We've all heard the saying, you can't know a person until you've walked a mile in their shoes. This technique is a figurative expression of that saying. It is about how to gain rapport by putting ourselves inside the person we're trying to persuade. Harper Lee wrote in To Kill a Mockingbird, "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view...until you climb into his skin and walk around in it."



We are going to learn to climb into the skin of our prospects, experience them, their affluence, their decision making mechanisms, their emotional states-so that we can better give them what they need and get what we need.

Our other than conscious minds are goal seekers. We have a strong pull toward pattern recognition. We can immediately pick up characteristics of others so that when we step inside them, our unconscious has already formulated what we will experience.

We can jump into another's skin by imagining yourself as them. Let your other than conscious recognize the pattern of them, understand your pattern, and blend the two.

You might ask, is this real? I don't know and frankly, I don't care. It's a mental construct that I create in my mind. I make up that I am in your body looking out at the world through your eyes.

I've never seen a faster way of gaining rapport than this exercise. If we're specifically working with an affluent clientle, this is phenomenally powerful especially if we're not as wealthy as we want to be.

If we assume that there is a finite number of patterns that exist, and if we chunk up a little bit, go to a bigger level, we can say, for example, there are twelve astrological signs. There are seven major personality types, depending on the system that you're working with. There are all sorts of different classification systems that will seek to limit the number of possible combinations.

Building these images is a construct. We might not always be accurate in our assessments, but if we are in front of our prospect, and we're hearing them and talking with them, seeing them move, keeping them in our sites, then we can instantly change our constructs moment by moment. The construct gets more complete and more powerful as we lock onto the personality of our prospect.

When you step in, you want to leave yourself behind and see through their eyes. When you do this, it establishes rapport at a very, very profound and deep level. Once you're in them, you've really moved along the process of rapport, and you've moved it along because you're so completely identifying with all of their behaviors, and all of who they are.

Try making this more tangible by "feeling" what their clothes feel like or if the person is of the opposite gender, feel what that feels like and maybe take on a few of those characteristics.

What are their physical characteristics? How does it feel to have those characteristics? Notice when you step into the other person, where you feel the connection to them. Do you feel the connection in your stomach, in your feet, in your hands, in your chest, in your head? Where do you feel the connection? By asking yourself these questions you'll deepen the rapport.

I'd suggest that you don't do this with someone who is sick or mentally ill or if they just feel like a negative person. This level fo rapport might not be right for the situation. Sometimes it can be hard to "shake" the feeling of being in their skin.

This is a powerful exercise and even if you're not tremendously in touch with "energy", you can still use this to your advantage in persuasion.