Have you ever been gabbing with a new acquaintance and, after a
few moments, you've said to yourself, "This person and I think
alike! We're on the same wavelength." It's a fabulous feeling, almost
like falling in love.
Lovers call it "chemistry." New friends talk of "instant rapport," and businesspeople say a "meeting of minds." Yet it's the
same magic, that sudden sense of warmth and closeness, that
strange sensation of "Wow, we were old friends at once!"
When we were children, making friends was easier. Most of
the kids we met grew up in the same town and so they were on our
wavelength. Then the years went by. We grew older. We moved
away. Our backgrounds, our experiences, our goals, our lifestyles
became diverse. Thus, we fell off each other's wavelengths.
Wouldn't it be great to have a magic surfboard to help you
hop right back on everybody's wavelength whenever you wanted?
Here it is, a linguistic device that gets you riding on high rapport
with everyone you meet. If you stand on a mountain cliff and
shout "hello-oh" across the valley, your identical "hello-oh" thunders back at you. I call the technique "Echoing" because, like the
mountain, you echo your conversation partner's precise words.
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How to Make Them
Feel That You're
Like "Family"
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It All Started Across the Ocean
In many European countries, you'll hear five, ten, or more languages within the language. For example, in Italy, the Sicilians
from the south speak a dialect that seems like gobbledygook to
northern Italians. In an Italian restaurant, I once overheard a diner
discover his waiter was also from Udine, a town in northeastern
Italy where they speak the Friulano dialect. The diner stood up
and hugged the waiter like he was a long-lost brother. They started
babbling in a tongue that left the other Italian waiters shrugging.
In America we have dialects, too. We just aren't conscious of
them. In fact we have thousands of different words, depending on
our region, our job, our interests, and our upbringing. Once, when
traveling across the country, I tried to order a soda like a Coke or
7-Up in a highway diner. It took some explaining before the waitress understood I wanted what she called a "pop." Perhaps because
the English-speaking world is so large, Americans have a wider
choice of words for the same old stuff than any language I've
encountered.
Family members find themselves speaking alike. Friends use
the same words, and associates in a company or members in a club
talk alike. Everyone you meet will have his or her own language
that subliminally distinguishes them from outsiders. The words
are all English, but they vary from area to area, industry to industry, and even family to family.
The Linguistic Device That Says "We're
on the Same Wavelength"
When you want to give someone the subliminal feeling you're just
alike, use their words, not yours. Suppose you are selling a car to
a young mother who tells you she is concerned about safety
because she has a young "toddler." When explaining the safety feaHow to Make Them Feel That You're Like "Family" 177
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tures of the car, use her word. Don't use whatever word you call
your kids. Don't even say child-protection lock, which was in your
sales manual. Tell your prospect, "No toddler can open the window because of the driver's control device." Even call it a toddlerprotection lock. When Mom hears toddler coming from your lips,
she feels you are "family" because that's how all her relatives refer
to her little tyke. Suppose your prospect had said kid or infant.
Fine, echo any word she used. (Well, almost any word. If she'd
said my brat, you might want to pass on Echoing this time.)
Echoing at Parties
Let's say you are at a party. It's a huge bash with many different
types of people. You are first chatting with a lawyer who tells you
her profession is often maligned. When it comes your turn to speak,
say profession too. If you say job, it puts a subconscious barrier
between you.
Next you meet a construction worker who starts talking about
his job. Now you're in trouble if you say, "Well, in my profession
. . ." he'd think you were being hoity-toity.
After the lawyer and the construction worker, you talk to several freelancers—first a model, then a professional speaker, finally
a pop musician. All three of these folks will use different words for
their work. The model brags about her bookings. The professional
speaker might say bookings, but he is more apt to boast of his speaking engagements. A pop musician might say, "Yeah, man, I get a lot
of gigs." It's tough to memorize what they all call their work. Just
keep your ears open and echo their word after they say it.
