How to Read Your Client's Mind

Introduction

In the mid-1970s, after I graduated from college, I walked into a San Diego employment agency looking for a job. Armed with a BA in experimental psychology, I was at a point in my life where I didn’t quite know what career path to follow. Being an honor student, I was so enraptured with psychological research that I scarcely thought about where my degree would lead.

I had only a few options. I could either go on to graduate school, furthering my esoteric endeavors in obscure psychological phenomenology, or get a job. A few days after graduation, I walked into the sales office of a large computer manufacturer, trying to convince the interviewer that I had skills that could be useful to some employer somewhere.

Scanning my résumé, he looked over the top of his glasses and said flatly, If you’re an aspiring college professor, you’re in great shape. Otherwise, I have a $3-an-hour job for you parking cars. Shocked, I struggled in my mind to find any research on sales or persuasive communication that would convince him that I had studied in the sales area, if not actually possessing selling experience.

I suddenly remembered a study I did as a junior on nonverbal behavior. Based on Ray Birdwhistell’s book Kinesics and Context, my studies delved into the behavioral patterns people show when they think. I researched more than twenty other studies on the subject. I also had extensive videotaped sessions with people we had interviewed. We asked questions leading them to states of happiness, skepticism, anger, and interest, among many others. We were able to see a strong relationship between many observable body movements and the emotions the subjects reported. Describing all this research to the sales manager, I sensed his interest in picking me up. Apparently their sales training consisted of features and benefits and ten ways to close, but nothing on the behavioral side of selling.

He asked me if I’d ever spoken to a group before. I said, Sure. Many times. I actually had only presented once before to a group of ten freshmen in an after-class meeting, but I really wanted the job.

He said, Do you charge a fee to speak?

I said, Well, uh, $150. I would have felt lucky to get $25, but I thought a low price might him think I wasn’t any good.

Sounds fine, he said. Let’s schedule it for three weeks from now in San Francisco.

Boy, I was really scared. Not only had I never received a fee before, but I felt intimidated that they wanted to import me by airplane. Practicing night and day for three weeks, at twenty-two years of age, I presented my three-hour talk on nonverbal communication.

Although my speaking skills were mediocre at best, they were good enough to elicit a job offer from the manager, this time to a group of managers at the Columbia School of Broadcasting. I was very flattered by the attention, but just at that time, I received written invitations from tournament directors to play in the Grand Prix tennis circuit, so I decided to try my hot hand at professional tennis.

When I returned from the tennis tour, I turned my attention to academia, studying client relations and sales psychology in my graduate-level research. After graduation, I got experience selling as a stockbroker. I applied my PhD (piled higher and deeper) research into real-world applications.

The purpose of this book is to give you a good idea of what your listener is really thinking, sometimes in spite of what he or she says. After reading this, you should be vastly sharper with your clients, in your ability not only to read their nonverbal cues, but also to listen and persuade.

Whether you’re a salesman, accountant, lawyer, or manager, you are paid to communicate with people. Your income will grow commensurately, not with your tactical ability, but with your ability to read people well enough to communicate the right message at the right time.

At a recent financial conference, the top producer, making over $1 million in commissions per year, said, You all out there in the audience keep asking me how I analyze my clients’ portfolios. I’m no better at this than you are, but I’m a great communicator. I make more money than you because I read my clients better than you. I’m paid to know how to deal with people, not to analyze their portfolios. I pay employees to do that for me.

This really shouldn’t surprise you. In our age of technological thinking, we would like to think that those with the better mouse-traps win. This is not always the case. Technology doesn’t make money; you do—through the way you deal with people.

This six-chapter book is delineated into three distinct sections. The first two chapters present some basic principles. Chapters 3 and 4 provide further illustration of these concepts, but most importantly, they’ll delve more deeply into the behaviors you often see in your clients but may not know why. Chapter 5, on persuasion skills, is a set of ideas that will make you much more persuasive simply because you will know the basic desires of most of your clients and how to appeal to those desires. It’ll give you extra insight into how to best appeal to people. Chapter 6 suggests techniques you can use to listen people into accepting your ideas rather than trying to talk them into it.

You’ll be asked to visualize numerous gestures and behaviors. I recommend that you spend a few minutes familiarizing yourself with the characteristics of each behavioral gesture.

The best way to learn this material is to read this book at least three times in the space of thirty days. Research into memory has shown that you will forget approximately 90 percent of what you hear after seven days. Through the reinforcement of rereading, that percentage will drop to 60 percent, and if you go through the book a third time, you’ll retain up to 80 percent of what you’ve heard after thirty days.

To learn any new ideas, you must practice them. Try to use as much of what you hear as possible on your friends and acquaintances. To develop your confidence, try to apply the ideas first on them. (It’ll be fun to watch your associates cross their arms, put their fingers up to their face, or sit back in their chairs.) If you use the ideas first in a nonthreatening environment, you’ll be much more effective with your clients.

After you’ve used these techniques, send me a note. I’d like to know how you’ve applied the ideas. Since I write so frequently for magazines, it’s very likely I’ll use your experiences in my monthly columns. My contact information is:

[email protected]

714-368-3650

Twitter: @DrKerryJohnson

Linked In: Kerry Johnson, MBA, PhD

Facebook: Kerry Johnson, MBA, PhD

One

How to Keep Someone’s Attention

When you’ve been one-to-one with a prospect or client, have you ever gotten the impression that they didn’t quite agree with something you had just said? Did they ever seem a bit skeptical with you, as if they didn’t quite understand it? Or didn’t believe it?

The problem is that by the time they tell you what they didn’t believe or disagreed with, it’s too late.

Wouldn’t you love to know what people are thinking at the time they’re thinking it? Let me give you an example.

Have you ever seen people move their glasses down the bridge of their nose when they’re talking