Look, Listen, Feel: Why Your Message Isn't Landing (and How to Fix It)

“You’re respecting my model of the world by talking back in my language.”

Welcome back to the NLP UK Training podcast! Hosted by NLP Trainers Steve Kay and Kali Fraser from NLPUKTraining.com – a leading provider of NLP Practitioner and Master Practitioner certification in the UK.

In this episode, Steve and Kali share one of the most immediately useful ideas in NLP: we all take in the world through our senses, but we don’t weigh them equally. Some people are predominantly visual (show me), some auditory (talk it through with me), some kinesthetic (let me get a feel for it), and some auditory-digital (give me the data, the criteria, the deal). Most of us are a blend with one or two dominant – and once you can spot which one someone’s running, you can speak their language and the message actually lands. The tell is in the words people use: look and see; I hear you and that rings a bell; it just felt right; it makes sense and meets my criteria.

The standout story is the salesperson at Ricoh who realised mid-training that he was deeply kinesthetic and had been selling photocopiers the only way he knew how: let the customer have a go, have a play. Which worked brilliantly – on the other kinesthetics. He’d been quietly missing every visual buyer who wanted to see the print quality, and every auditory-digital buyer who wanted the price, the monthly payments and the network specs. As he put it himself, he’d been missing out on a big chunk of his potential customers without ever knowing why.

Kali brings it home with her kitchen renovation – functionality and storage criteria first (that’s her AD), then hands run over every worktop and door in the showroom, handles ruled out entirely because of how they feel (pure kinesthetic), while visual Matt picked the colours and style. The upshot for anything you’re communicating, from a sales pitch to a website: build in enough of all four channels, and let people connect with the one that speaks to them.

In this episode, Steve and Kali discuss:

• The four representational systems – visual, auditory, kinesthetic and auditory-digital
• How to spot someone’s preference from the words they use (and their eye movements)
• The Ricoh salesperson unknowingly selling to only a quarter of his market
• Kali’s kitchen: criteria plus touch, a blend in action
• Why good websites deliberately serve all four channels
• Steve’s book on eye movements and language patterns – on the website and Amazon