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Verbal Mirroring & Sales Mistakes

Let's try it a little bit. This is gonna be interesting. We're gonna see how it goes. So, the best way to understand mirroring is to actually practice it. So, who is a slow talker? Who self-recognizes as a slow talker? We actually don't have a lot of slow talkers in here. Irina, I might bring you up because you have an accent, is that okay? You're, what's your first language? Ukrainian and Russian. Ukrainian and Russian, okay. So, you're a slow talker in English. Do you know what you are, what are you in Ukrainian and Russian? Do you speak faster? Faster. Faster, interesting. I'm a very fast speaker. And that is interesting. Okay, so I happened to get an audience full of fast talkers, that's okay. Okay, so who's the fastest talker in here? Who do you think is a really faster talker? You. (laughing) Me, oh, me? Yeah, I totally am. You know, we can try it, we can try it. Let me try it first, and then we can have someone come up. Okay, so, what I'm gonna do is I'm going to...

interview you for your body language goals, okay? And so I'm gonna talk to you about it, and I'm gonna try to slow down my pace and my cadence to her pace and cadence in a natural way. So, Irina, tell me a little bit about some of your goals with body language. I would like to understand how my actions, my behavior, I would like to understand how you see me, how my clients see me, and how I can improve to convey my message. Okay, so, we're talking about you and your clients, right? So, when you're interacting with clients, when you sit with them, what usually comes up for you? What are the kinda things that you feel when they're seated across from you? I don't really understand what-- So, when you're with a client, what are the kinda things that nonverbally come up for you? What would you like to come out? What comes up is, well, it's a very actually problematic spot is, they have a tendency to close because they're sitting and it's very convenient to close. Okay, and they turn away? You turned away, so I'm wondering if they do that. I'm turning away. I'm thinking of it because when you sit, there is more possibilities to move around when you're sitting in the armchair, let's say. Okay, right. So do you see how I was subtly mirroring her body, very subtly, and I slowed down. That was very uncomfortable for me at first, but once I started getting into the slower pace, I matched her pace. Now, if I had spoken even faster, it would've been like we were talking on two different planes. Right, so that's how that works. All right, does someone wanna come up and try it? I know, it's really hard. Okay, Jean-Marie, come on up. Okay, I would love, 'cause you do this all the time, I would love for you to interview Irina about what she knows about personal presence. If she knows about it, talk about what you would do if she was a client. I'm gonna get out of your way, okay. (laughing) I'm mirroring her already. So, she's gonna ask you a question, Irina. You just answer like natural, you just be your natural self. So, Irina, have you ever considered your presence, or do you know anything about personal branding? Yes, I have. What do you know? As a photographer who works for myself and developing my own business, of course I would like to know more how to build my brand around my name. So, what have you read so far that inspired you to know more, or is there anything that you've learned-- Slow down, slow down a little bit. Oh, sure. Is there anything that you have learned and actually implemented into your brand, or your website, or your business card, or even the way you dress? It's hard to say what I've read because I've read a lot, and I've listened to lots of speakers, including CreativeLive, by the way, but what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to act in a way that I am presenting my brand. So, wherever I am, whatever I do, and whenever I talk to people, I remember that I'm not talking about, only about myself, but also about my brand. Oh, so it sounds like awareness and remembering to blend what you know with the conversations that you're having, that's the challenge for you, and that's what you wanna work more on. Okay, that was perfect, that was really good. That was perfect. So, how did that feel when you were talking to her? Was it hard to slow down? Did you notice yourself slowing down? Well, once you pointed it out, I was a lot more aware. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, right? 