel you don’t grasp their industry’s problems if you don’t speak their language.

I have a friend, Penny, who sells office furniture. People in publishing, advertising, broadcasting, and a few lawyers are among her clients. Penny’s sales manual says
office furniture
. However, she 05 (171-198B) part five 8/14/03 9:18 AM Page 180

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How to Talk to Anyone

told me, if she used the word
office
with all of her clients, they’d assume she knew nothing about their respective industries. She told me her client, the purchasing officer in advertising, talks about his advertising
agency
. Penny’s publishing client says publishing
house
. The lawyers talk about furniture for their
firm
, and her radio clients use the word
station
instead of
office
. “Hey,”

Penny says, “it’s their salt mine. They can call it whatever the heck they please. And,” she added, “if I want to make the sale, I’d better call it the same thing.”

Technique #45

Echoing

Echoing is a simple linguistic technique that packs a

powerful wallop. Listen to the speaker’s arbitrary choice of nouns, verbs, prepositions, adjectives—and echo

them back. Hearing their words come out of your

mouth creates subliminal rapport. It makes them feel

you share their values, their attitudes, their interests, their experiences.

Echoing Is Politically Correct Insurance

Here’s a quiz: You’re talking with a pharmacist and you ask her,

“How long have you worked at the drugstore?” What’s wrong with that question?

Give up? It’s the word
drugstore
. Pharmacists abhor the word because it conjures up many industry problems. They’re used to hearing it from outsiders, but it’s a tip-off that they are unaware of, or insensitive to, their professional problems. They prefer
pharmacy
.

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Recently, at a reception, I introduced one of my friends, Susan, as a day-care worker. Afterward Susan begged, “Leil, puleeze do not call me a
day-care worker
. We’re
child-care workers
.”

Whoops! Time and recent history quickly make certain terms archaic.

A group’s intense preference for one word is not arbitrary. Certain jobs, minorities, and special-interest groups often have a history the public is not sensitive to. When that history has too much pain attached to it, people invent another word that doesn’t have bitter connotations.

I have a dear friend, Leslie, who is in a wheelchair. She says whenever anyone says the word
handicapped
, she cringes. Leslie says it makes her feel less than whole. “We prefer you say
person
with a disability
.” She then gave a moving explanation. “We people with disabilities are the same as every other able-bodied person. We say
AB
,” she added. “ABs go through life with all the same baggage we do. We just carry one extra piece, a disability.”

It’s simple. It’s effective. To show respect and make people feel close to you, Echo their words. It makes you a more sensitive communicator—and keeps you out of trouble every time. 05 (171-198B) part five 8/14/03 9:18 AM Page 182

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46
How toReally Make It

Clear to Them

I recently had to make a presentation to fifteen men in a corporate meeting. “OK,” I said to myself as I stood up, “fifteen Martians and one Venusian.” No problem! I’d read
Men Are from Mars,
Women Are from Venus
. I’d explored neurological differences in men’s and women’s brains. I knew all about gender-specific bodylanguage signals. Hey, I teach communications differences. I was well prepared to talk to these men, get my point across, and fend any questions.

Everything started out fine. I’d conceived my presentation clearly and concisely, developed each theme, and presented it flawlessly. Then, I sat down and confidently invited questions and open discussion.

That’s when it fell apart. All I remember is a horrifying barrage of questions couched in football analogies.

“Do you think we dropped the ball on that one?” one man asked.

“Yeah,” another responded. “But can we make a fumble recovery?”

Those two I understood. However, when it got to pass coverage and intentional grounding, I started to lose it. When one
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How to
Really
Make It Clear to Them

183

guy raved about a Hail Mary pass being needed to save the deal, I suffered the ultimate humiliation. I had to ask, “Uh, what does that mean?” The guys looked at each other knowingly and then smiled condescendingly as they explained it to me.

That night I had sadistic fantasies of fifteen women running the company and one man left scratching his head as we bandied about childbirth analogies.

“We won’t get his new proposal ’til the third trimester,”

reports the account exec.

“Yeah, but that’s six months away. Let’s get it by C-section,”

responds the comptroller.

“Why bother?” asks the marketing VP. “All his ideas are developed in vitro anyway.”

“I’m about to go into postpartum depression,” murmurs the CEO. The lone male employee is left as confused and humiliated as I was in the face of football analogies.

Ahem, the aim of this book is not to feed fiendish fantasies, but to improve communications. To that end, I offer the following technique based on analogies, not just football analogies. Because old-boy analogies are unsportsman-like conduct with the girls.

On-Target Analogies Hit Bull’s-Eye

Analogies can be an effective communications tool—if you evoke images from the life of the person you are talking to. Men don’t use football analogies to obfuscate matters or to confuse women but to clarify situations for each other. Analogies from the sport bring situations to life for men because generally they watch more football than women.

Moving on to other sports analogies: everyone knows what the speaker means when he or she hears, “We’ll never strike out 05 (171-198B) part five 8/14/03 9:18 AM Page 184

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How to Talk to Anyone

with this solution.” Nevertheless, the image would be more compelling to a baseball fan as would analogies like “caught on the fly,”