Face profiler Alan Stevens shows SMB owners how to read people faster, communicate better, and close more deals, without saying a word differently.
GROWTH PILLAR: Sales & Revenue
WHO THIS IS FOR: SMB owners / Solopreneurs / Anyone who sells, hires, or negotiates
WHAT THEY'LL GAIN: A practical framework for reading body language, microexpressions, and personality type — so every conversation moves in the right direction.
Most business owners focus on their pitch. Alan Stevens focuses on the face across the table, and that's why his clients close more deals.
Alan is the founder of The Science and Art of Reading People. In this Canada Growth Network Power Hour session, he makes a simple and uncomfortable point: every business problem — cash flow, bad hires, lost deals, broken negotiations — comes down to people. And most of us were never taught how to read them.
Alan walks through his three-step framework: read the personality, match the language, confirm with feedback. He demonstrates it live by profiling Percy, Wayne, and Bernie in real time — showing exactly how each person takes in information differently, and what happens when you communicate in a way that doesn't match how they're wired.
The moment that lands hardest: Percy says detail-oriented people are frustrated because overview thinkers never go deep enough. Alan's reply is ten words. "But the whole thing is, if you want to sell to him, he wants the fluff." That's the whole session in one line.
Key topics covered:
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Next Steps
Alan (00:05)
I'm going to go through a short presentation, but after that, I was going to do a little bit of face profiling and show you just how quickly this stuff works. And so, not just me talking at you. I'd like to get everyone involved in it as well. So I'll do that.
Well, when it comes down to it, the one of the biggest business skills we have, nobody is actually teaching us today. We're taught about all the different ways of building a business, our accounting, our different systems and everything else. But the major problem is every business problem and also every business success comes down to the people. You might be selling business to business, you might be building b doing your business, business to business.
Or business or customers, B to C or B to B. However, every transaction we do is H to H. Everything is always human to human.
Now, what do they all have in common, whether it be cash flow, whether it be sales, whether it be AI, competition, any of those things you can see on screen, it always comes down to the people that we're working with.
Where do businesses mostly invest? We worry about putting our systems together. We worry about compliance, all the other aspects, but the one thing that we f forget most of the time is understanding people.
And I I just ask you for a moment to think about this rhetorical question. And that is first of all, think about the the best employee you've ever had.
And think about the the worst employee you've ever had.
Also think about the the easiest customer you've ever dealt with. The most difficult customer you've ever dealt with. And think about the negotiations that went brilliantly and the negotiations you'd love to do again because they went the wrong way. You'd like to improve on them.
So this is the biggest issue, and that and imagine if in all those cases you were able to build successful recruitment, you have happier customers, successful negotiations, stronger relationships, you're able to your staff working together and productive meetings all the way through. And all of that comes down to be the people itself, whether it be stronger decisions, strategic communications you're looking for, effective relationships, clear understanding.
or consistent wins or you just want unity within your family. Everything comes down to the people. And people give away sort more information than we're aware of. Eye contact. Now even with wearing a mask. The facial expressions, the body posture, hand gestures, listening, confidence, hesitations and all of those things.
It comes down to if we were doing business, this particular example here, at the top, we need to be able to connect with people. That's the first priority. Once we're able to connect with them, we're able to engage them. And when we engage them, then we can influence them. So this is where we build relationships at the top. We transition through to where we can then do our sales and marketing. Unless we can build a connection with people, we never get the opportunity to be able to show them our products and services.
When people say to me, you know, what's the most important thing, whether it's your products or your services? I actually ask that question often, and people will say you used to say it was the products and services. Then they got wise and said, No, it's the relationships. But the true question should have been, which is the priority? Because they're all equally important. If you don't build relationships, you're not going to show how good your products and services are. So the relationship's got to come first. And the way I do that.
Is through being able to read somebody, knowing their personality, then knowing how to communicate with them in the way that they need to be communicated with, and then being able to confirm that I've read them right. And this is one of the things I'll show you in a few moments, and that when we look at somebody, we understand their personality. But I never assume that I got it right. It has to be proven. We have to test it and make sure. And this is where the communication side comes in, and then the confirmation. If I were to do that.
We can build rapport faster. We also have a stronger relationship. And we also then build greater trust with the person. At that point, now we've got the strong collaboration. We can show have a focused outcome on what we want to put to them. We can really focus on at that point. We get sustained relationships, we do that, and that we're doing it the most time efficient way.
If we're able to read another person, speak to them in the way that they need to be spoken to. We give them the amount of information that they need. The presentation that we do will take the length of time it needs to take based on them. If you're able to connect with them and give find out exactly what it is that they need, then you'll get people buying from you. I've got a mate of mine who always says that the ATM equals the ETM. So your money machine, the bank.
relies on the emotional outcome that you're able to deliver that they're after, the time that you save, the amount of money that they make or money they save. But then on top of that, to do that, we need to be able to understand the problem they have. So we've got to become a problem solver. And if we do that, then we remove their worry and stress. And that's what it always comes down to. If we do that, we're not selling. The other person is buying.
They will buy from us, they will ask us to actually do the business with them. Because when they see their problems and everything all solved, that's when the solution comes into place for them. And this is the anybody who tells me that if they don't like selling, well, if you become a problem solver, you'd have a it's not that you have a right to sell to them, you have an obligation to sell to them. Because if you're fixing their problems, it comes down to
If somebody says to me, I don't like selling, I go, right, are you a good person? They go, Yes. I go, your products and services, will that help the other person solve a problem they have? They go, yes. And I said, and you don't like selling. Then either you're telling me a fib that you're not actually a good person, or your products and services won't help them. Because if they will, then you have an obligation to sell to them. You present in a way in which they will then buy from you. So this is where it all comes in. But the next point is.
