Free report: how to write effective emails

Here’s a report I recently wrote about how to write professional emails that get the results you want.

I hope you find it useful.

Special Report–Writing Emails that Get Results

Use “mode matching” to connect with people

People tend to experience the world primarily through one of the five senses: sight, sound, touch, smell or taste. People also tend to communicate using the sense they’re most comfortable with. Knowing which sense most resonates with someone can greatly enhance your ability to connect with that person.

Visual people: “I see what you mean.”

Auditory people: “Sounds good to me.”

Get into the habit of listening for these types of clues in your conversations, to determine how the people you speak with regularly experience their world. Using the same sense they do—called mode matching—will build a deeper connection and get your messages across more clearly.

Talking with a visual person:

When someone says, “Let me show you what I think we should do…”

Your answer should be something like, “Looks good to me,” or, “We definitely see eye-to-eye on this.”

Talking with a tactile (touch-oriented) person:

If someone says, “I can’t seem to put my finger on the problem…”

You might answer, “Let’s lay it out again and see if we can get our arms around it.”

When you mode match, you make the conversation richer and more memorable for the other person, because you’re speaking in a vocabulary comfortable to them. They’ll probably have no idea why they feel the connection, but the conversation will go much more smoothly.

The opposite is also true: When you don’t mode match, you can leave the other person feeling frustrated, or like they’re not being understood—and you’ll have a much harder time getting your own message across.

Down a bunny slope?

On a conference call today, one of the participants said she was worried we were “going down a bunny slope.”

She meant going down a rabbit hole, meaning getting off topic. She was right; we were getting sidetracked from our call’s main focus.

But here’s reason five gazillion to watch your cliches and corporate-speak. If you get the phrase wrong… youch. “Bunny slope?” Sure hope I managed to hit the mute button before I started belly laughing.