'Cause did you hear how Irina was in her pace, and Jean-Marie started to go into her faster pace, and I had to tell her, slow down. I also loved how you kept your hands in the same position that she was at, which was great. That was a very just subtle way to mirror. Yeah? I don't know if Jean-Marie caught this, but when Irina started talking, she was talking up here, and you actually matched her, at least once, by doing that gesture. Yeah, so I was in the middle. Yeah, it's perfect, right? And that's one out of every five, how I talked about it. It wasn't every single gesture, it was just a little bit. How did it feel to speak more slowly? Did you like it, was it uncomfortable for you? Actually, when I was speaking more slowly, when I intentionally chose to match her, I was able to listen better to what she was saying. Okay, so this is the most important part of mirroring. It only works when you do it in practice, you actually feel it. When you begin to speak like they do, you use the words like they do, you feel as they do. I mean, that is the whole reason we naturally mirror people, and it helps you literally understand exactly to be in your client's shoes. It literally helps you do that. That was great, thank you so much. All right, I'm gonna have another pair come up and you're gonna practice mirroring. Yeah, May, come up. Sasheed, I'm gonna have you come up too, okay? All right, so do you wanna practice mirroring, or would you like to be mirrored? Mirroring. You would like to mirror, you would like to do the mirroring, okay. So, I would like you to interview Sasheed. So, he would not be your typical client. Or, right? Well, we'll shake it up today. Okay, so I want you to ask him a couple of questions, and as he speaks, you speak totally naturally, ask the questions you would. We're gonna practice subtle mirroring with postures, gestures, and your vocal cadence. So I talk fast. Okay. So, Sasheed, lots of times, people who have busy professional lives like you do are working on how to balance the time at work, the time for fun, the time to take care of yourself. Tell me a little bit about how you do that. So, I try and do that, but most of the time, I am actually spending doing work. I'm trying to put things in my schedule so that I'm stopping work, and putting time for other different things. So you're working on trying to make some changes in your life. What's worked so far? One of the things that's worked really well is having a time when I shut off my computer, so 6:00pm, and then just shutting it off at 6:00pm and doing something else. So having an actual split between work time and other time is working for you? Yes. Okay, so I'm gonna pause right there. It was great because she's talking way faster than you normally talk. Are you speeding up on purpose? I didn't notice. I actually feel like she's speaking, do you feel that too Jean-Marie? Yeah, you actually have sped up. Even the first question was slower, and then as soon as Sasheed started talking, you actually started speaking faster. The only thing that I would say is, at the very beginning, he was talking with his hands down, and you were talking with your hands up. So you might notice where he was. Start with him, start with where your client is, and then as he talks, I think you actually mirrored her. Yeah, I did, I kinda came up. Did you see it? So, I noticed that you were up and you were down and you went, "Oh, I'll do that too," and I saw you mirror her. So, it's actually difficult to not mirror. All right, we're gonna actually switch roles, and I want you to both practice mirroring each other. And that is, by the way, harmony. When you are in a conversation with someone and your client likes you and they're mirroring you and you're mirroring them and it's happening all subconsciously, that is like, you're like, gosh, this is just jiving. Right, that feeling of, like, "Gosh, "I feel like we've been friends forever." It's usually because you're very in-sync, both nonverbally and verbally. Can I ask you a question there though? If I'm reading language, body language like this, as somebody not being comfortable, then would using my hands help them to relax and get moving? Yeah, well it did. You actually brought him up. Now, this is not low confidence, so this is okay, he could stand like this. But I would not have mirrored him if he had had his hands behind his back. But you could've actually used your hands to encourage him to bring his hands forward. As we talked about, that's an anti-blocking behavior. Sasheed also has some very specific sort of tonal patterns when he speaks. Would it have been too much to imitate those as well as the pacing and things? Let's try it, let's try it. Yeah, thank you, we're gonna try it. And by the way, one of my challenges for you to implement this mirroring is to practice with your friends. Don't tell them you're doing this, 'cause they're not gonna be weirded out by you. Well, hopefully not, they'll still be friends with you, is to meet with some of your friends and just practice it. See if you get them to open up more or less, depending on how you're mirroring. That is how you perfect mirroring. Don't try it the first time in a business situation. Try it with your friends and family, and then afterwards you can say, "I took this power of body language course, "and I was just mirroring you. "Did you notice it?" Ask them. So, that is how you practice implementing mirroring. So, what do you want, you wanna interview Sasheed about his content needs, or? I would love to talk to him about, like, what he does for work, what his regular day looks like. I love it, okay. And remember, you just talk like normal, okay? So, Sasheed, tell me a little bit more about what you do on a day-to-day