Boothman - Convince Them in 90 Seconds or Less: Make Instant Connections That Pay Off in Business and in Life

Convince Them in 90 Seconds* *or less

Make Instant Connections That Pay Off in Business and in Life

by Nicholas Boothman

Workman Publishing, New York

Dedication

For Gracie

I want to thank Francis Xavier Muldoon for planting the seeds of this book in my head and my heart, Mike Freedman for showering them with his wisdom, Peter Workman for shedding light upon them, and Margot Herrera, my editor at Workman, for nursing them to full bloom.

Very special thanks to Derek Sweeney of the Sweeney Agency Speaker Bureau for his ceaseless support, advice, and friendship. My deep gratitude to Brian Palmer, Don Jenkins, Susan Masters, and the team at National Speakers Bureau in the U.S. for their ongoing cheerleading.

My heartfelt thanks to Mary and Lester Stanford for welcoming me to these fair shores more than three decades ago and pointing me in all the right directions.

This book is not about a new business theory; its about how you can become more successful in business and life by learning to connect with your customers, clients, colleagues, bosses, employees, and even total strangers in ninety seconds or less.

That first ninety seconds of any encounter isnt just a time for making a good first impression. In the first few moments of any meeting, you connect with a persons instincts and their human naturetheir hardwired responses. In the opening seconds, our subconscious survival instincts kick in and our mind and body decide whether to run or fight or interact, whether this person offers an opportunity or a threat, whether theyre friend or foe. This book teaches you about the snap judgments that are made in those first few instants and how you can make them work to your advantage. Once youre past those first hurdles and trust is established, you can begin connecting on a person-to-person, or (to be more precise) personality-to-personality, level. Ill show you how to figure out just who and what youre dealing with and how to connect with, as well as motivate, influence, and convince them.

Theres an order and a process to connecting with others: First you establish trust with the basic instincts, then you establish rapport with the personality. What results is a relationship, and every relationship holds almost infinite possibilities. How do I know this? From experience. Where I am today is light-years from where I started and where I expected to be when I began my life journey. And I owe much of my success to my ability to connect with people.

I spent a quarter of a century making people look good. I was an international fashion and advertising photographer, and that taught me a lot about making people look appealing. Im not talking just about shooting professional models. Businesspeople, musicians, jet pilots, and farmers all went before my lens, and I got each of them not only to put their best face forward but to feel as if theyd been confident and charismatic all their life.

Anyone you put in front of a camera has a face, a body, and an attitudewith a message to deliver. My job was to give form to that message by influencing my subjects with my face, body, attitude, voice, and words. In this book youll learn how to use all these toolsface, body, attitude, voice, along with words and language patternsto create an impression and get your message across in ninety seconds or less.

Im not going to be taking a photo of you, but I am going to change the image you have of yourself and show you how to connect with anyone and everyone in your daily lifequickly, simply, easily. No matter your line of work, you are first and foremost in the business of connecting with other peopleand those people are deciding whether thats going to happen or not, in about the same time it takes to glance at a photograph.

Early on in my photography career, as I circulated among studios and clients in London, Lisbon, Madrid, New York, Cape Town, and Toronto, I became aware that there were certain people who could get along with anyone the moment they met them. And because of this ability, they were able to strike up instant relationships, boost their business reach, and rapidly make their way up the ladder of success. But for everyone I met who could make these fast connections, there were half a dozen who couldnt. It was as if some people were always open for business, while others were closedat least thats the impression I got when I first met them. But as I got to know these closed people better, I saw that first impressions can be deceiving. Most of those who seemed so remote werent actually like that at all.

Clients, CEOs, models, hair and makeup artists, advertising executives, accountants, decision makers, jet pilots, farmers, musicianspeople who more often than not had never met beforewould come together at a shoot. Those who were open and able to connect easily and quickly with others flourished, while those who were closed and kept to themselves seemed to miss out on opportunities and lucky breaks and to get left behind. To my surprise, brains, beauty, and talent didnt seem to have anything to do with it.

Certain people seem to have an innate ability to connect with others in a warm, spontaneous way.

Observing, influencing, and portraying behavior and mood make up a large part of a fashion photographers tool kit, and after a time, I began to recognize patterns of behavior that enabled people to get alongor not get alongwith others. Some people play out patterns that work, while others are stuck in patterns that dont.

It was about this time that I became aware of the work being done by Drs. Richard Bandler and John Grinder. They had developed a technique for studying and understanding the structure behind human behavior and how we use language to program ourselves and others. It went by the unwieldy name of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, or NLP for short. NLP lets you see whats behind how we act and allows you to understand how what we say makes us and those around us behave. I soon found myself studying alongside Dr. Bandler in London and New York and earning my credentials in NLP.

Afterward it became increasingly easy for me to observe the patterns of behavior of the people I was encountering every day and figure out specifically how those with good people skills differed in their approach from those without these skills. As I became more successful, I was often invited to lecture on fashion and advertising photography at colleges and clubs. It wasnt long, though, before my talk consisted of five minutes about photography and fifty-five minutes on how to connect with the person on the other side of the lens and get their cooperation. Soon I was invited to give this same talkminus the five minutes about photographyto airline personnel, at colleges, in hospitals, and to associations. This quickly blossomed into engagements with major corporations all over the world.

As I became more involved with the business world, meeting and connecting with thousands of people, I became aware that connecting in business is different from connecting in your personal life. In your personal life you get to choose your friends, but at work you cant walk away from relationships with your colleagues, employees, superiors, and clients without walking away from your jobyou have to build and maintain those relationships every day. This book will show you everything you need to know about connecting with the people you