Effective Communication Strategies for Entrepreneurs

[AndrewNC]

As an entrepreneur, being able to effectively communicate with others is an essential skill for your success.

Communicating with:

1. Prospective customers, through your product descriptions.
2. Potential investors, when seeking the next round of investment.
3. Employees and contractors, to make sure they understand the job and get it done right.

Not to mention how effective communication skills carry over to all other areas of your life with personal and romantic relationships. In summary, if you want to be able to influence another person to do the thing you want them to do (buy your product, invest in your company, work the extra hour on a project deadline, say yes to a date with you), you're going to have to know how to communicate with them effectively.

The Human Brain is Like a Computer | Psychology for Influence & Communication



When you communicate with a person, their computer processes information in five representational systems (also known as Modalities).

1. Visual (sights)
2. Auditory (sounds)
   1. Auditory (external sounds)
   2. Auditory Digital(internal self-talk)
3. Kinesthetic (feelings)
4. Tastes
5. Smells

Your Goal as the Effective Communicator: Meet the other person at their level (not yours).

At any given time, the person you are speaking with leans towards using one specific representational system/modality. If you want to effectively input data into their computer (brain), you have to understand how their brain is currently processing information.

Example: The person you're communicating with says one of the following:

• I see what you're saying.
• I like the sound of that.
• It just feels like the right decision.

The language the person uses is a clear indicator of how their brain is currently processing information. When you begin to pay attention to the predicates the person is using in their sentence, you can now begin to structure your language to begin communicate with them in a way they they will understand.

In the past, a person might say to me "I really see a bright future ahead of me." and I would reply with the wrong modality and say something like "Sounds like you have a good grasp of things." (auditory and kinesthetic). While at the conscious level, this makes sense - it loses a lot of it's power because you're not playing into the way their brain (computer) is currently set to process information.

"It looks good that you have a clear direction in front of you." would be a better way to communicate with them.

Summary: To more effectively communicate with a person, you structure your words to operate through the representational system/modality they are currently processing with.

 

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[AndrewNC]

Discovering a Person's Representational System/Modality

1. Predicates - Here is a list of some common linguistic predicates for each of the modalities/representational systems. While this brief list can get you started, the real learning happens when you begin to recognize different predicates people use when you communicate with them, and structure your words in favor with theirs.

Visual Predicates

• Look(s)
• Clear
• Picture
• See
• Bright
• Foggy
• View
• Focused
• Imagine
• Sight for sore eyes
• Take a peak
• Bird's eye view
• Paint a picture

Auditory Predicates

• Listen
• Hear
• Sound(s)
• Rings a bell
• In tune
• All ears
• Loud and clear
• On another note

Kinesthetic Predicates

• Feel
• Grasp
• Touch
• Tap into
• Catch on
• Get a hold of
• Hard
• Concrete
• Get a handle
• Solid
• Sharp as a tack
• Trow out
• Get in touch
• Hand in hand
• Hang in there

Auditory Digital Predicates (Auditory Digital is Internal Self-Talk)

• Sense
• Experience
• Understand
• Makes sense
• Perceive
• Distinct
• Know
• Think
• Learn
• Process
• Decide
• Describe in detail
• Pay attention to
• Without a doubt

2. Other Indicators of a Person's Favored Representational System
Visual

• Stand or sit with their heads and body erect.
• Breath from the top of their longs
• Sit forward in chair.
• Organized, need, well-groomed, and orderly.
• Memorize by seeing pictures.
• Noise doesn't distract them
• Have trouble remembering verbal instructions.
• Appearances are important to them.

Auditory

• Move their eyes to the sides.
• Breath from middle of the chest.
• Talk to themselves (sometimes they move their lips while doing it)
• Easily distracted by noise.
• Can repeat things back to you easily
• Likes to be told how they are doing.
• Interested in what you have to say about things (like your product or service).

Kinesthetic

• Breath from the bottom of their lungs (their stomach goes in and out as they breath).
• Move and talk very slowly.
• Enjoy touching.
• Stand close to people.
• Memorize by doing things.
• Interested in things because it feels right or if you give them something they can grasp.

Auditory Digital

• Talk to themselves a lot.
• Often show characteristics of other representational systems
• Purchase your product or service because it "makes sense"

Important: Each and every person uses a mixture of all different representational system, and it is not one or the other. With that being said, the information learned above gives a strong indicator of which one they operate from most of the time.

 

[kkompoti]

i like that you provide a lot of value to this forum.
i like the fact that you provide genuine knowledge and i have some questions about that.
do you earn a lot of money doing what you do?are you in the start of your business? are you doing everything by yourself?
if you do everything by yourself my congrats! i do not know how you find the energy and time to do it.
is it profitable yet? sorry for the questions but i would like to know how you can monetize what you do?

i don't want specifics. i don't want to steal your idea.

p.s. is there a progress thread from you that i can read? thanks!

 

[AndrewNC]

i like that you provide a lot of value to this forum.
i like the fact that you provide genuine knowledge and i have some questions about that.
do you earn a lot of money doing what you do?are you in the start of your business? are you doing everything by yourself?
if you do everything by yourself my congrats! i do not know how you find the energy and time to do it.
is it profitable yet? sorry for the questions but i would like to know how you can monetize what you do?

i don't want specifics. i don't want to steal your idea.

p.s. is there a progress thread from you that i can read? thanks!

Thanks for the nice words!

I don't really have a progress thread from my entire journey, and the one I have is mainly me just sharing content I put out..

https://thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/limitless.59304/

September 2011 - October 2013 - I Was jumping from idea to idea, had no clue what to do, taught myself coding and read a lot of books without taking much action.

October 2013-Spring 2014 - Built a digital magazine company - that has since grown to 938,000 readers - haven't worked on it much since 2014 though.

June 2014 - quit my job and traveled since them. Built a company called Limitless to help others with mental and emotional blocks/teach the lessons I learned on my journey.

Right now, I'm in a very interesteing point in my business - but I'll share that story at a later time

 

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[Justin Gesso]

@AndrewNC - Fascinating. In all of the sales/communications books and classes I've been through, I've never heard of this approach (or at least it didn't stick with me). Where did you come across it?

And interesting timing too. I just finished reading "Never Split the Difference" by Chris Voss, which certainly shares some concepts with what you're writing here. Labeling has some overlay and seems as though it might be strengthened by this approach.

 

[AndrewNC]

@AndrewNC - Fascinating. In all of the sales/communications books and classes I've been through, I've never heard of this approach (or at least it didn't stick with me). Where did you come across it?

And interesting timing too. I just finished reading "Never Split the Difference" by Chris Voss, which certainly shares some concepts with what you're writing here. Labeling has some overlay and seems as though it might be strengthened by this approach.

A lot of what I learned is through Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP). Similar how psychologists know how to help others through many mental and emotional problems, it studies the same workings of the human mind.

I studied that in detail and shaped the lessons learned into 1. Coaching and 2. Communication/influence.