basis. Sure, oh. (laughing) The question was like, I thought you were gonna ask about something else. So, I work with a lot of different businesses to help them with their marketing needs. Most of the time I'm spending is doing outbound sales calls, and sending direct mail, and following up with companies like that. So, it sounds like you're doing a lot of work on the internet? Yes. And it sounds like you're trying really hard to balance that work with work that you do offline and in person, is that correct? Yeah, so a lot of the stuff I'm doing is offline, where I'm sending them direct mail, and then I'm calling them on the phone to get them to look at material I'm sending them, which is hosted online. So it's sort of like a three-pronged approach where I'm trying to contact them from all different sides. And do you find that this, like, three pronged approach has been really successful for you, or have there been spots of pain that you've been finding? Yes, actually, one of the things I found was, when I started emailing them, as opposed to just calling them, the response rate went up because they have two different ways to reach back to me. Okay, I'm gonna pause. Do you notice how it went so naturally, right? Like, as soon as, and you did it very well, very, very subtly, where you mirror just basically how he uses his words, 'cause you do have a very interesting cadence. Do you notice how it went from, like, one question, one answer. It went into just natural conversation. There was a moment I looked over and I was like, "Ah, that was the switch," when it went from just back and forth to, oh, yeah, we're in a conversation together. So how'd that feel for you? It felt good. It was hard to try and balance, like, thinking about it and talking, listening. But it didn't sound unnatural. Like, it sounded like it was really easy for you, at least to me. Did it feel like that for you? Yeah, absolutely. Okay, very cool, thank you. Did anyone else wanna try mirroring before we move on? Are we okay? Max? I'm good. Okay, all right, so let's keep going. So, I wanna share this study by Helen Reese, and she is a therapist, and she wanted to learn more about her clients, and about this idea of empathy and mirroring. So, she set up this very interesting experiment. What she did was she hooked her client up to machines that read her heart rate, her breathing rate, how much she was sweating, all of her physiological responses. She also hooked herself up to the same machine, so they were reading both her and her client, okay, both at the same time. And she did it with one particular client, the client that she shares this, she did it with a bunch of them. The story that she shares in her study is that it was a client who'd been coming to her for a couple of months, she was very, very overweight, and she just could not lose the weight. Okay, so she was having huge amounts of trouble managing her weight, emotional overeating, and they were not making any progress. Helen was, Dr. Reese was trying to find a way to connect with the client so they could make progress, because it was just totally stalemate. So, brought her in the lab, and she found that the patient had a line that was very similar to this. So, there was peaks in her emotionality, and then valleys, and then peaks, and it would go up and down. It was very up and down throughout the session. She was surprised first to learn that sitting in a session, there was so much variation with what the client was feeling. Then she noticed that, at each peak, something specific happened nonverbally. The patient was using, at every different peak, a nonverbal tic happened. So, at the peak heart rate, at the peak breathing rate, at the peak sweat rate, the client would tuck her hair behind her ear. At the next peak, she would tuck her hair behind her ear and she would scratch her nose. And she learned that, at every single peak, there were certain tells. There were nonverbal tells that were happening, and so she was able to figure out, "Wow, whenever my client does this "self-soothing behavior," a lot of them were self-soothing because she was nervous, "that is a high emotional peak for her." And she was able to learn, "Okay, "now that I know her nonverbal tics, "I know where to push." She had no idea where those were if she had not read the machine. The machine was a way for her to physically see the emotional upset. So why this is important for us is I trained you in how to notice nonverbal tics. We know how to read facial expressions, we know how to read nervous, self-soothing behaviors, so when you see that in someone, you know there is something going on behind the words, and that is exactly where you wanna focus to get the more information out of your client, which is kinda cool. She also found the second half of the study was that her nonverbal matched. Unconsciously, her body knew what her client was going through. It was much less, but she had the same peaks, even though mentally she didn't realize that she was feeling the same way, her body knew that's a hot spot, that's a hot spot. So in this course, I want to train you to hone your abilities to be