Pacing involves establishing rapport and making persuasive communication easier; leading involves steering your prospect toward your point of view. Pacing and leading will enable you to direct a person’s thoughts so they tend to move in your direction.
When you pace, you validate your prospects either verbally or nonverbally; that is, you are in agreement or rapport with your prospects. As a result, they feel comfortable and congruent with you. Pacing entails using statements everyone accepts as true. By doing so, you eliminate disagreement and get others to agree with what you are saying. The topic either can be proven true or is commonly accepted as true. The simple act of being agreeable rather than controversial will get others to like and respect you.
An example of a pacing question (obviously true):
Most people would love to be financially free and end their money worries forever. Once you have established rapport and harmony with your prospect, you can create expectation of agreement. You must have general agreement before you can lead your prospect to your point of view. You then begin to use statements that you want your prospect to agree with, even though they haven’t consciously and/or publicly acknowledged that they do.
An example of a leading question (you want your prospect to accept):
The answer to your financial problem is providing the right training at the right time by the right person.
So to put pacing and leading in a nutshell, pacing statements are obviously true, so the prospect has to accept their validity. Leading statements can’t necessarily be proven true, but they represent what you want your prospect to believe.
Both pacing and leading are critical to your success as a persuader. You must lead your prospect down the path that leads them to a buying decision. You are the authority and must control the pace of the conversation and lead the direction of the presentation.
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