How To Quickly Get In Sync With Someone

The Power of Pacing.

A skill required throughout the entire client development process is the skill to get in step, or get back into step, with prospects and clients, either on the phone or face-to-face throughout the life of the relationship.

The First Step Toward Building Trust.

As sales professionals we must get in step with our prospects and clients by being like them. This creates feelings of trust and rapport and actually helps us empathize. Stephen Covey, in his book "7 Habits of Highly Effective People," describes empathic listening as listening with the eyes, ears, and heart.

Empathic listening is listening for feeling and for meaning. It is listening to understand, not just listening to respond. One way to accomplish this is with Pacing. A top producer once summed it up like this, "I've been in this business 19 years and the most important thing I've ever done is to listen to my clients and go at their pace." While this sounds very simple, developing this skill requires practice and a commitment to be truly client-focused.

You will find this strategy is much faster and more predictable than using the old "Personality Styles" approach (ie: Driver, Sociable, Thinker, Amiable.). It is a lot easier to remember to do also.

The benefits are real. It's just like anything else, if you don't use it won't work. When you do use it you will notice a few things. Some of them will be to: Dramatically increase professional flexibility.

• Build trust on-purpose.
• Exponentially enhance comfort on the telephone and in person.
• Get more referrals.

In its' simplest form, the essence of pacing is to go at their pace: slow, medium or fast. If the prospect goes slow, the sales professional goes slow. If they go fast, the sales professional goes fast, etc. Do you know what it's like to be driving down the highway, your speed is about that of the flow of traffic, and someone blows by you like you are standing still? What are the first words that come to mind to describe that person? They aren't kind words, are they? Why not? What did that person do to you to deserve that response?

All they did was break your pace. When people operate at a much faster pace than us it tends to make us feel uncomfortable. On the other hand, do you know what it's like when you get stuck on the road driving behind someone who drives just 5 mph slower than you like to drive? Do you know the feeling I'm talking about? You hate it, don't you? And it's only 5 miles per hour! Even when we are not in a hurry we hate operating slower than our normal pace. When people operate at a pace slower than us we tend to feel anxious or stifled.

The same is true when a sales professional meets with clients. We make pace adjustments so our prospects and clients do not feel anxious or uncomfortable.

Is it possible that people would decide not to do business with us just because our pace is uncomfortable for them? Yes. We will discuss other specific pacing techniques, but the big picture is slow, medium, and fast. To make prospects and clients feel comfortable sales professionals must listen and go at their pace.

One reason pacing is so powerful is because we tend to trust people who are like us. Many studies have been conducted by psychologists and other scientists of human behavior which support this observations.

Pacing Allows You To:

• Get in step with all people, even those substantially different
• Build trust into every communication.
• Dramatically expand your personal and professional flexibility.

• Monitoring = It looks like they are looking in a mirror.
• Matching = Pacing exactly what they are doing.
• Cross-over = Pacing with a different part of the body altogether.

Examples Of Cross-Over Pacing:

• You might meet with a client who wears glasses and tends to push them up on their nose with their index finger. If you don’t wear glasses you will look foolish poking yourself between your eyes. Instead you can scratch the bridge of your nose to pace the behavior without looking silly.

• Some people tend to clear their throats often while they talk. Instead of clearing your throat when you respond, you can simply speak a bit more slowly and pause with a similar rhythm.

• Men sometimes cross their legs. Women can effectively pace by also crossing their legs in a manner that is appropriate to them.

What does it mean to "pace" someone physically? It means we act like they act, move like they move and even talk like they talk!

Pacing is...

• The ultimate courtesy.
• Demonstrates that you care.
• Proves that you are truly client-driven.

For example, when guests arrive at your home for a social function you are probably concerned with their comfort. You may not earrange the furniture, but you might make an adjustment in the temperature to insure the comfort of you guests. That’s all pacing is, an adjustment to insure the comfort of your prospects and clients. "Listen and go at their pace."

Inconsiderate sales professionals go at their own pace and expect the clients to respond anyway.

NOT monkey-see, monkey-do: physical harmony.

What do you pace?

Whole body: Match/mirror the other persons' stance or overall position.

Part body: Match/mirror any consistent behavioral shrugs, gestures, head nods or any type of shift in behavior.

Half body: Match/mirror upper or lower portion of their body.

Breathing: Match depth and/or speed. (Extremely powerful!)

Voice: Match tonality, tempo, volume, intensity and intonation, accent.

Leading

You can test to determine how comfortable your prospect is with you by leading. After you have paced for a few minutes in the interview, simply adjust your physical position and be aware of whether your prospects follow you or not.

Thus, the test to determine comfort level is to lead by doing something different. If they follow you it means they are comfortable. If they do not, continue to pace. Within a very short period of time, pacing and leading becomes second nature. What makes pacing and leading so easy for sales professionals is the fact that they are immediately asking questions and listening. It’s difficult to try to pace while you are talking. It’s easy to pace while you are listening. Another reason why becoming brilliant at asking questions and listening with empathy is crucial to sales success.

Pace to create rapport. Lead to move them to the next step in the process.

Remember, Be The Ball!