Rant

percent of our communication comes through our tone of voice, the speed we talk, and how loud. The surprise is, only 7 percent of our message comes through our words. So a smart salesman, his big talent is knowing how to listen.
    We call it “pacing” a customer: You match your breathing rate to his breathing. He taps his foot or drums his fingers, you do, too, and match his speed. If he scratches his ear or stretches his neck, you wait twenty seconds and do the same. Listen for his words and watch where his eyes roll as he talks. The majority of customers, they learn through vision, and most times their eyes are looking up—to the left if they’re remembering information, but they’ll look to their right if they’re lying. The next group learns by hearing, and they’ll look side to side. The smallest group learns by moving or touching, and they’ll look down as they talk.
    The visual people will say, “Look,” or “I see what you mean.” They’ll say, “I can’t picture that,” or “See you later.” That’s Echo Lawrence: always eyeing you.
    Your audio customers will say, “Listen,” or “That sounds good,” or “Talk to you soon.” For example, that Shot Dunyun guy: Makes almost no eye contact, but if you talk fast, sound excited, he’ll get all worked up.
    Your touch-based customers will tell you, “I can handle that.” They’ll say, “Got it,” or “Catch you later.” That’s the young kid, Neddy Nelson: Stands too close to you, and he’s always tapping you, touching you with his fingers, to make sure you’ll listen.
    In really effective pacing, a salesman adopts the learning style of the customer—visual or hearing or touch—to the point of looking up or sideways or down at the ground while you talk. Your goal is to establish common ground. Not everybody enjoys baseball or even fishing, but every person is obsessed with himself.
    You are your own favorite hobby. You’re an expert on you.
    All a good salesman does is make eye contact, mimic your body language, nod or laugh or grunt to prove he’s spell-bound—those noises or gestures, they’re called “verbal attends.” A salesman only has to prove that he’s just as obsessed with you as you are with yourself. After that, the two of you share a common passion: you.
    There’s lots more comes after that: embedded commands, objection bridging, hot buttons, tie-down and add-on questions, control questions…you name it.
    Any good salesman will tell you: Before a customer cares how much you know, that customer wants to know how much you care. And your truly effective salesman, he knows how to fake that he really, truly does give a shit.
    7–Haunted House
    Bodie Carlyle ( Childhood Friend): The only gold money Rant spent was, one day he pushed a wheelbarrow down the road, all the way to the Perry Meat Packing plant.
    Reverend Curtis Dean Fields ( Minister, Middleton Christian Fellowship): Inside the grange hall, the annual haunted house consisted of old oilcloth tarps, smelling from train diesel, hung up to make a pitch-dark tunnel you’d walk inside. How folks hung the tarps, it made the tunnel turn right and left, turning back on itself to confuse you and make the walk last long as possible. Kids waited at the start, and Rant took them through one at a time. Kid stuff inside. At the far end was a party with a costume contest, cake, and candy. One year, a piñata.
    Inside, the tunnel was pitch-dark except when lights flashed to show something scary. The far end was most dark, and Rant would blindfold you. He’d put your hand in a big mixing bowl full of cooked elbow macaroni stirred with cold butter, and he’d tell you, “This is brains.” You’d feel a bowl of grapes coated with corn oil, or peeled hard-cooked eggs, and Rant would say, “These is pulled
    out eyeballs.” Pretty tame stuff these days. Hard for a kid’s imagination, standing in the dark, feeling a bowl of warm gelatin water while Rant Casey says, “This is fresh blood…” Anymore, it’s pretty hard for imagination to make that seem horrible.
    Luella Tommy ( Childhood Neighbor): At the party end of the haunted tunnel, kids is gobbling cake and playing Ducky Ducky. Playing Pass the Orange. Kids ask can they have napkins to wipe off their hands, after touching the pretend brains and lungs and scary junk. Other kids just wipe their hands on their costumes or on each other.
    The little Elliot girl comes out the tunnel, red up to both elbows. Real