Originally Published February 2013

One of our most valuable sales tools allows us to establish interpersonal relationships, manage conversations and broadcast our feelings to an attentive world. It was millions of years in the making and we scarcely give it a second thought. It’s our face.

What the Face Can Say

Many successful sales professionals seem to agree that the key to a solid business relationship begins with the establishment of a good personal relationship between the sales person and the decision maker. Trust must be established before product information can be shared and believed.

But how do we know we are building and managing those relationships effectively? What is the feedback mechanism that tells us we’re doing the right things? Good sales people will say they have good instincts or that they are good at reading people. Somehow they just know what their customers are thinking.

What they are likely referring to is an innate ability to observe and understand facial expressions. A skill that was buried deep in our subconscious brain for millions of years and that has been all but adapted out by generations of reliance on spoken language, written language and, as of recently, email and social media.

Prehistoric Origins

Well before the appearance of spoken language, our biological ancestors communicated with each other through body posture and facial expressions. Critical emotional states such as fear, anger, happiness and sadness were transmitted to specific muscles groups in the face where they were converted into expressions. Understanding the meaning of these expressions was very important to assessing the level of harmony—or threat—in the surrounding environment. It was a crucial skill that was passed down through generations and, according to leading researchers, is still with us today.

Dr. Paul Ekman is regarded as the world’s leading authority on facial expressions and their associated emotions. He has spent his entire career traveling the continents and comparing the way different cultures display and decode facial expressions. What he has found is that facial expressions are almost universal in nature and meaning. An expression of disgust on a face in London is readily recognizable to an observer from New Guinea (researchers and ethologists have theorized that this supports the evolutionary origin of expressions as a primal means of communicating within the species).

The Physiology of the Face

Our faces are able to display so much information about what’s going on inside us because of the way they are structured. Unlike most areas of the body, the face is innervated by both the somatic and autonomic nervous systems. Remembering our high school biology, the somatic system primarily controls motor functions under conscious control, while the autonomic system manages bodily systems without conscious input. This is why we are able to make some deliberate, exaggerated facial expressions in addition to the spontaneous ones that we don’t or, in some cases, can’t control.

The limbic system, an older part of the brain that mediates emotions, affects the autonomic nervous system in response to emotional activity. When we experience strong emotions it is this system that transduces them for display on the face.

Evolution’s Gift to the Sales Team

After millions of years of evolution we have slowly adapted to other forms of communication including speech, writing and email. But still, deep in the recesses of our primal brain, we have maintained the ability to recognize, and be sensitive to, the facial expressions of others.

When we say someone’s face just lit up, we are likely reacting to an expansion of the orbicularis oculi which tightens the skin around the eyes and allows more light to enter the eye sockets, a sign we correctly interpret as an awakening or sudden understanding. We respond to lowering brows and wrinkled corrugators as a sign of anger, and to a tightening of the lip corners as a signal of restraint. We may not be able to note these observations without training, but we are programmed to observe them and react to them.

Ekman and his team have used this research to develop highly specialized facial recognition programs that are used by government agencies and security firms around the world. But we don’t need to be a highly trained expert to make effective use of this information in the sales and marketing world. By studying the faces of those with whom we communicate, and by learning the basics of expression recognition, we can become more aware of how our words are affecting the conversation. Also, like actors, if we can learn to produce subtle, realistic expressions on demand, we might be able to make better conscious management of the conversation by offering our partners important subconscious clues to assure them of the direction the conversation is taking.

Continued research in the field of facial expression recognition may soon give us even better techniques for the industries of sales, security and any capacity where a heightened awareness of emotional disposition would be a benefit. But for now, sales teams have the opportunity to enhance their effectiveness at building relationships by using a tool that has been with us for eons.

If the eyes are the window on the soul, the face is the door.

For further reading:

Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics and Marriage by Paul Ekman (2001). New York, NY: W. W. Norton and Company, Inc.