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Thursday, December 27, 2007

Hopping Into Someone Else's Skin

By Kenrick Cleveland

We've all heard the saying, you can't know a person until you've walked a mile in their shoes. This technique is a figurative expression of that saying. It is about how to gain rapport by putting ourselves inside the person we're trying to persuade. Harper Lee wrote in To Kill a Mockingbird, "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view...until you climb into his skin and walk around in it."

By climbing into our prospect's skin, we can share their experience, feel their affluence, understand their decision making strategies and emotional states. This helps us to give them exactly what they need through our products and services.

Our other than conscious minds are goal seekers. We have a strong pull toward pattern recognition. We can immediately pick up characteristics of others so that when we step inside them, our unconscious has already formulated what we will experience.

How are we going to do this? The way I do it is I just look at you and jump in. I imagine in my mind that I am now you looking at me. It's that simple. When I look at you, my unconscious, knowing that I'm going to step inside you, can very quickly build a pattern of who and what you are, such that when I step inside you, it already has constructed what's going to happen. Once I'm inside you, I'm modeling you, or mirroring you so completely and so powerfully that the results can be startling both for you and for the person that this is being done with.

Is it real? I don't know. I don't really care. It's a mental construct. I am making it up in my mind. I'm making up that I'm now in your body looking through your eyes.

This is the fastest way of gaining rapport I've ever experienced. Specifically, if we're working with affluent clients, this works phenomenally especially if we're not as wealthy as we'd like to be.

If we assume that there is a finite number of patterns that exist, and if we chunk up a little bit, go to a bigger level, we can say, for example, there are twelve astrological signs. There are seven major personality types, depending on the system that you're working with. There are all sorts of different classification systems that will seek to limit the number of possible combinations.

Building these images is a construct. We might not always be accurate in our assessments, but if we are in front of our prospect, and we're hearing them and talking with them, seeing them move, keeping them in our sites, then we can instantly change our constructs moment by moment. The construct gets more complete and more powerful as we lock onto the personality of our prospect.

When you step in, you want to leave yourself behind and see through their eyes. When you do this, it establishes rapport at a very, very profound and deep level. Once you're in them, you've really moved along the process of rapport, and you've moved it along because you're so completely identifying with all of their behaviors, and all of who they are.

You can make this more powerful in a couple of ways. First, marvel at what it feels like and what their clothes feel like. If the person is of the opposite sex, you might feel what it feels like to be a woman or a man, whatever the case may be, and actually take on those characteristics.

What are their physical characteristics? How does it feel to have those characteristics? Notice when you step into the other person, where you feel the connection to them. Do you feel the connection in your stomach, in your feet, in your hands, in your chest, in your head? Where do you feel the connection? By asking yourself these questions you'll deepen the rapport.

Keep this in mind before you do this: if the person is physically sick, mentally ill, or if you have the intuition that they might not be a savory character, do not jump into them. This can be hard to shake off and may stick with you in an unpleasant way.

This is a powerful exercise and even if you're not tremendously in touch with "energy", you can still use this to your advantage in persuasion.

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