adventures in sound

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by Kenrick Cleveland

As you listen to what I’m going to tell you, you’ll begin to hear the way in which you can use these words to describe most anything. You can orient your phrases and the way in which you talk such that people will resonate with what you’re saying very well. If you make your voice calm and smooth you’ll probably have an even greater appeal as you verbalize the message you want to get across. You can tune in to what people are telling you as well, becoming more empathic with them and helping them to understand exactly your meaning to all the words that you have.

Reread the first paragraph and notice that I’ve stuffed it with a bunch of auditory words so that you can begin to ‘hear’ what they sound like and can more easily identify the type of person you’re talking to. My suggestion is to make some lists, one for auditory, one for visual and one for kinesthetic words and study them. The better you know them, the more quickly you can come up with the system in which your prospect or client is operating.

In previous articles I wrote about how to understand and identify visual and kinesthetic people. Here’s how you can determine if someone is auditory.

To begin with, auditory people have some distinct vocal characteristics. One type is a bit sing-songy when they talk. Many radio disc jockeys, for example, are oriented towards the auditory.

These folks may have a lot of affect and their pitch will rise and fall. In other words, their speech can be quite dramatic.

You’ll also hear what appears to be the exact opposite of this. You’ll learn to discover it also as an indication for auditory and that is a person who talks in a monotone. And they’ll expect you to listen to what they’re saying and they’re going to carefully phrase their words to make the point they’re trying to get across and they’ll describe things very thoroughly and carefully. and this kind of a speaking pattern is a dead giveaway that the person is very much into the auditory system.

Of course, as with all of the representational systems, you will also hear their orientation in the words they use, in this case, they will be auditory.

When someone is visually oriented their eyes will tend to go up to where they are creating pictures whereas an auditory person’s eyes stay level and will go side to side (towards their ears).

They cock their head to the side like as if they’re talking on the phone. Think back and remember a time when you watched a person talk on the phone and they cranked their head to the said while they’re talking. Now think of times when you’ve been talking with someone face-to-face and they do the same thing. They’re often leaning an ear in to try to hear better what you’re saying and to try to understand. And when you see that, bingo, you’ve got an auditory person.

There’s not as much of a concern about how close you stand to auditory people because they’re not creating pictures in their minds like visual people do.

We are all auditory, visual and kinesthetic to one degree or another but the power comes in where a person weighs heavily to one and when you begin to integrate these words into your vocabulary.

Auditory examples: Al Gore. Regardless of how much coaching he gets, or how hard he tries, his speeches are monotone. Dick Cheney. Notice how he cocks his head and also has a monotone speech pattern.

About the Author:

Kenrick Cleveland teaches strategies to earn the business of affluent prospects using persuasion. He runs public and private seminars and offers home study courses and coaching programs in persuasion strategies.