Tag Archive for Job

Reading Buy Signals

by  • March 6, 2013 • 0 Comments

No matter what your occupation, we are all in the business of selling. If we aren’t selling a particular product, we’re selling ourselves! Most good salesmen agree that almost every form of sales includes the selling of oneself and when people buy, they usually buy us and not the merchandise. This is why it’s important to know when we are on the right track during a sales call. Buying signals include indicators that tell us that someone is not only ready to buy an item, but can also mean that they are ready to sign a deal, offer us a job, create a partnership or forge practically any other agreement. Let’s look at some of the ways we know when someone is about to commit to buying so we can tone down or stop our pitch altogether in favour of closing out. Pitching passed the point where a decision is made is always unnecessary, but sometimes even disastrous because we may end up saying something extra to take them out of the buying mood. So here are the various signals we should watch for during a sales pitch.

Eye contact: During the pitch process a buyer will sometimes try to feign disinterest (or might actually be disinterested) but as someone readies to buy, they increase eye contact.

Moving in: Buyers will shrink the distance between them and the seller usually by leaning inward, or if standing, by moving in closer. Translation – they don’t want the deal to slip away.

Touching the chin: Touching the chin is a powerful signal showing thought, and if seen along with accompanying buy-signals, closing should be attempted.

Greater relaxation: Tension is heavy during negotiations, but as demands are met and agreements created, a sudden release of tension from the body indicates that your client is prepared to accept the deal and is okay with its terms.

Any reversal of these signals, midstream or a lack of buy-signals shows that a buyer is not yet ready to purchase. With what we have covered throughout this book, it should be obvious from their body language, the reason they withhold the sale. If possible, addressing concerns as you go through hints in their body language, but if you miss them and get hung up put the ball in their court by asking them what needs addressing. This is only a fail-safe tactic since in most cases, as we have seen people give off plenty of solid clues to negative thought patterns.

Gestures

by  • March 6, 2013 • 0 Comments

Never gesture too much because subconsciously it will appear that we are at a loss for words. Don’t restrict gestures either, as they will make us seem uptight and will inhibit our speech flow and always return your hands to your lap after each bout of movement. High status individuals use gestures much less than low status individuals so keep your gestures deliberate, clear and meaningful. If possible and appropriate, mirror the subtle gestures of your interviewer to try to build rapport. The more similar you can make them think you are to them, the more confident they will be in your ability to do the job and fit in.

How Men Display Interest – An Introduction And Further Reading

by  • March 6, 2013 • 0 Comments

Very little focus has been place on how men use nonverbal communication to signal interest. Perhaps this is rightly so, perhaps not. Women are without question the most efficient users of body language in courtship. Women are, more often the not, the choosers and initiators in relationship origination, and men are often left following. The job of women is to signal to men when it’s time to display their features and “dance” for them. In other words, women are the choosers when it comes to sexual relationships, and in the body language department, if men employ it properly, they are not much more than the chosen.

What the research fails to properly address up to date, is how men can use body language after contact has been established to build attraction with women. I have devoted and entire book to this very topic in my e-book Body Language Project: Dating, Attraction and Sexual Body Language. It is a very complex issue so I can not deal with it in its entirety here, so I encourage anyone interested to pick the book up and read more extensively. In this book, I will hit on all the key features and main topics in male courtship body language that will be of interest to a general reader such as women and professionals. The male “pick-up-artist”, or women who wish to thwart male come-ons and pear into the minds of men, should read further with Body Language Project: Dating, Attraction and Sexual Body Language.

Who Smiles More, Men Or Women, And Why?

by  • March 5, 2013 • 0 Comments

Women smile more than men to appease them.

Women smile more than men to appease them.

The research on smiling shows us that women tend to smile the most and that they also tend to smile regardless of their emotional state. Men will and can get away without smiling the most as men who don’t smile are seen as dominant whereas women who don’t smile are seen as unhappy or angry. We might feel that this is simply a learned or cultural phenomenon but the fact is that smiling differentials between men and women happen very early in life. Little girls by the age of eight begin to smile much more whereas little boy lag further behind and they continue to lag behind into adulthood.