Echoing goes beyond job names. For example if you are chatting with a boat owner and you call his boat an it, he labels you a
real landlubber. (He reverently refers to his beloved boat, of
course, as a she.) If you listen carefully, you hear language subtleties you never dreamed existed. Would you believe using the
wrong synonym for a seemingly uncomplicated word like have
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labels you a know-nothing in somebody else's world? For example, cat lovers purr about having cats. But horse people would say
owning horses. And fish folk don't own fish. They talk about keeping fish. Hey, no big deal. But if you use the wrong word, your
conversation partner will assume, correctly, that you are a stranger
in his or her hobbyland.
The Peril of Not Echoing
Sometimes you lose out by not Echoing. My friend Phil and I were
talking with several guests at a party. One woman proudly told
the group about the wonderful new ski chalet she had just purchased. She was looking forward to inviting her friends up to her
little chalet in the mountains.
"That's wonderful," said Phil, secretly hoping for an invitation. "Where exactly is your cabin?" KERPLUNK! There went
Phil's chances for an invitation to the lady's chalet.
I couldn't resist. After the conversation, I whispered to my
friend, "Phil, why did you insult that woman by calling her chalet
a cabin?" Phil scratched his head and said, "What do you mean
insult her? Cabin is a beautiful word. My family has a cabin in
Cape Cod and I grew up loving the word, the associations, the joy
of a cabin." (In other words, the connotations of cabin.) Well, fine,
Phil. The word cabin may be beautiful to you, but obviously the
skier preferred the word chalet.
Professional Echoing
In today's sales environment, customers expect salespeople to be
problem solvers, not just vendors. They feel you don't grasp their
industry's problems if you don't speak their language.
I have a friend, Penny, who sells office furniture. People in
publishing, advertising, broadcasting, and a few lawyers are among
her clients. Penny's sales manual says office furniture. However, she
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told me, if she used the word office with all of her clients, they'd
assume she knew nothing about their respective industries.
She told me her client, the purchasing officer in advertising,
talks about his advertising agency. Penny's publishing client says
publishing house. The lawyers talk about furniture for their firm,
and her radio clients use the word station instead of office. "Hey,"
Penny says, "it's their salt mine. They can call it whatever the heck
they please. And," she added, "if I want to make the sale, I'd better call it the same thing."
Echoing Is Politically Correct Insurance
Here's a quiz: You're talking with a pharmacist and you ask her,
"How long have you worked at the drugstore?" What's wrong with
that question?
Give up? It's the word drugstore. Pharmacists abhor the word
because it conjures up many industry problems. They're used to
hearing it from outsiders, but it's a tip-off that they are unaware
of, or insensitive to, their professional problems. They prefer
pharmacy.
180 How to Talk to Anyone
Technique #45
Echoing
Echoing is a simple linguistic technique that packs a
powerful wallop. Listen to the speaker's arbitrary choice
of nouns, verbs, prepositions, adjectives—and echo
them back. Hearing their words come out of your
mouth creates subliminal rapport. It makes them feel
you share their values, their attitudes, their interests,
their experiences.
05 (171-198B) part five 8/14/03 9:18 AM Page 180
Recently, at a reception, I introduced one of my friends,
Susan, as a day-care worker. Afterward Susan begged, "Leil, puleeze do not call me a day-care worker. We're child-care workers."
Whoops! Time and recent history quickly make certain terms
archaic.
A group's intense preference for one word is not arbitrary. Certain jobs, minorities, and special-interest groups often have a history the public is not sensitive to. When that history has too much
pain attached to it, people invent another word that doesn't have
bitter connotations.
I have a dear friend, Leslie, who is in a wheelchair. She says
whenever anyone says the word handicapped, she cringes. Leslie
says it makes her feel less than whole. "We prefer you say person
with a disability." She then gave a moving explanation. "We people with disabilities are the same as every other able-bodied person. We say AB," she added. "ABs go through life with all the same
baggage we do. We just carry one extra piece, a disability."
It's simple. It's effective. To show respect and make people feel
close to you, Echo their words. It makes you a more sensitive communicator—and keeps you out of trouble every time.