How to Use Your Intuition to Serve a Client or Make a Sale
You know you need to use your intuition, but how to proceed?
If IQ, training, and technical skills were all it takes, we’d make every sale, and hit the nail on the head every time. Intuitively we know we need more than that; we need to use our intuition. But just how does crucial emotional intelligence competency work?
I interviewed some experts in intuition for clarification.
IT STARTS BEFORE YOU GET THERE
According to Nancy Fenn, The Intuition Coach, who’s been coaching over 15 years, it’s an ongoing process that starts even before you make the contact. “Take a few minutes before you call or see the person to visualize them clearly in your mind,” she says. “Think of one thing about the person that distinguishes them from all others.”
Nancy also advises that you use their name. Using someone’s name summons them to “appear and stand at attention intuitively,” she says.
MORE TIPS
· Positive affirmations are important, Intuitionists agree. Affirm that everything you’re going to say and do will prosper you and the other person and work together for your mutual good.
· Let the conversation go where it goes. “If you let the horse run, it will return to the stable on its own,” says Nancy. Stay focuses within, but in the meantime, you’ll have indulged everyone’s love of talking about what matters to them, built rapport, and made some discoveries about the person’s needs that will increase your ability to serve them.
· Listen! Learn! Helping a client, or selling to them, is about finding out what their needs and problems are. You can only do this when you listen.
· Promise yourself you’ll learn one new interesting thing about this person during the interaction.
LOOK AROUND … BE ATTENTIVE
Be attentive to the person, but also to your surroundings. If you’re in person, and kept waiting, for instance, or they have to take a phone call, look around.
“Pick up on prominent colors,” says Nancy, “items that indicate personal interests, photographs, amount of neatness or clutter, plants or lack thereof, type and condition of the rug, kind of chair the person sits in, personal jewelry, etc.”
WITHOUT JUDGEMENT
“Do this utterly without judgment,” the Intuition Coach adds. All these things trigger your intuition.
HOW YOU ARE
· Mirror. Something else you can do that will aid the encounter is to mirror the other person’s sitting or standing position. This builds instant rapport and top salespeople do this instinctively. They sit back, you sit back. They lean forward, you lean forward. Try this. They won’t even notice, I promise you.
· The message you convey when you do this is – we’re working together for our mutual greater good.
· Stay grounded. When you’re not mirroring the other person’s posture, keep both your feet on the ground. This will ground you and help you stay centered.
AFFIRM
Finally, affirm that everything that takes place during the interaction is leading to your desired goal and mutual benefit. Then you’ll relax, let go, and be amenable to intuition.
About the Author
Susan Dunn, The EQ Coach, GLOBAL EQ. Emotional intelligence coaching to enhance all areas of your life - career, relationships, midlife transition, resilience, self-esteem, parenting. EQ Alive! - excellent, accelerated, affordable EQ coach certification. Susan is the author of numerous ebooks, is widely published on the Internet, and a regular speaker for cruise lines. For marketing services go here.
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