Women are obliged to smile to appease men according to researcher Dr. Nancy Henley at UCLA. She felt that women smiled simply to placate men and that since men normally occupy the dominant roles, women felt pressure to submit to their dominance. She felt smiling differences had nothing at all to do with women as nurturers and pacifiers. This might not be the whole story though. The research also shows us that while women that smile more are taken less authoritatively, women, regardless of their social status and position tend smile more than men. This is the case even when they hold similar job positions showing us that they smile more often even when they don’t have to Other research though confuses these findings and says that sometimes women of equal status to men, tend to use smiles similarly.

However, this certainly wasn’t the case for my wife, who, I had run a ‘smile boycott’ in light of the research done on smiles by Marianne La France. A ‘smile boycott’ is fairly simple, I explained to my wife, all she had to do was smile when she was happy and not smile when she wasn’t. You might try the same experiment for comparison. At first, she found it difficult to bring to consciousness the instances when she smiled because it happens subconsciously, but once she got the hang of it, she found that she smiled a lot.

In fact, at work, she smiled almost continuously, and so it was difficult at first for her to avoid smiling. She found that as she passed male colleagues in the hallways, she’d feel inclined to smile, even though they often failed to reciprocate. Men, she found, would merely nod their heads as they passed. When conversing with other female coworkers, they too tended to smile but if they didn’t, she reported back that she felt as if they were ‘rude.’ If she held a ‘non-smiling’ face for any prolonged period of time, she was questioned; “Are you okay?”, “Lighten up” or, “What’s bothering you?” She simply couldn’t get away with smile avoidance; the world wouldn’t let her. While this is far from scientific, it does illustrate well the trend we find in the scientific research. Women that don’t smile are reported negatively whereas women who smile more, tend to be viewed much more positively.

Further research shows us that smiling is in fact an option for the powerful regardless of their sex. Whereas less powerful people are required to smile more to appease those in higher positions, those higher up, need not placate those below. Interestingly too, is that women usually feel the need to please others, whereas men don’t, and they tend to correlate this need to please with smiling. Therefore this need to please might be at the root of all smiling. Armed with all this information, you can use the smile for your purpose, be it to placate, appease or neither.

How To Avoid An Attack Or Speeding Ticket

by  • March 5, 2013 • 0 Comments

A backward facing cap with open body language means ticket all day long.

A backward facing cap with open body language means ticket all day long.

If you wish to avoid an attack, quickly avert your eyes, pull your head and chin down and draw your shoulders and body inward to make it appear smaller. Submissive postures, like this one, switches off the aggressive attack response in other people. A large part of what provides motivation for those in power, is the power itself and it has been said that those in positions of power want nothing else but more power. So to avoid an attack all we need to do is give them that power, ideally it is in the form of less physical methods. Taking up a submissive posture and admitting guilt is usually enough of a payoff to avoid a speeding ticket at best, or at worst, lessening the amount of punishment that will be received. If asked to step out of the vehicle, keep slouched so as to never reach your full height and don’t completely avoid eye contact, but don’t stare either. Keep reserved, hold your arms and hands across your mid section or in your pockets, but never cross your arms in effort to confront.

A submissive child-like posture leads to protective feelings in others.

A submissive child-like posture leads to protective feelings in others.

Only rarely does a direct confrontation between subordinate and superior individuals lead to a positive outcome for the subordinate since the aim of each must align and only rarely does this happen. Your goal is therefore to produce a situation where the dominant person receives an equal or better outcome, or a weak payout (such as making them feel guilty for giving a nice person a ticket). Affirming ones position against another only leads them to affirm their position further. This completes a never ending cycle that can escalate in short order. By admitting that you are wrong it forces people to mirror this stance causing them to drop their aggression.

If you don’t plan on fighting the ticket in court your best course of action is to vehemently admit your mistakes, and do it repeatedly for effect. The side of the road is not the place to start an argument, that’s what the courts are for, so save it for then. Right now your job is to make the officer feel bad for giving a nice person a ticket so what you want to do is act as if you are an honest, well respected member of the community. Even if you do plan to fight it, you still want to be forgotten so the officer doesn’t go back to his cruiser to jot down notes and begin to mount his court case. If he can’t remember you in court he won’t be able to defend his ticket.

When asked for information, provide it quickly and without hesitation. Avoid “humming” and “haaing” and be as helpful and short as possible, he’s heard all the excuses already so don’t bother getting emotional. The worst you can do is to appear as a threat to his safety by being shifty and moving erratically. When asked for your driver’s license and registration be sure to tell him where they are located and in what order you will give them to him. When reaching in an enclosed compartment like the glove box be sure not to hold eye contact since most attackers look directly into their victims eyes before they assault them. Statistics say that officers are very likely to be assaulted or even killed while on routine traffic stops.