The way I do that is through the facial features. Now that may sound a little bit woo-woo, but I'll explain how that works. I'll actually give you a demonstration as soon as I get through this. The facial features, it'll tell me the emotions, how they will react to different situations, how they like to express themselves, and also their thinking style, how they take information in. I've already worked out how Percy takes his information in pretty damn quickly.
And the way you can respond back to people as well and pull ideas and concepts together extremely fast. And with someone like me who's a little bit more sequential in the way I think, he may be a bit too fast for me. Or if he bounces around, I may lose context of where I am. So we'll look at some of the issues that we've had and why we've had some of those deals that have gone the wrong way in the past. With the other person, you've done a great presentation, but the other person just hasn't got it.
The then we got the language. So once we know the personality, then we know what words and that to use, the amount of detail, the order in which we deliver it and the style as well, whether it's more
Alan (06:28)
formal more laid back.
Alan (06:29)
Because I can also, yeah, looking around the screen, all three of you have got dry wit So I know that anything I throw at you, it's going to be able to throw it back at me as well. So conversation gonna be fairly lighthearted. Once we got the language right, then well, how do we know whether we read them right? Well we're gonna listen to well, it's in our tone of delivery as well, but it's also in their paralanguage. The way they ask questions, the way they respond, the intensity of the of their focus on what we're talking about.
And we measure that by the response of their microexpressions body language. Microexpressions, little twitches on the face that give away so much information. In this particular area, and with the paral language, they say that we take in about 2 million bits of information every second, but we process about 134 bits. There's one fifteen thousandth of the information we take in, but it's where we focus.
And if we're just focusing on what they're saying and not realizing what they're truly meaning, and the body language and expressions will give that information to us, that's where we have the problem. And so
Now, as you've noticed, that's a very quick presentation. I like to get that out of the way as quickly as possible because when it comes down to it, it's a conversation that we have with somebody that's most important. Now all
Alan (07:43)
of you.
Alan (07:44)
for people who like to make very quick decisions. So is it okay with you guys if I
talk about some of the traits I can see in your faces. Because end of the day, I'll always say to somebody and that my mother used to say to me, Alan, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. I can talk about how great this stuff is and how it works and everything else.
But until you apply it yourself, you never know. And so for the people who are watching this, I want them to be able to hear your feedback as well. But looking at Percy, I know that first of all, he needs to analyze things before he makes a decision. Whereas in Wayne's case, he just likes the overview first of all. If he's interested in that, then he'll ask more questions. So, Percy, if you were talking to Wayne and you just spoke in the way that you like to be spoken to.
And that's the way we normally communicate. We think that everybody is like us. So we communicate in one way. And if it doesn't match the other person, we're going to lose them. So Percy may go into, and Bernie will do the same thing, we'll go into a lot of information. And Wayne's already decided he'll be giving yeses, he'll be trying to finish your sentences off and he'll be trying to move you on. You're
Bernie (08:44)
Well that's
Alan (08:45)
right, Wayne?
Bernie (08:45)
that yeah.
Percy (08:46)
That's correct.
Alan (08:49)
See, this is how beautiful beautifully it works, because at the end of the day, making that connection with somebody. So with Wayne, first, if you're talking to Wayne, it'd be a case of look, Wayne, there's a lot of information here. And you'll go, my god, no. Then you say, But before I get right into all of that, how about I just give you the overview? And from the overview, you ask the questions that you need to ask. But if there's something there that you haven't asked that I think you need to know, is it all right if I tell you that then Wayne?
Bernie (09:13)
That would work.
Alan (09:14)
And Wayne says, yeah, so you give the overview, asking these questions, he'll ask the questions, then you can turn around and go, okay, now you've asked the questions. This is something you may have missed that I think you need to know. Is it all right if I tell you that now? I usually say to somebody, this is the boring bit. Is that okay? And I usually get, well, same expression I've just got from Wayne then. A bit of a giggle and yeah, okay. Because as soon as I said I'm going to give you the overview and you ask all the questions you want to ask, he's now put at ease because he knows that he's going to be able to control this.
It's going to be a discussion. You're going to be talking with him, not at him. Right. Now in Wayne's case, if he's trying to tell you something, he'll give you the overview. And because you need more information, Wayne, and also Bernie, you're likely to then turn around and keep trying to drag him back to get more information. So he'd say something similar in the fact of, look, there's a lot of information here, but so I don't forget any of it.
I will just want to give you the overview and then you can ask all the questions. We'll spend all day here if you like. He gives the overview. If you kept on trying to interrupt, he can he's got a verbal contract with you. He can then say, Well, look, as I said before, I don't want to forget any of this. That's important to me. It's got to important to you as well, Percy. Is that right? And you say yes, he's got you back on track again. And so he can then control to make sure that he gives you the information. But
Because you now can ask all the questions you want to ask, he's got all the time in the you've got all the time in the world to get those questions when he's then knows that if he answers the questions, there's more chance than not that you're going to turn around and say, Okay, let's do business.
Bernie (10:38)
Yeah.
Percy (10:39)
A and I've I've dealt with other people who are who are like Wayne. The real challenge is is they never want to get to the detail that I want to get to. It's always fluff.
Alan (10:47)
But the whole thing is, if you want to sell to him, he wants the fluff.