able to spot those peaks with your clients, so you know exactly the right questions to ask and when. So this shows us two things. First, nonverbal cues are the visible signs of inner emotions. Right, we've been talking about this the whole time, that what we show on our body are just the physical manifestations of what someone is feeling. Second, seeing them and responding to them helps them feel valued. We started off this income section talking about the way that you make more income is to be interested. The best way that you can make them feel interested is to make them feel valued by responding to those nonverbal cues that you see. This is number 20, body language, la la. Number 20, so if you wanna pull out your laws of bodies language handout, these are free in your bonus materials. This is number 20, the law of empathy. So, the law of empathy says "Mirroring and reading someone's nonverbal "fosters a deep sense of empathy and connection." If you really wanna do business, if you really wanna connect with your clients, this is how you do it. You show them that you are not only nonverbally there for them, but you read and respond to their nonverbal cues, so they feel valued and heard. That's who refers you. That's people who are happy to write you their checks, because they feel like, when they're with you, you're willing to respond to them on their level. Does that make sense? I know that that's a deep one, and my next story is that I know this is getting real deep, right? This is the power of body language and body language is a sexy topic. This is my most emotional part of the course, and I hope that it's a great way to end this day, 'cause tomorrow we're gonna be doing lie detection and it's really important to get set in your empathy and knowing people. This is the reason I got into this work. So, when I started studying body language, I always felt like the most important human characteristic was empathy, but it's so hard to teach empathy. You know, how do you show someone that you're empathetic? I feel that body language is the number one way that you can show people that you care, because when we mirror them, when we show that we're with them, it shows that we literally feel as they do. All right, it is time for questions. I want you to think back to all the how to increase your income topics. We did a lot. We talked about your nonverbal, we talked about their nonverbal, we talked about confidence cues, being charismatic, and leadership. So, with this whole section, when you go forward with your clients, when you're thinking about your nonverbal sales pitch, are there any remaining things that you wanna focus on? Yeah? So, this is the opposite of empathy, but sometimes in consults, for me, what I have to do is like push/pull, where I have to say something like, "Maybe this isn't the best fit," and then bring them back in. So how do you do that nonverbally? So, these are clients who you don't wanna work with, or you're worried that you're not aligned the same way. Tell me a little bit more about that. If I see them getting not interested, I'm just doing the push/pull to get them more interested. So it's like telling them, like, this can get taken away from them, and then bringing them back. Okay, so, we are heading into the psychological territory of persuasion. So, one of the scientifically proven ways to increase your influence, which is that course that I was talking about that I'm working on, scarcity is one way that you can increase influence. You're talking about how do I create scarcity to make them feel like they have to value it. How do I say no to them? So, luckily, you don't have to even worry about that nonverbally. We are already very attuned to anything that might be scarce, so you can do it verbally. In fact, if you're gonna do that, totally up to you if you'd like to, you wanna make sure that you stay nonverbally engaged, so you're not disrespecting them, but then you can verbally say, "You know, I don't know if this is the best fit." You're still respecting them, but it teaches them, "Oh, I might lose this." Right, so you actually wanna keep your nonverbal very engaged, and then verbally you can show scarcity. That's a persuasion technique, yeah. Yeah? When I work with a client, I mean, the sales part usually, the consultation or the sales part usually happens when we all are seated, including me. So what would be your advice? Totally fine if you're seated. As long as you're making sure that you're not crouched down and in, also for women, if you're gonna sit, do not tuck your legs underneath the chair. That is a very low confidence pose. So you see a lot of women in their chairs, they'll sit, crossed legs is okay, that's okay. But you'll see women will do this extra tuck, you know? They'll actually add their, they'll put their leg behind. That is extremely closed. So, if you're seated, try to also stay in as expansive pose as possible. This is called the alpha cross, by the way, when you sit in this pose, especially for men. That is a very powerful pose. So, if you're seated, make sure that you still use the law of space, and you still use the law of