I’ve dedicated many of these articles to a prospect’s decision-making style and personality traits. Decision-making will clearly be guided by personality and a variety of learned behaviors.

Much of what we do, as sales people, if we are successful, will be the result of inherent empathy; that is, the ability to feel and relate to our prospect’s personality and behaviors. On an unconscious level we tend to alter our performance in order to gain our prospect’s trust and respect.

In addition to empathy, which may be our greatest natural talent, we must also learn how our prospect receives their message. How they receive this message is a key component of their decision-making.

I’ve embodied, in my sales strategy, a system of defining how my prospect will understand what I have to say. Will he hear it, see it or feel it?

Many studies have been conducted on learning styles. From you own experience, you will best be able to understand what this all means.

When you have been presented with new data or, in attempting to recall something from memory, do you recall it by seeing it? Feeling it? Hearing it? Just the other day, I needed to find a vendor’s promotional price on a specialty product: I had filed it somewhere and had just reviewed it the day before; at my wits end I finally asked someone in the office if he had retained a copy. Thankfully he had. As he brought the piece to me, and as I glanced at it, I instantly recalled where it had been placed in my office. I needed to see it in order to recall its location.

In sales, your message must be delivered in a fashion that relates to the mind’s method of categorizing and filing. Your prospect will lose your message if it is not filed where he can retrieve it.

Have you ever wondered why a sales session, seemingly perfect, does not bring you the prospect? After all, your prospect nearly committed the account to you. You might want to consider the possibility that your prospect misfiled you and your message. Unable to retrieve your message, he hands the account to your competitor.

Your prospect will file his memory of you and your message in his feeling directory, his seeing directory and his hearing directory, but only if your message is formed for convenient placement. If a visual learner is not provided with a picture, you will be misfiled. The same holds true for a prospect who learns by feeling or one who learns by hearing.

How can you identify your prospect’s feeling system? Ask him questions and listen to his responses.

A visual learner will see things. He will often express his words in pictures ie: “I see what you mean.” In order to appeal to this style of learner, present the picture as vividly as you can.

One who learns by feeling will express himself in a variety of ways, but unlike the visual learner he feels everything. In order to deliver your message and have him effectively recall it, he will file his messages in his feeling directory. “How would you feel if you could no longer produce revenue to support your employees and their families?” See? It’s all about feelings.

The auditory learner hears the message. If you are an insurance provider discussing the perils of windstorm he will hear the hurricane, and as he hears it, he files his responses in the appropriate directory and will recall them at the appropriate time.

It’s simple human nature, as is most of what I reference in my articles.

We all become vague, as do our presentations, as time passes. I encourage you to do the best you can to impose into your prospect the kind of vision, sound or feeling that can be recalled at a later date and evoke the sentiments they felt while you were sitting in front of them and when you knew you had closed a case.