The Tribune

By D’Arcy Rahming

“Look me in the eye when I am speaking to you,” I heard the father tell his son. I was in a comic book store in Evanston, Illinois. The boy, about eight years old, had knocked one of the books off the shelf and then ran off. His father saw this and took corrective action. He made the boy own up to it, and then made him apologise to the store attendant. Then he told the boy what his punishment was going to be; that he would not be allowed to buy any of the comics. The boy was upset but the lesson had been learned.

The most important lesson for selling success in the above story was one that our children in the Bahamas, for the most part, are not learning. And no, it is not owning up to your mistakes, apologising or even taking responsibility, all of which are good and critical lessons. The key selling lesson here is confronting a problem head on while looking someone in the eye. This is because selling is based on confidence.

Confidence changes your body language, your posture and, most of all, people can sense it. So confidence increases your believability and credibility, making it easier for people to build a relationship with you and trust you.

Our history of colonialism and slavery may be the root cause of this. It seems to have left us with more than a few scars. One of which affects our ability to be effective marketers. Bottom line, people buy from people they like and trust. While I think we are, as a culture, quite affable, our inability to look people in the eye often affects our ability to sell products or to present ourselves seriously on the national and international stage.

Americans and Canadians, who are our largest markets, do not trust people who fail to look them in the eye. So when you are negotiating a contract, a salary raise, doing a business presentation or selling a service to a major client, if you look away whenever there is a challenge, you appear to be hiding something.

The first lesson I have to teach many of my college students is that you are to look me in my eyes when I am speaking. This is also definitely true of the children. I know that what I am saying may be counter culture. Some will read this column and say they are just shy, or it is just the way they were raised. But I have personally seen million dollar sales lost or gained based on whether the clients felt one side or the other could be trusted because of eye contact.

NB: D’Arcy Rahming holds a Masters of Management from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. A lecturer at the College of the Bahamas, Mr Rahming has clients in general insurance, retail, the health and medical fields, sports federations and financial services. To receive his marketing newsletter FREE go to http://DArcyRahming.com or contact him directly at darcyrahmingsr@gmail.com