Once you’ve given all the correct body language signals watch for the moment where the officer finally judges that you aren’t a threat. The officer’s body language will become more relaxed and loose and you can begin to address them in a less rigid and formal manner. Cracking jokes is risky, at this point though, since you may put them back into an authoritative position by appearing to belittling the situation. If they seem bent on issuing a ticket though, you may have nothing to lose and easing up might have them lower the fine even at the last moment. If you are persuasive enough and can efficiently built rapport, you may be able to walk the thin line between presenting your case which can be taken as an insult and setting off his dominance triggers.

You wouldn't mess with this chick. Head back spells confidence and authority.

You wouldn’t mess with this chick. Head back spells confidence and authority.

There are other times altogether when showing submission just won’t work to avoid attack. Walking in the city at night is one of them especially for women. Postures such as slumped shoulders, drooping head and a worried face are the postures attackers use to identify easy victims. While placating some attackers might sometimes be appropriate, it won’t work in every situation since every attacker has different motives and while submission postures will help reduce punishment from someone with morals and ethics, it will do nothing to reduce an attack from a criminal who is interested in your pocket money, looking for someone to abduct, or worse. The same has been said for bear attacks. It just so happens that bears, just like people, have different motives depending on their disposition, mood, hunger, sex. Female bears are particularly aggressive when their cubs are present. Therefore, your natural inclination should always be to hold dominant postures first, to fight and run if possible, and only show submission to people whose punishment you are willing to accept. The last thing you want to do is appear as though you’d be easily taken advantage of especially when faced by a stranger. So the default street posture is to keep your head up, shoulders back and a loose body. If someone is going to attack a confident looking person, they’d most likely attack you regardless of your posture, so taking on a confident posture is always the most appropriate in questionable circumstances.

Adaptors

by  • March 5, 2013 • 0 Comments

Is he hot under the collar or is the collar simply uncomfortable?

Is he hot under the collar or is the collar simply uncomfortable?

Adaptors are movements or gestures that are used to manage our feelings or control our responses. Adaptors include movements done to improve comfort or reduce stress and often happen at such a low level they usually escape awareness. Adaptors include movements such as shifting in a chair or postural changes, crossing the legs, pulling at a shirt collar, adjusting a tie, loosening clothing and so forth.

What is interesting to researchers is that some adaptors serve a real purpose and others indicate stress. For example, sometimes our pants really are uncomfortable so we scratch our legs, other times the stress from outside pressure causes us to scratch in an effort to displace energy and distract us. Crossing the legs toward your date might be read as an indicator of interest, but might instead serve to alleviate numbness from loss of circulation. Children will rub their eyes repeatedly when tired, but this is not because they become itchy!

Scratching the nose is another example of an adaptor and could be misread as an indicator of a lying or might actually serve to relieve an itch. Another common adaptor used by adults is the head-grooming gesture where the hand messages the back of the neck or head to relive stress. This gesture is not an authentic gesture motivated by a physical purpose. Rather it used as a method to achieve comfort when facing discomfort applied from the outside. Just about every cue related to body language can be an adaptor. Arm crossing, leg crossing, scratching, fidgeting, twitching, rubbing the eyes, and so on, are all part of the human repertoire and not all have hidden meaning all of the time.

A gestures that indicates anxiety rather than a targeted scratch.

A gestures that indicates anxiety rather than a targeted scratch.

It is the job of the body language reader to decide which movements are motivated by a real physical purpose and which are motivated by an underlying emotional purpose. Usually stress release methods are person specific so once they are detected can be reliable as predictors in future encounters. Some might pull an ear lobe, rub one’s throat, pull on a collar or scratch the back of the hands. I will say that it’s usually pretty obvious when a gesture like scratching is real because it is targeted, quick, non-repetitive and provides instant relief, but when it’s as a response to emotional trauma, it show opposite characteristics. It is general in nature, perpetual, repetitive and provides no discernable relief (at least not instantaneously). The context, meaning high or low stress environment provides strong clues to the purpose of the adaptors. All proper body language reads should take context into consideration.

