As a business owner or ‘communicator’ you’re in the business of getting results and when you start to think about business situations you come into, contexts in which you communicate and the differing outcomes that can possibly occur you’ll soon realise that your thought processing and communication is geared towards an outcome that is generated by yourself or ’shared’ with another and your key objective is to ‘get agreement.’
There are numerous ways of ‘enhancing’ your personal communication to get agreement and before I share those with you there’s one thing I have to be clear about.
In any communication transaction there is an ‘intention’ and consideration has to be given to whether or not you consider your intention in ‘persuading another’ to be self fulfillment or shared winnings. Only you will know that but you know as well as I do that relationship building is built on shared outcomes that benefit all parties concerned.
Now we’ve got that out of the way, let’s move on.
Getting agreement is about getting people saying ‘yes’ and there are a number of ways to steer someone towards a ‘yes’ through language.
Know your outcome and ‘pre-frame’ your communication
Set the scene by outlining your ‘objectives’ and create an environment where you and the other person involved in the transaction are in agreement on what is to be achieved. YES number one.
‘Pace’ the listener using pacing statements
Pacing ‘current experience’ is very powerful. It is used to ‘get people in on the deal’ and engaged with you. Notice the following text and how you cannot disagree with it.
“You are reading this material, looking at the text on the page, considering how these tools might assist you….”
Subconsciously, as the reader you have ‘accepted’ or ‘YES’d’ three times by reading the above text. Agree?
Asking the right questions to get the right answers
People buy on ‘emotion’ and in the sales or relationship building process the ‘hot buttons’ of the prospect are to be identified and utilised to create the condition for the sale. By asking the following set of questions you can effectively create the right conditions by allowing the listener to highlight their situation and thought processing in relation to the context:
What is your priority? – Allows the listener to highlight their criteria
Why is that important? – Justifies their criteria
What would it mean for you if you had that? – Personalises the justification
What would the consequences be of not having that? – Creates the criteria to be avoided
How would that be a problem for you (not having that)? – Justifies the avoidance criteria
Once you have this set of information you now understand what the person wants, doesn’t want and what it means ‘globally’ (impact on the bigger picture) and ‘personally’ to the listener. Repeat back to the listener and confirm what they want or don’t want and how it impacts them to get them in agreement with you.
Use of suggestion to create ‘options’ – don’t ‘force’ communication
Suggestion statements are used to enable the listener to have an option yet the message contained within the sentence is clear. By giving people an option you don’t come across as pushy but ’suggestive’ giving the listener the option to make the right decision for themselves. Consider the following sentences:
“Commit to working with my company today” – forced
“Are you able to commit to working with my company today” – option given – “Are you able”
“Could you commit to working with my company today” – option given “Could you”
Embedded commands
As with the above sentences you can see that the message or ‘command’ contained within the text is ‘commit to working with my company today’. Let’s combine pacing statements with a command:
“We’ve discussed your situation, I’ve highlighted what we offer as a business, and how we can assist you in achieving your objectives, and as you think about what you might achieve by working with me, how our commitment to each other can move you and the business forward and by knowing now, that we have assisted companies in a similar situation to yours grow substantially by these services, I’d like to make it easy for you to be able to commit to working with my company”
Tag questions
Tag questions refer to questions ‘tagged’ onto sentences that create agreement. It’s quite interesting knowing that it is possible to create agreement using such tools like the one’s above isn’t it? And you can see that by using these patterns you can become more effective in your communication can’t you? So you will go on and use them won’t you?
As with all ‘things’ in life, especially honing your language skills, its about putting in practice, time and commitment. Practice saying your sentences with different voice tonality and speed and with ‘pauses’. Commit to utilising some of the patterns daily and you’ll soon see and increase in your personal performance, won’t you
Nick Hill is an International Business Trainer specialising in human soft skills development techniques and trainings. As the owner of Binary Vision, Nick works with companies and individuals to transform them into high performers by taking them through a programme of workshops designed to accelerate personal performance in business.
