I’m doing a week on selling and communication.  Five days, five tips.  Put all of these to work and I guarantee you improved results for virtually any kind of selling. 

It’s not about eye contact; it’s about personal space. 

Of course eye contact is important to communicating – and selling.  But it’s not as important as most people seem to think.  The exquisite dance of eye contact between two people who are talking to one another is largely regulated by our unconscious minds.  The point is to signal – along with a symphony of other gestures – when one person is done or almost done and the other person should start talking.  It’s only noticed when one person indulges in too much – or too little – eye contact.  Then it interferes with the regulation of the conversation. 

It’s like catching the eye of a waiter.  A good waiter makes it effortless; the harried or incompetent make it difficult. 

More important to communication and to sales is the amount of space between the two people.  We all have incredibly sensitive monitoring capabilities keeping constant track of where we – and everyone else – is in space.  It’s for obvious safety reasons, it’s mostly unconscious, and it works very well. 

We monitor four zones of space.  Twelve feet or more is public space – and our unconscious brains don’t pay much attention to that, because that means that people are far enough away that we have time to react. 

Twelve feet to four feet is social space.  That’s warmer, and our brains are now paying attention, but it’s still a cool relationship.  Things heat up in personal space – four feet to a foot and a half.  And things get really hot in intimate space – a foot and a half to zero. 

Here’s what’s important about that:  The only significant things that happen between people happen in personal and intimate space.  As a sales person, you can’t go into intimate space, usually, so here’s the takeaway – to close a sale you must get into the personal space of the client/customer.  It’s why car salespeople spend so much time shaking your hand – they want to build your trust by getting into your personal space repeatedly.  Good tactic, just a bit overdone. 

For the rest of us, a successful sale involves the delicate art of creating trust without pushing it.  Use personal space subtly and tactfully and you’ll accomplish this with style.  Let the eye contact take care of itself, unless you’re the Rainman.