Leil Lowndes is a New York based communications consultant who has coached top marketing executives of Fortune 500 companies, and is currently conducting sales seminars for corporations and organizations. She is the author of numerous magazine articles in publications such as Psychology Today, New Woman, Redbook, Cosmopolitan – and three books including the best selling, How To Talk To Anybody About Anything. Top sales pros such as Harvey Mackay, Og Mandino and Jerry Della Femina have endorsed Ms. Lowndes'latest book.

Customers say they buy with their heads, but they have a decision making organ in their bodies far more powerful than their brain. It's the one Cupid takes aim at to make people fall in love. It's the one that starts beating before we're born and continues until the moment we die. And it's the one retailers must aim at to make people buy.

When a customer signs on the bottom line – or walks away from you – he thinks he's made a rational and intellectual decision. What even he doesn't realize is that he already said "yes" or "no" with his heart long before the decision reached his brain and his lips.

How a customer feels about your merchandise and, equally important, how a customer feels about you is crucial to the sale. Study after study has shown this and yet, even today, many retailers still focus their sales pitch solely on their merchandise.

Naturally your customer must find the features of your merchandise or service attractive. But that's just for starters. Your product is good but, chances are, so is the competition's. The crucial difference is beating in your customer's chest. How do you get accurate aim at the heart?

Back in 1936, Dale Carnegie – the How to Win Friends and Influence People guru – summed it up. He said, "Smile, be a good listener, and make other people feel important." No less true today than it was almost 60 years ago. The difference is, Dale Carnegie told us what to do, but not how to do it.

Don't blame Dale. Many of the techniques for subliminal rapport didn't exist in his time. Nowadays, methods from the worlds of psychology, kinesics, sports, psychiatry, and even theater have worked their way into mainstream acceptance. And yet, except for affirmations, the business world draws relatively little from these disciplines.

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