Basic principles from a high concept performance art that sales reps can tap into.
By Pete Mercer
Can you read the minds of your customers? You might wish you could, but most of us don’t have that gift. Until we can figure out a way to literally tap into the minds of our customer base, we will have to settle for more creative tactics. Mentalism, the performance art where the performer demonstrates the appearance of highly developed intuition, is as close as it gets – but how can sales reps tap into such a high concept performance art?
On a recent episode of The Cure … With Scotty and Sully, hosts Scott Adams and Brian Sullivan spoke to Josh Fletcher about how mentalism techniques can transform your sales approach, covering everything from building rapport and reading people to overcoming objections and handling stress.
The art of persuasion
Essentially, mentalism is all about persuading people to make a choice, much like sales. Fletcher gets up on stage and through a series of cleverly worded prompts and questions can convincingly nudge his audience towards a specific outcome. Fletcher said, “I like to say in the performance aspect, it’s kind of like what you’d expect from a magician, but I’m not making things appear or disappear. I’m messing with people’s minds and trying to figure out what they’re thinking.”
He’s looking at body language to better understand how his audience will react in real-time, then adjusts his approach based on those reactions. For him, the most important thing in his shows is to get people on his side. He said, “Sometimes even if something is in someone’s best interest, there are so many roadblocks that are popping up in their way and sometimes will actually get in their own way for making the best decision and being able to subtly help people, guide them to where they’re ultimately going to be happy, but do it in a way that makes them own that decision and feel good about it.”
Using mentalism in sales
While mentalism might be a specialized performance technique that would take years to master, sales reps can use the basic principles in their meetings with customers. Body language reveals a lot of information about how your customers are engaging with your sales approach. According to Fletcher, it starts with a very simple tactic: using your natural skills to help you better understand your audience.
“When you start trying to tell people what decision they should make, our natural inclination is just to dig our heels in. But when you listen and then you are prescribing to them from a professional educated standpoint, you’re solving their problem versus telling them what they should do,” Fletcher said.
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