What simple technique can make a sales pitch 20% more effective?

Mimic the customer’s body language.

Via Honest Signals: How They Shape Our World:

Despite the rather obvious nature of the copycat animation, only eight of the sixty-nine subjects detected the mimicry (and those mostly because they made a strange movement and then saw the agent making the same unusual motion). The remaining students liked the mimicking agent more than the recorded agent, and rated the former as being friendlier as well as more interesting, honest, and persuasive. They also paid better attention to the copycat presenter and found the mimicker to be more persuasive. In the final analysis, just adding mimicry made the sales pitch 20 percent more effective.

There’s plenty of research on mimicry’s power:

• Research has shown the two things a salesperson must have are 1) empathy, 2) ego drive. Mimicry is a potent nonverbal form of empathy. It may be the key to sales.

• Mimicry makes you a better negotiator. The first words you should say in a negotiation are anything very similar to what the person on the other side of the table just said.

• Out and out mimicking people (but not obviously) causes them to like you more and to act more kind. On dates, when women mimic men the guys are more interested.

• Mimicry doesn’t work by only building a bond between the two involved, it makes the person who is mimicked feel better and act nicer to everyone.

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