Sales Intelligentsia

Building Rapport: Visual, Auditory, Kinetic

In our minds we represent information and experience as pictures, sounds, feelings and to a lesser extent, smells. Many of us use one of these systems as a primary representational system. It has been estimated that 50% of us primarily think in pictures while the 25% hear sounds and 25%, feelings. Our language often gives signals as to which system we prefer. We say things like: ‘Picture this, you’re in a boat on a large blue river with trees blowing in the wind…’ or ‘Imagine you’re in a boat, the water lapping against the creaking wood and the wild rustle of wind all around you in the trees..’ or ‘..the boat is bobbing in the cool current while the gentle breath of wind is coming across the tree lined shore to ruffle your hair..’. Each description tells you how the person describing the scene may process information internally. As blatant as these examples may be they tell us a lot about the people who say them. The first is primarily visual creating a picture in their minds, the second auditory, hearing a soundscape and the third kinetic, describing the physical feeling involved in the memory.
Knowing these systems is important to any human interactive process like selling because they have a direct effect on how successful your communications will be. If you primarily communicate with visual images to a person who thinks in terms of sounds you may have a communications breakdown without ever realizing why. By simply making certain that you couch your presentation in all three systems, you’ll avoid any subconscious failure to communicate.

If you learn to distinguish which of these ways of representing information another person prefers you can match their style and start to build subconscious rapport. If they use visual analogies when they describe things, make sure you’re using similar analogies.