hands, so you always have your hands visible. So just make sure that you still use all those laws in the same way, and it's totally fine if you're seated. Obviously, most meetings take place seated. Yeah, that's a good question. Okay, so the last section is step four, avoiding the top sales mistakes. Right, these are the top things that I see happen in sales situations. Number one, fake smiling. So, we learned that one of the universal microexpressions is genuine happiness, and the only true indicator of happiness is when these muscles here on the upper cheeks and the sides of the eyes are activated. Unfortunately, sales people are often taught, or we're taught from a young age, "Oh yeah, just smile if you're trying to "make a connection with someone. "Oh yeah, it's so great to meet you!" The problem is, if you fake smile, it's worse than not smiling at all, because immediately you come off as smarmy, as just a salesman. Car salesmen do this the worst, right? Like, they have this permanent plastic smile on their face. "Sure, we'll check that out! "Yeah, I'd love to show you "the air conditioning, no problem!" And that's why they have that reputation, because they've been taught in their sales materials to smile all the time. So, number one, it is okay, if you do not feel genuine happiness, you do not have to smile. I would much rather you only smile when it's authentic than have that fake smile plastered on your face. Number two, the power of touch. So, do not forget what we learned earlier with the law of touch. That was one of our body language laws. Haptics, or how we integrate our touch with other people, is extremely important for sales. As we saw in the waitress experiment. When waitresses touched the arm, hand, or forearm of their patrons, their tips increased 41%. So, the power of touch is incredibly important, but I wanna add a little asterisk here. It's not only important for you to touch your clients to build connection, I also want them to touch your product. So, if you have products that are an extension of you, photo albums, brochures, an iPhone app, whatever it is you're selling, people feel ownership over what they touch, so this is why, in clothing stores, you know, women or men will take things off the rack and walk around the store with them, holding them. I always tell salespeople, I'm like, "Don't ever take the clothes from them "and put them in the dressing room." The longer that people walk around the store holding the clothes, the more they feel like it's already theirs. There's a huge amount of ownership that we have over what we touch. So, if you have a way to physically represent what you do, that's why I think brochures and PDFs are so great, they're great for anti-blocking, they're also great for touch, 'cause you can say, "This is what I do, "this is my package for you," and having them touch it, and hold it, and keep it, that's actually way that they already have started to think about ownership of your product. Yeah? Situation, I've been instructed in the past to hand someone something larger than a business card. Would you recommend that that is almost like a power of touch in the networking? Yes, and whoever recommended that, that's great, because that's the same kind of law. It's more substantial, it feels like more. I have little postcards that I usually pass out with things. But I do something weird with my business cards. So, everything I do is an experiment. All my friends, I experiment on them all the time on my website. One thing I do with my business cards is I came up with seven different versions of a business card, and then I passed them out at different events, and I tracked who got the most email responses, like how many people emailed me back, and there was one that won. It was the biggest one, right? So, that definitely works. It feels more substantial. I feel like they get more of you, so I pass out little postcards. Yeah, great question. Anything else on the power of touch? So yes, not only using the power of touch in the safe zone, the safe zone, wherever your touch map, but also having a physical representation of your product. Phone sales. So, let's talk about specifically calling clients. There's a lot here that you can do with your nonverbal, with your voice tone, and your cadence, in addition to mirroring. So first of all, you should always be power posing. Lucky you, on the phone, no one sees you. So walking around, having movement, that's great. Get your testosterone levels up and keep your cortisol levels low. So, always power posing before you get on a call, as well as during the call. Using vocal power. Using the authoritative voice tone is even more important on the phone than it is in person, 'cause it is the only cue that you can give them. You can't show them nonverbal confidence with your body, so you have to show it with your voice tone. If you can, I would recommend recording some of your calls, and then playing back, 'cause we don't realize how often we go into the question inflection, and high nonverbal, high vocal. So, if you can record a couple of your pitches, go back, listen to them, and take note of every time