Walking in your Customers Shoes

Walking in your Customer's Shoes - the art of empathy

What is empathy?

I have two sons separated by 2 years, very similar in looks but you couldn’t get two different characters. One is reserved, effortlessly sensitive, worries about people all the time and can spot a personal feeing a mile away even in camouflage.

y other son is completely oblivious to people’s feelings, beliefs and opinions and is always the centre of attention and very talkative. Not that he’s a bad boy, just different.
I know which one is going to be the natural salesperson.

You see salespeople, coaches, team leaders, sales support teams all need to be sensitive to other people’s situations, they need to show empathy to customer’s positions in order to gain rapport and sell successfully. Empathy can be defined as knowing how people think, what’s going on in their world without necessarily agreeing with them. And I firmly believe that this skill can be learnt, so there is hope for my son.

There are two steps to having empathy with customers.

Step one is being aware of their situation
Step two is acknowledging that you are aware.

Remember to go to step two as people can’t guess that you understand them; you have to make it known.

Here are 9 practical tips to turn up your empathy volume by being aware of their situation and then showing that you’re responsive.

1st, 2nd, 3rd Positioning

This little technique comes from NLP – Neuro Linguistic Programming. 1st position is when you’re in your own world appreciating and seeing things from your own point of view. This is not empathy with someone else.

2nd position is putting yourself in your customer’s shoes. Literally leaving your body and floating into theirs. Metaphorically speaking of course, unless you’ve been watching too many late night horror movies. Seriously though, imagining that you are in their body feeling their world and experiencing their emotions is a brilliant first step to take and really does work.

3rd position is a little more difficult to get to. Here you come out of both bodies and observe from a neutral position being able to see the points of view of both you and the customer. Real empathy comes from this position. Try it next time, feel yourself leaving your body, pop into theirs next to appreciate their point of view, then wander over to a neutral spot and observe both positions.

Read between the lines

I call this level 3 or global listening – it’s the ability to read what’s not been said, to rely on gut reactions, to use your sixth sense, to use your intuition. That way you can understand where the customer is coming from. Level 1 and 2 listening is as far as most of us go – level 1 is selfish listening in that everything you hear gets related to your personal experiences and for your own purposes. Level 2 is listening or active listening and appreciating your customer’s point of view.

Trust your level 3. Trust your intuition to read between the lines.

Non verbal clues

Or body language. To be really empathetic you need to be able to read body language so you can read beyond what is being said. People can change the words they use but they can’t hide their body language. Look for clusters of gestures not isolated ones.
For example a crossed arm might be because they’re cold or are hiding their paunch. It may not mean being negative or hostile. But crossed arms, alongside crossed body and legs, sitting behind a barrier, jerky eye contact and pacier language would normally mean there’s something up in their mind, and it’s not good.

Lower your voice tone

A lower voice pitch is more empathetic. Learn to deepen your tone and people will warm to you sooner. Do ensure your vocals have a good range though; no one wants to listen to someone who is monotone in their delivery.

Listen more

Most salespeople appreciate this but three things you can do to listen with empathy is to paraphrase, mirror language and use silence more. Paraphrasing asks that you use the customers language and words when summarising. Occasionally repeat back one or two words and raise your voice as you say them to indicate a subtle question. This will get the customer to say more. And silence is the best way to let your customer say how it is especially on the phone. I always believe that phone operators would become comfortable with a few seconds of silence so long as there is a purpose to this.

Tell stories

Tell stories during your selling. Use stories to prove your expertise, to demonstrate your product’s uniqueness, in fact any part of the sales process can be enlivened with a story. Now when you tell a story a strange thing happens in the customer’s mind. They translate the story into their world as if they were in the story. This helps to show them that you are like them, you share similar ideals. People love a story, its something granted to us as children and we never lose the irresistibility of a tale.

Rapport

Is having something in common with someone, where you are both in tune with each other and can see each other’s point of view. You just seem to get on. This normally happens over time. You know when you’re with a friend because silence doesn’t feel uncomfortable, you just feel relaxed. Friends have deep rapport – they share many aspects of their lives. They think the same much of the time, have things in common, laugh together and often move in line in more ways than they think.

Rapport is something you can accelerate with customers to help build empathy. The quickest and easiest way to do this is to deliberately become like them in some subtle ways. Learn to match them in physical ways. Mirror their body language, positioning; match their voice pace and tone; do this subtly and don’t mimic. It’s definitely worth practising as it does work.

Empathy gestures

Showing empathy with your body language is something that women are far better at than men. My daughter, who is 8 next month, has this completely tied up. She knows when to turn on the empathy charm with Daddy to get what she wants. One of her weapons is head tilt. Bethan uses this when she wants to show lots of empathy with my situation and simply tilts her head sideways. This has a magical effect on the person talking and shows deep empathy. And Daddy always melts.

Try this yourself.

Other empathy creating gestures are smiles, eye contact, open body language, hands to face to indicate deep listening and thinking about your situation.

Reflective statements

Are really useful little phrases that tell your customer that you see where they’re coming from. You may not necessarily agree with them but you appreciate their point of view. That’s empathy and not being a “yes” man or woman. Some examples:

“I understand what you’re saying”
“I can appreciate how you feel about that.”
“I’ve been through that as well and it was terrible.”
“I see where you’re coming from”
“Gosh that must be awful”

So there we have my 9 tips to show more empathy with your customer – a particularly important skill for salespeople or anyone who deals with people as part of their profession. Some people are natural at it – most of us have to learn it though – these 9 tips can help you do just that.

Paul is an international sales speaker, sales trainer, author and coach based in the UK.

He specialises in rapport selling and rapport coaching and can ignite his audiences large or small.

Sign up to my weekly eZine of sales and coaching tips and get a free report on getting the best out of 2009 plus a free hypnotic relaxation MP3 to download. www.archertraining.co.uk

01452 730276

paul@paularcher.com

Blog – www.paularcher.com

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