As we see, movements or adaptors come in two forms. They either have hidden meaning, or they do not. Plenty of emphasis has been given by researchers on these subconscious clues on the grounds that they would unlock secrets. However, the importance placed on adaptors is probably overstated and oversimplified. The real goal of the body language reader is to decipher the difference between adaptors with no meaning and movements and gestures that have actual meaning. Adaptors in cross-cultural meetings can also be potential landmines. For example, emblems, specifically because they are culturally engrained, are emitted without conscious thought. Many Arabic countries see the sole of the foot or the figure-four-leg cross as offensive and rude (an emblem of sorts to them) so they may classify a Westerner as something they intent not to be. It is clear to the Westerner that they wish only to take up a more comfortable seating position. The take-away message is to treat adaptors with the care they deserve instead of jumping to inaccurate, embarrassing or even disastrous conclusions.

Baselining

by  • March 5, 2013 • 0 Comments

Does he always sit on his hands or is he hiding something?

Does he always sit on his hands or is he hiding something?

Baselining is probably one of the most important and often overlooked aspects of reading body language. It refers to the “normal” motions that populate the repertoire of each and every person on the planet. Normal here is the operative word. We can’t even begin to read someone until we first have their baseline pegged. For example, to read someone that is normally flighty and constantly moving, as agitated is wrong since they are merely acting out their particular “idiosyncratic nonverbal behaviour.” That is, the body language that is particular to specific people and that makes up their repertoire, or basket of cues considered normal for them. This person might be flighty or high strung by nature but they certainly can’t be constantly agitated by nature as our nervous systems can’t tolerate perpetual stress. A person high strung by nature who seemingly freezes instantly is telling us based on their baseline that something is up. Baselining tells us that a condition in their environment has changed and it has affected them. It now becomes our job to detect the cause for the change.

Baselining involves learning about how a person usually sits, how they use their hands to gesture, where they place their hands while at rest and relaxed or when nervous, how they place their feet when standing, their overall posture, how they prefer to cross their legs such as whether they cross them equally left over right as right over left, and so on. The list to baselining is utterly endless as are the myriad of cues that can be emitted from the human body, fraught with or, absent of, meaning.

By establishing a baseline it will be possible to catch sudden changes in body language. This is the ultimate purpose to establishing a person’s baseline. Without catching the changes, body language loses its ability to indicate exactly what is going on. For example, a younger brother that is acting exuberant and ecstatic who is jumping around with joy and happiness, who, at a moments notice, finds himself in the presence of an older brother only to suddenly cease his joyful movements, turtles his head into his shoulders, and becomes quiet, says a lot about what kind of relationship they have been having lately. Body language is directly linked to emotions, and so when it changes, we know that something has cause the change, and more often than not, it will be precisely the event that preceded it.

These changes aren’t just limited to events either, they can also be tied to words spoken, or even topics. A married couple might be carrying on amicably, but when there is mention of an ex-girlfriend, even casually, the wife might begin to display dominant and closed body language such as crossing arms, wagging fingers, or scolding eyes. She is indicating that this women or topic is a particular sore spot between them and the sudden change in mood, from good to bad, tells us that it is the topic that is the issue. Criminal investigators will frequently steer suspects off-topic (and seemingly off the record) by talking about favourite pass-times or hobbies by example. This serves the investigator by producing relaxed body language. Once a baseline is established interrogators begin to introduce facts surrounding the investigation to measure their effects. They might begin with items not even connected to the trial and then suddenly introduce a murder weapon, for example, to see if nervous body language appears. During criminal investigations the murder weapon can be kept a secret from the public especially early on, so only the real criminal would exhibit a visceral response to viewing it. While these sorts of interrogations won’t directly lead to a conviction, it does provide clues for further exploration. Like all body language, clues tell us if we are on the right track or if we’ve eliminated leads, at least for the time being.

Those who don’t know about baselining will find it difficult to read other people who lack similar affect to themselves since their only reference of normal is what they do or what the average person they associate with do (which more often then not is very similar to themselves anyway since we tend to hang out with those of like mind). People that don’t baseline won’t see people for their individual characteristics, idiosyncrasies, culture and habits. As we work through life we should have our family, friends, coworkers, bosses, instructors, or anyone else we interact with regularly pegged for their baseline. This will not only make reading them easier, it will also give us “archetypes” that can be cross referenced as comparisons. This in turn, gives us a better chance at evaluating others, even strangers, on the spot, and in real time.