you use the question inflection, every time that you use lack of vocal power, and every time you volume drop. You can use vocal and verbal mirroring, as we talked about. That's a great way to bond on the phone. And avoiding the question inflection and volume drop, especially on your price. I want you to practice your price over, and over, and over again. And if you need to just record that part of the call, when people ask you, "So what are your rates?" Practice that, 'cause that's the hot spot area where people are wondering, if they've kinda maybe already made a decision I'm gonna work with you. But now they have to decide how much you're worth, right? So you wanna make sure that you end really solidly on what your rates are, so that you don't invite any questions, you're not saying, "I'm not sure what my price is." So, if you need to record just that aspect of the call, you can do that to make sure. I have a very specific question about phone technique, et cetera, which we'd like to put I'm learning so much. There's this question saying, "How does one's physical fitness level "affect how you are perceived. "You might be really fit or you might be overweight, "you might be in a wheelchair or have visible birthmarks, "whatever it is. "Can a good first impression via phone or non-camera "offset any negative impression "when they first meet you face-to-face, "because people do create an image "from what they've heard of your voice." Yes, you actually do make a slightly different first impression when you make a first impression via phone, and then a first impression in person. So if you have a really strong first impression on the phone vocally, do it, 'cause that's going to cast a positive light on when they meet you. They're gonna start off with a rule that's very positive, right? The rule they make in their head about you is gonna be very high, so anything that they see, even if it's negative in whatever way you perceive that to be, they already have you through a positive lens. So absolutely, you can affect first impressions that way and start with your strong one, yeah. Similar to phone, it may not be totally relevant, but people are asking about email, and are there nonverbal cues that can be sent via email? I personally hate this habit now we all have of emoticons. I use them all the time, I'm just as guilty, but that's a way people have tried to indicate what they're really meaning to say, and put in your facial expression into an email. So, tomorrow we're going to be talking about statement analysis, and that is how nonverbally, how your nonverbal cues come out with the words that you use, so how you come across in your emails with the words that you use, the emoticons, the colors you use, so we're gonna be talking about this tomorrow for your nonverbal brand. And a little sneak peak, there's actually an emotional spell check program that helps you emotionally spell check your emails, so we're gonna be talking about that as well. But you can actually add in nonverbal cues to your email correspondence. Any other questions on that? Well, keep going, yes. Okay, so last thing for phone sales is send videos. Please, please, please send videos. We talked about the power of this. You can also do this in email. If you're doing a lot of email back and forth, filming a quick video of your pitch, a thank you. If you're ever thanking your client for anything, sending a check early, getting all their materials to you, organizing something, giving you a heads up, send them a thank you video, gratitude videos where you can actually show genuine happiness, huge rapport building opportunities. Now, I have a picture of Jean-Marie next. So, this is a screenshot from one of Jean-Marie's fantastic videos. So, I was browsing on her website, and so this is a fantastic video. I love the colors. What I want you to do is I want you to pan back. So, as you can see, I could only see the very tip of your fingertips. I wanna see all of your hand. So, if you're sending videos, try to scoot your computer back, so they get your torso and up. Or at least your chest and up so they can see some of your nonverbal gestures. That's gonna help get your trust indicators up so you can use more of your nonverbal. Four, practice, practice, practice. So, not only recording your phone pitches, but also practicing pitching in front of the camera. Now, what you guys did today was trial by fire, but you made huge leaps and bounds because I forced you into a very nerve-wracking situation, and I made you rapid fire back and forth with me. Turning on a camera can help get you faster progress, because it's like, "Ooh, I'm on camera!" It puts you into that nervous situation, so you can then go, "Okay, I'm gonna move forward, "I'm gonna move through this adrenaline, "I'm gonna get through these nerves." Right, so the more you can practice, the better. And remember the law of growth. That was one of our first laws of body language. The more you do it, the more your brain grows. You brain is like a muscle, so by the end of tomorrow, things that we sort of did on the first day that seemed really hard will seem exceedingly easy.