Mark Bowden - Winning Body Language for Sales Professionals: Control the Conversation and Connect with Your Customer—without Saying a Word

Copyright 2013 by Mark Bowden. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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To Tracey for always making the impossible possible.

Mark Bowden

To my wife, Diane, and my mother, Jessica, in appreciation
of their unwavering support for everything I do.

Andrew Ford

I first met Mark Bowden in March 2008. I was introduced to him via two associates who had just met this great public speaking coach and body language expert! and thought I should meet him too. Both Mark and I were based out of Toronto, and so, curious, we arranged to meet over coffee.

You might be wondering why I say curious. I was already a very accomplished public speaker and seminar leader in the world of sales performance management. My ratings were always top of the top. I had a loyal following of fans and workshop attendees across North America and beyond. Yet two of my best supporters were adamant that I meet with this communication coach. You can imagine that something started nagging at me as to why exactly they were being so insistent.

Now, prior to venturing into my profession as a consultantlaunching Sales CoPilot in 2006 I had been (not to blow my own trumpetbut I will) a pretty successful salesperson, sales manager, and even scaled the heights to be president of a division in an enterprise software company. Great communication had gotten me some distance professionally, and it would have been fair to rate me as an above-average presenter. Indeed, some would have said a pretty damned solideven expertcommunicator. But don't take my word for it: as a young man and at my mothers encouragement, I had joined Toastmasters and successfully completed my 10-speech curriculum, to achieve what was called at the time the Competent Toastmaster certificate. Ask my mother and shell dig it out to show you! So, through upbringing, training, and extensive professional experience, I was no wilting flowercomfortable with myself and comfortable in front of others, whether one-on-one with the CEO of a multinational, speaking before a packed convention, or in front of a couple of dozen industry specialists hammering me for solutions. Then why should I need a communication coach, even one of the great ones?

When I sat down for coffee that day, it was with an air of (probably healthy) skepticism as well as an unusual edge of negativity. Youve seen it from the other side of the table, no doubt. Everything about your prospects, the way they sit, speak, and look at you when you talk says, Okay, prove it!

Then Mark calmly and confidently walked in, shook my hand and smiled, sat down next to me, and asked me some questions and everything changed.

It was one of those pivotal meetings that we all find periodically in our careers. The influential impact of Marks immediate insights and subtle coaching (there and thenin Starbucks) quickly extended past my presentation skills and into more general professional sales communication, and beyond! But I will begin here in the arena of presenting.

As a speaker I am a high-energy guy. I bring truckloads of enthusiasm and a freight train of passion to my work. I am absorbed by and immersed in the world of sales, and so I have amassed a wealth of domain expertise in system and process design, messaging, management, and coaching. When facing a group, I draw on this knowledge with warmth and enthusiasm. I am gregarious and put myself out thereyou have to, to win attention and respect. If you dont give heart and soul, then your clients wont either.

When I present, I constantly strive for an interactive environment. Just like in any sales communication, seminars work best if the content is driven by the clients needs and you travel together toward shared insights. So it was in that meeting over coffee with Mark, as he gently questioned me about my communication style and I responded, that I had a shocking insight: my passionate energy, in great part manifested through my body language, was creating a serious risk to my bigger business objectives. So much so that at times I was overwhelming my audience and thus suppressing the interactive, conversational engagement that both they and I valued so highly.