The Persuasion Interview
From Success to Seduction, Consulting
to Body Language
(Part Two of Two)
Michael Senoff interviews Kevin Hogan
The Complete Body Language Interview
(continued)
Michael: How about this? How about seating arrangements for man-to-man
or man-to-woman and woman-to-woman? Does it matter where people sit?
Kevin: It matters a lot. This is so important. Let's just talk about
probably the most important thing in where to sit first.
If you have a right-handed person that you're working with as opposed
to a lefty, from their vantage point, you want to be off to their right.
And the reason is that it activates their left brain more when they're
looking at you.
To be overly simplistic, their left brain is a little more logical,
it's a little more linear, it's able to be convinced by logic and rational
thinking. The right brain is sort of the storehouse of emotional
memory, autobiography, feelings, all that kind of stuff. And all
that's great, but you don't really want to be setting off all those emotional
feelings and all that when you're meeting somebody in a sales
presentation because if you do, you're probably going to set off bad
feelings and bad memories. Most people's most powerful emotions
are negative and that is a shame but that's the way it really is.
So the first thing you do no matter who it is, is you try to be off to
their right, if they're right handed. I'm not even talking about the left.
You can go to www.kevinhogan.com and there is all kinds of stuff about this
subject there.
The starting point: Imagine yourself in their body. If they are turning
their head to the right to look at you, you are in good shape.
Now, let's go to a few rules of thumb in communicating with men.
If you are a man, you're probably best to give men a little space.
Men seem to be most comfortable when they have 4-6 feet between each
other. So if you have a choice between a little table and a big
booth, you should choose the big booth.
If you're at a small table, men are going to be very uncomfortable.
Men are very adversarial, and with that in mind, if you can make your
presentation on a right angle, if the man is in position A and you're off to
his right at 3:00, that's ideal. So you're at a 90 degree angle to him
and your justification is so you can show him your portfolio or your
PowerPoint presentation or whatever it is you want to show him.
You don't want to be too close to him but you don't want to be
directly across the chessboard from him either, because men are
very confrontational.
Women, on the other hand, women are
relationship creatures. They want to be directly across from each
other, talking and looking at each other. They tend to have lengthy
eye contact; they like to be much closer than men. A woman can
be 3-4 feet across from another woman or 3 ½ feet across from
another woman. Face-to-face works the best. Interestingly for women they can
also be side to side, very close, and successfully you can have a
sale made from a presentation side to side.
You can't do that with men though; it doesn't work.
And you should know, this is partially
contact dependent. If you're at a sports arena, if you're at a
baseball game and you're seated next to a guy, you guys can talk
business and close the deal, no problem, but otherwise, that's
simply not a good idea.
Women can intentionally sit next to each other and actually transact
business like that, almost as easily as they can face to face.
Stock photography appears under license with istockphoto/sjlocke.
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Kevin: It matters a lot. This is so important. Let's just talk about
probably the most important thing in where to sit first.
