Watch your customers body language!

by Kim Yu-gon

Sigmund Freud once said, none of us can keep a secret, which shows that no one can avoid revealing their emotion in the body language even if they make an effort to hide it; so that we can easily find out someones feeling or attitude from the body language. As for the sales technique, similarly, a salesperson can easily figure out the customers' emotion so that he/she can exploit the emotion in mitigating the customer's objection. Hence, you can effectively respond to the customers objection if you know how to read and use such body language as sitting posture, eye behavior and hand gesture of your customers.

If you know how to read and make good use of your customer's sitting posture in your sales pitch, you can effectively mitigate your customer's objection so that you will be a high performer. We can recognize that customers have a tendency to show their objections with the negative sitting posture. You can see the customers with positive sitting posture, for example, sit up with knees crossed and arms uncrossed in your sales talk, which shows they may be relaxed and putting the trust in what you are saying. In contrast, people with negative sitting posture sit with legs stretched out and arms tightly folded, which signifies that they partly are getting bored and disagreeing with your sales pitch. For your sales pitch, you can create an affinity between you and your customers by capitalizing on their sitting posture. In other words, if you notice the negative sitting posture of your customers, you can respond to their objections in a positive way simply by changing your sitting posture so that you can show them your interest in them. For instance, one of my seniors who works in an insurance company as a customer operator says, when I observe my clients sit back with arms crossed, I usually try to sit leaning forward as if I am very actively interested in them. He says its because he can create a good impression and easily lead them to buy his product. Its almost seems that the more positive the sitting posture, the more effective and successful the sales pitch. Hence, it is important to watch your customers sitting posture and maintain the positive posture in your sales talk because it can bring your customers great comfort which lead them to buy your products.

Besides knowing that the customers resistance can be effectively mitigated by the positive sitting posture, there is an another body language that you can draw on in your sales pitch. If you figure out what kind of eye behavior your customers have and exploit their eye behavior, you can easily make their objections alleviated. We can notice what customers eye behavior can come up when they make an objection to the salespersons pitch. When customers are interested in the salespersons sale talk, for example, they probably look into the salespersons eyes for a while. And when they are really enthusiastic about the products that the salesperson shows, they may response with eyes wide and alert. On the other hand, customers would resist the salesman's glance when they are suspicious of the products that the salesperson persuades them to buy. And they react with eyes narrowed and sometimes squinting eyes when they feel tense. For your sales talk, you can make good use of your customers eye behavior to show your affinity for them when they begin to make an objection. That is, when you see your customers look away and squint the eyes so that they dont seem to be interested in your sales talk, you can change their annoyed mind into the relaxed one by looking properly into their eyes and the like. When I went to a computer shop to get some information about the price, for instance, I thought that the computers in the shop looked a little expensive in comparison to the other shops so that I began to dig in my heels. However, the salesman of the shop tried to hold my eyes for a proper time with a widening of the eyes while I was talking, and then I felt that he was very kind and really into what I said. At that time, I thought I would buy my computer in the shop in the future in spite of the high price. Consequently, as far as observing your customers eye behavior in your sales pitch and trying to build rapport with making good use of the eye behavior, you can more easily allay the customers objection.

In addition to drawing on the sitting posture and eye behavior to mitigate the customers objection, I can show you that the customers hand gesture is also worth being observed and exploited for calming the customers objection. We can find out that customers have a different hand gesture according to their mood so that you can figure out whether they are in a good mood by observing their hand gesture. In other words, your customers hand gesture shows whether they dig in their heels. Some customers, for example, have a tendency to open their hands on the table pointing out several products that they're interested in when they feel relaxed and comfortable. And others habitually tend to palm down the hands on the table or chat with the fingertips when they get nervous. For your sales pitch, if you believe your customers begin to make an objection as a result of observing their hand gesture, you can change your hand gesture so that you can create a relaxed and comfortable atmosphere. In this case, you can open your hands on the table and use your hands in pointing out the products that you want to show. According to my sister, For instance, when she went to buy her cosmetics, she felt so comfortable even though the saleswoman in the shop just said the prices. She said that she could easily follow the saleswoman's pacing without trying to find which one the saleswoman was talking about. It would appear that the saleswoman moved her hands very openly pointing out the products in her sales pitch. Therefore, observing and exploiting the customers hand gestures can be a useful sales technique as a means to ease the customers objection.

You can find out what kind of feeling your customers have by watching their sitting posture, eye behavior and hand gesture in your sale pitch because their body language shows whether they are interested in you. By the same token, you can capitalize on such body languages to show how much you are relaxed, agreeable and interested in your customer when your customer makes an objection. Hence, try to watch your customers nonverbal language and exploit it as fully and effectively as possible in your sales pitch. If you do so, you will get more better result and great possible profit.