They’re Buying You, Too
If you’re in sales, copy not only your customer’s class but the class
of your product as well. I live in a section of New York City called
Soho, which is a few blocks above the famous-for-being-trashy
Canal Street. Often, clutching my purse tightly and dodging the
crowds on Canal Street, I’ll pass a pickpocket-turned-salesman-
for-the-day. He furtively looks around and flashes a greasy hand-
kerchief at me with a piece of jewelry on it. “Psst, wanna buy a
gold chain?” His nervous thief ’s demeanor alone could get him
arrested.
Now, about sixty blocks uptown, you’ll find the fashionable
and very expensive Tiffany’s jewelry store. Occasionally, clutching
my fantasies of being able to afford something therein, I stroll
through the huge gilt doors. Imagine one of the impeccably
dressed sales professionals behind
the beveled glass counters
furtively looking around and saying to me, “Psst, wanna buy a
diamond?”
No sale!
Match your personality to your product. Selling handmade
suits? A little decorum please. Selling jeans? A little cool, please.
Selling sweat suits?
A little sporty, please. And so on for whatever
you’re selling.
Remember, you are your customers’
buying experi-
ence. Therefore you are part of the product they’re buying.
How to Make Them Feel You’re of the Same “Class”
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Have you ever been gabbing with a new acquaintance and, after a
few moments, you’ve said to yourself, “This person and I think
alike! We’re on the same wavelength.” It’s a fabulous feeling, almost
like falling in love.
Lovers call it “chemistry.” New friends talk of “instant rap-
port,” and businesspeople say a “meeting of minds.” Yet it’s the
same magic, that sudden
sense of warmth and closeness, that
strange sensation of “Wow, we were old friends at once!”
When we were children, making friends was easier. Most of
the kids we met grew up in the same town and so they were on our
wavelength. Then the years went by. We grew older. We moved
away. Our backgrounds, our experiences, our goals, our lifestyles
became diverse. Thus, we fell off each other’s wavelengths.
Wouldn’t it be great to have a magic surfboard to help you
hop right back on everybody’s wavelength whenever you wanted?
Here it is, a linguistic device that gets you riding on high rapport
with everyone you meet. If you stand on a mountain cliff and
shout “hello-oh” across the valley, your identical “hello-oh” thun-
ders back at you. I call the technique “Echoing” because, like the
mountain, you echo your conversation partner’s precise words.
176
How to Make Them
Feel That You’re
Like “Family”
✰
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