Can You Hear What I See? (Pt. I)

Do you ever feel like you are communicating with clients, and it doesn’t make any sense to them? You’ve put a lot of time and effort into a great presentation, but they just don’t seem interested or engaged?

Dawn, a new radio seller, learned a valuable lesson this week about communicating with a prospect. This lesson earned her a presentation meeting with a client who originally couldn’t “see” the value.

Originally, he kept saying he just could not see how I could help him. Why would he want to buy a huge market when his market is only a 30-mile radius? Plus, radio has never worked in the past. I explained I would really like to hear about that experience because details help me understand why it did not work. He said that quite a few times too “I just can't see it” and I realized — he needs to visualize. So, I helped him to visualize my audience. I showed him a success story to let him see how devoted and engaged my audience is. I also showed him some graphs and statistics about gun ownership with country listeners.

Are you:

• Telling and they aren’t seeing it?

• Showing and they aren’t hearing it?

• Presenting emotionally and they don’t feel the same way?

Communication is defined as a message that is sent AND received. To be a great communicator, not only do you have to have a clear message, but you must communicate it in the style that your audience receives it.

Early in my sales career, I was fascinated by the psychology of sales, and I discovered research on a subject known as neuro-linguistic programming, or NLP. You can spend months digging deep into the topic as I did, but the application for sales is straightforward and easy to implement.

Neurolinguistics is the study of the neural mechanisms in the human brain that control the comprehension, production and acquisition of language. In plain English, that means how to communicate effectively so people understand you.

All of us fall into one of three “communication styles”:

1. Auditory: People receive information best when it is spoken.

2. Visual: People receive information best when they can see it, or picture it in their mind.

3. Kinesthetic: People receive information best when they can feel it, be a part of it and/or experience it and understand how it works.

If you want to communicate most effectively with your prospects and clients, you must learn their communication style and adapt your style to match. This is when true understanding and connection occur.

The first key is to listen very carefully to the words they use. By listening to how your clients communicate with you, you will easily identify their primary communication style.

Having your information seen, heard, or felt involves presenting it in the style that your prospects and clients best understand it. Taking these simple steps of identifying and then communicating in that particular style will lead you to greater relationship strength, understanding and connection. Those things, of course, will lead to you having a greater ability to solve the problems of your clients and make more sales. Tomorrow, we’ll go a little deeper and offer you a free tool that will help.

Jeff Schmidt is SVP-Professional Development at the Radio Advertising Bureau. You can reach Jeff at Jeff.Schmidt@RAB.com or follow him on social media: Twitter and LinkedIn.