Keep good eye contact
How to Talk to Anyone offers some techniques on how to communicate for success. Here ar
e three of them.
How to make someone feel like an old friend at once
Zig Ziglar, author of See You at the Top, says that ‘People don’t care how much you know until they know how much care… about them’
When meeting someone, our brains are in overdrive. Remember Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar? He said of Cassius, he ‘has a lean and hungry look… he thinks too much… such men are dangerous.’ So it is with our brains when conversing with a new acquantaince. Our brains become lean. (Some of us are fighting off shyness. Others are frantically sizing up the situation.) And hungry. (We’re deciding what, if anything, we want from this potential relationship.) So we think too much instead of responding with candid, unself-conscious friendliness. Such actions are dangerous to impeding friendship, love or commerce.
As our bodies are shooting off ten thousand bullets of stimuli every second, we need a technique to ensure every shot aims right at the heart of our subject:
[bluebox] Technique: When meeting someone, imagine he or she is an old friend (and old customer, an old beloved, or someone else you had great affection for.) How sad, the vicissitudes of life tore you two asunder. But, holy mackerel, now the party (the meeting, the convention) has reunited you with your long-lost old friend![/bluebox]
How to ressucitate a dying conversation
[bluebox] Technique: Like a good gumshoe, listen to your conversation partner’s every word for clues to his or her preferred topic. The evidence is bound to slip out. Then spring on that subject like a sleuth on to a slip of the tongue. Like Sherlock Holmes, you have the clue to the subject that’s hot for the other person.[/bluebox]
How to create a friendly ‘private joke’ with them
Loves whisper phrases in each others’ ears that mean nothing to anyone but themselves. Friends crack up over a few words that sound like gobbledygook to anyone overhearing them. Close business associates chuckle about shared experiences.
[bluebox] Technique: With anyone you’d like to make part of your personal or professional future, look for special moments together. Then make them a refrain.[/bluebox]
