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Trying On Someone Else’s Skin By K. Cleveland

By: Associate Editor

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.” And we’ve all heard the saying, you can’t know a person until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes. This exercise is a way to figuratively step into someone else’s shoes, into their skin, and create instant rapport and understanding.

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.

The other than conscious mind is a goal seeking mechanism. We have strong pattern recognition software already at our disposal. We are able to pick up characteristics of others so that when we “step inside” of them, we’ve already formulated an experience of them.

How do we step inside another person’s skin? Easy: jump in. Have an image in your mind of yourself, looking at the prospect or client and just imagine yourself jumping in. Once inside, begin to model and/or mirror the other person.

You might ask, is this real? I don’t know and frankly, I don’t care. It’s a mental construct that I create in my mind. I make up that I am in your body looking out at the world through your eyes.

This is one of the fastest ways of gaining rapport I have ever seen or used and specifically when we’re working with the affluent, if say, we are not as wealthy as we expect we will be yet, this is a really powerful simulation.

Assume that there are a very finite number of patterns that can exist. Go to a bigger level, think ‘astrological signs’ or personality types or any number of systems you can work with. We have many different ways to classify people, and our pattern recognition systems seek out the limited possible combinations.

This is a construct. We are constructing an image. Will it be accurate? Not exactly, but that’s okay, because if we’re in front of them, and we’re hearing them and we’re seeing them, and if they’re moving, we keep changing our construct until it’s identical to what they are, so for every minute, every second that goes by, ours gets better, and more complete and more powerful, and we’re locking right in to that person.

As you step into your client, leave yourself behind. See through their eyes. This allows you to move along the process of rapport on a very deep level. You are so completely identifying with 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.

About the Author:

Kenrick Cleveland teaches techniques to earn the business of wealthy prospects using persuasion. He runs public and private seminars and offers home study courses and coaching programs in persuasion techniques.

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