Salesmanship University

Sales Techniques – Shift Your Prospect’s Perspective Using The Empathy Close

You may already be using a few of your favorite sales techniques with good results. Yet if you want an instant boost in your closing power, the empathy close will be a good one to use.

This technique is sometimes called the friendship close or love close. It involves your willingness to work towards a mutually beneficial outcome. Like any friendship or relationship, your sincerity is the active ingredient that makes it tick.

The empathy close is similar to pacing and leading in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). It requires you to first pace (follow) your prospect’s rhythm, way of speech and even body language as you open up your conversation with him.

Without going into the inner workings of NLP, it’s sufficient to simply immerse yourself into your prospect’s world and truly understand where he’s coming from.

There are two reasons for doing this:

1. You’ll begin to speak your prospect’s language and this will nurture a feeling of affinity and familiarity. As you do, your prospect begins to trust you. When his heart is open to new ideas, more than half your battle is won.

2. The solutions you present to your prospects will feel more credible. As you introduce ideas in ways that are more palatable to him, he’ll digest them with ease. Then you can have a chance to impress upon him about how your product can improve his life.

Having empathy as you connect with your prospects put you head and shoulders above the average product peddler. This is because most of them only care about themselves and their product. Some may show concern, yet this isn’t the same as empathy.

The word Empathy is derived from the Greek work, “empatheia”, which is composed of two root words, “En” (which means “in”) and “Pathos” (which means “passion” or “suffering”). The ancient Greeks understood the concept of being immersed into the emotions of another human being.

As you empathize, your emotions closely resemble your prospect’s inner experience. Then an almost magical phenomenon happens – he’ll have that warm fuzzy feeling that you really care. This is a powerful emotion that can lead to deep trust.

With this, you have a good chance of shifting the way your prospect see things and lead them towards your point of view.

More than just a sales technique, the empathy close is really an attitude. As you can see, there isn’t really a process or what exactly to say. It’s a matter of the heart. But when you use it, you can get wonderful results and genuine friendships at the same time.