Hands On

An old joke says that if you tied an Italian’s hands, he couldn’t talk. This is a comment on the Latin culture’s especially vigorous use of the hands to pace and emphasize speech. It’s not just the Italians whose speech would be hampered by bound hands. Far more than we realize, all of us use our hands to “conduct” our sales presentations.

The gesticulations of our hands are among the most interesting but unnoticed forms of body language. Hand movements are so much a part of speech, in fact, that most people use them even when they’re talking on the telephone to listeners who can’t see them. Remarkably, blind people gesture at the same rate as sighted people.

Every little movement

Maybe you remember the song, “Every Little Movement Has a Meaning All Its Own.” It was a song about dancing.

The song’s words equally apply to the nonverbal hand signals between a seller and a buyer. When the seller knows how to recognize common hand signals, interpret them in their specific context and display them to support the significance of his or her verbal message, the seller is well on the way to making the sale.

The meaning of hand motions

Gestures that salespeople send out and receive from their prospects only make sense within the physical setting (that is, the actual context) in which they occur.

There are five major situational factors that affect the sales interaction:
• who sends the signal,
• who observes the signal,
• the reason the signal is sent,
• where the signal is sent, and
• when the signal is sent.

Let’s take a look at the simple gesture of pointing a finger. Depending on the situational factors, it may mean the following:
• A direction. Translation: “I prefer that you sit in this chair and not that one.”
• A method of interruption. Translation: “Please be quiet. I’ve got something I want to tell you.”
• A cue to learn where you stand with the other person. Translation: “What do you think about what I’ve just said?”
• A means of focusing the prospect’s eyes in the general direction of the product itself. Translation: “Let’s begin talking about the purpose of my visit with you right now.”
• A technique to get the client to concentrate on a specific feature of the product. Translation: “I’m going to give you some detailed information about an outstanding feature of my product.”

Hand signals in selling can be used for the following:
• to repeat and emphasize what the seller or buyer has said verbally;
• to regulate and control the communication interaction between them;
• to substitute for things that have not been said; and
• to disagree with what has been said.

Three directions

Generally speaking, there are three directions the hand can follow in space to send meanings: horizontal, vertical and sagittal (pointing). Each conveys something to those who are observing.
• A person trying to calm someone may be seen moving his or her hands slowly, palms down, parallel to each other and horizontal with the ground. This is a soothing sort of gesture that says, “Take it easy. Everything will be all right.”
• A priest in talking may move his hands up and down; a leader or politician may stretch a hand high overhead. These are more authoritative, vertical gestures. They demand a bit more attention than the horizontal sweeps.
• Most powerful and most demanding is the sagittal move; the word is from the Latin sagitta for arrow and means pointing. When someone points at you or thrusts a fist toward you, that’s a burst of power, and you sit up and take notice.

Specific hand signals

If you think your hands are only keeping time with the rhythms of your sales presentations, you’re probably underestimating their eloquence. Your hands are literally shaping the feelings you’re expressing with your words.

To follow are examples of hand signals exchanged during a call.
• You’re trying to draw agreement out of someone. Your hands are palms up, lifting and pulling, or cupped like a beggar’s.
• You’re trying to get through to the heart of a problem. With the edge of a flat hand, you chop through the air – cutting through to the bone.
• Your prospect is trying to make a fine and subtle point. The tip of his finger and thumb barely touch, as if he were pinching a hair-thin distinction out of the air.
• You’re trying to drive home a big and obvious point. Your hand grabs a fistful of air, and clutches it to your chest or hammers it down on an imaginary table.
• You’re trying to find just the right thing to say in an awkward or complex situation. Your hands may be steepled, all the fingertips of one lightly seeking the matching fingertips of the other.
• Your buyer is fed up with something and wants to cut it off once and for all. His hands, flattened, palms down, are parallel with the desk and then cross at the wrists. They slide back and forth over each other like scissors opening and closing.
• You want to visually acknowledge the series of informative points you are making about the product under consideration. Let your fingers do the talking to underscore these points.

To follow are examples a salesperson can observe on a sales call.
• If the buyer picks up a pen and takes notes, he’s telling you your message is worth keeping (in most cases).
• If she picks up her glasses from the desk and puts them on, she may be cueing you she’s seriously looking into the matter at hand. However, if she puts them in her case and puts them away, it’s a wrap-it-up signal.
• If she puts an object such as a pencil in her mouth, she may be indicating she’s reflecting on what you’re saying.
• If he picks up his chair, he’s telling you he wants to adjust the distance of your shared space bubble (either farther or closer).

The dirty words of hand languageThe kinds of motions a salesperson makes can fall into two categories: professional and personal. We’ve already discussed professional hand signals, but personal signals are equally important. They can give away the salesperson’s social class, sense of manners and attitude toward privacy when it comes to little grooming details.

In a dissertation on gentlemanly behavior, George Washington noted that no gentleman in company should place his hands or fingers near his face. Now, we would hardly expect such a large-minded man to bother himself with such homely little bits of advice, but if Washington was anything, he was dignified, and he understood that no one can remain dignified while attending to his personal appearance in public.

To follow are hand movements of a more personal than professional nature:
• motions you make that are related to your clothing, such as adjusting your tie, straightening your jacket, pulling down your shirt, etc.
• motions you make as a clue to your feelings at that moment, such as pushing back your hair, placing your hands in your pockets and jiggling coins, fiddling with your ring, curling your hair around your finger, scratching your head, tugging an ear lobe, rubbing your nose or the back of your neck, etc.

It would be well for you to consider the personal motions you use with your hands that detract from your sales presentation. These can be received by the one you are trying to impress as dirty nonverbal words!

What can you do about gestures in your movement signature when they do not positively amplify the words you say? Talk to yourself in a mirror and notice how you emphasize certain words in your sales presentation with your hand movements.

Needing, reading and feeding

Once upon a time, there was a great philosopher who was given an opportunity to visit both Hell and Heaven for a day, then return and tell about them.

When he got to Hell, he was surprised to see all its inhabitants sitting at a long banquet table laden with sumptuous, maddeningly beautiful and aromatic food. They could not bend their elbows, however; thus, they were unable to bring the food to their mouths, and consequently were all emaciated, starving and unhappy.

He went to Heaven next and found there the same kind of banquet table. The people there could not bend their elbows either, yet these people were all well fed, healthy and happy.

When the philosopher came back, he went about telling of the difference between Hell and Heaven, and usually his audiences could not guess what made the difference.

“Why, it’s simple,” he would explain finally. “In Heaven, they feed each other!”

I think we can make our own professional and personal lives here on Earth either a Heaven or Hell in much the same way. Buyers who are hungry for food know how to say so. Just as you and I do. The many hungers of a buyer’s personality, however, are not that easy to understand or to express in words. These hungers can be as important as the simple hunger for food.

Most of the hungers and satisfactions of the buyer’s personality are expressed not in words but in the body’s language of the hands, eyes, face, postures and gestures.

An awareness of nonverbal signals – a sensitivity to the meanings of unspoken signals, both others’ and your own – enables us all to read each other’s hungers and feed back the appropriate signals to satisfy them.

The better we can all do that, the more successful we can make our lives here on Earth. Remember to use your body’s language in selling. You are your best visual aid!