Technique Eight: Listen to Your Customer's Body

Even when your customer's mouth is closed, he's shouting important messages to you. As you are talking, watch your customer's body and tailor your pitch accordingly. When he's nodding, when he's smiling, or when he's turning full body toward you, highlight the aspects of your merchandise or service that he's hearing.

Is he's turning his body away, looking over your shoulder, getting a blank stare on his face? Now he's not interested. Quick, switch to another feature.

Expert salespeople are masters at watching their prospect's eyes. When an individual hears something he likes, his pupils unconsciously become larger. And his pupils close down when he's not pleased.

When you become an expert at eye-watching, you will know when to further pursue a point and when to keep quiet by your customer's subconscious eye movements. Continue talking about the features of your merchandise that the customer's body responds to - and move on to the next one when their body reveals they're not interested.

Technique Nine: Invoke Your Customer's Interest

Words have different power and punch to different people. Have you ever noticed how men use more sports analogies when talking business than women? It's because, in general, men watch more sports.

If you know your customer's interests, you can take this one step farther. Try to use words that invoke their interests. Here's an example. Everyone knows what the speaker means when he says, "This solution is right on target." But that phrase has more punch to an archery enthusiast than to the rest of us.

If your customer is a baseball fan, you make a bigger impact when you say, "We'll never strike out with this solution." To a recreational shooter, try, "This solution is bulls-eye."

More examples:

Does your customer have a garden? Talk about "sowing the seeds for success." Is he a private pilot? Talk about a concept "really taking off." For a boat owner, you'd change that to an concept that "will stay afloat."

Get the idea? For persuasive conversing, invoke your customer's interests every way you can.

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