Category Archives: Conversation Skills

How to get Automatic Agreement in Any Situation

How would you like to easily and effortlessly create instant agreement  with anybody, anywhere, anytime? What happens when you imagine being able to walk up to a complete stranger and get them to say “yes.. yes.. yes..” and hang on your every word? If you are in sales, think of the power of increasing your person to persons sales skills, your telephone sales skills, and you presentation skills.  Is this something you’d like to learn? Is this something you’d like to be able to use at will to quickly and naturally increase your income, and not only make friends easily, but to truly develop lasting relationships?

Well it’s simple to learn, easy to remember, and so natural to use, that when you are able to take this skill that you’ve likely already been using, and use it consciously, you will be amazed at how incredibly effective it is.

Sales professionals of all kinds, door to door, negotiators, telephone sales, refer to this as the “Yes set.” Linguistically, it is commonly called “Tag Questions.”  This is how they work. After you make a statement, they invite the person you are speaking with to almost automatically, without even thinking, agree with you.

Here’s how to make them. Take any statement. Let’s try “It’s raining.”  The first part is “It’s,” which is a contraction of “It is.”  All you do is reverse it, by making it negative. “It is” becomes “It is not”. Then you change the statement, “It is not,” into a question. “Is it not?” And there you have it. Then, when you add it on to your statement, it becomes “It’s raining, is it not?” or “It’s raining, isn’t it?”

Let’s look at some more examples.

Today is sunny, isn’t it?

It sure was cold yesterday, wasn’t it?

You like spaghetti, don’t you? (The ‘do’, in ‘you do like spaghetti’ is usually left out, but you can use it anyways.)

They sure are cute, aren’t they?

This sure is a great blog, isn’t it?

You sure are going to tell are your friends about this site, aren’t you?

Be sure when you say the “question” part, your voice goes down, like you are making a statement. You don’t want to sound unsure of youself, do you?

So, how do you use this? Whenever you want somebody to automatically say “yes.”

You like it when people say yes to you, don’t you? And you can already think of many ways that you can start to use this technique every day, can’t you? And if you imagine now, what it will be like when you develop the confidence that naturally comes from getting quick and easy agreement from people, you really do realize how much easier it will be to make life fun, don’t you?

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Instant Conversation Skills

Who is that over there?  Wow. They look kind of interesting. Should you go talk to them? What if they don’t like me? What if I don’t know what to say?

Have you ever had these thoughts? Evil blobs of mind poison that instantly crippled any short lived hopes you’d had of maybe being able to make a friend?

Well, you are in luck, because I am going to not only show you a foolproof way to start a conversation with a complete stranger, but how you can make them do all the talking, and end up thinking you are the stunning conversationalist.  Ready? Let’s go.

You will need three basic tools.

1) How to form a tag question.

2) How to ask interesting, open ended follow up questions.

3) Basic body language reading skills.

First thing you need to do is approach casually, and stand a few yards from them for a couple of minutes.  Just find any old excuse to go hang out near their “space.” While you are standing there, notice something interesting about the environment. The trees, the weather, anything that makes you think, just a little bit, wow, cool. Let’s say you see a cool leaf on a tree. (This is just an example, if there are no trees in your situation, this probably won’t work out so well). Look at the leaf, imagine out how cool it is. Try and think of all the stuff that’s happened since the big bang, and here this leaf is right here, being all leafy.

Now you make your move. Bust out your brilliant tag question.

“Wow, that is a really cool leaf, isn’t it?”

Be sure when you say the “isn’t it” part, you don’t make it sound like a question. Make it sound like a statement. And smile. Next come your wicked body language skills. If the person responds with “um, yea” and looks like he or she just found a cockroach in their kool aid, then move on, the conversation is over. If they look at the leaf, and then at you, you’re in. Bonus points if they match your smile.

Next you ask your open ended question. About anything that’s easy to talk about, the surroundings, party, bar, study session, whatever.

“So what do you think about….” and insert any old topic. Then as he or she is speaking, watch their face for signs of life.  Whatever they say when their face lights up, grab it.

Watch them talk, watch their face, and ask them for more information about things they seem happy about. Nothing too personal. Some good questions are:

How do you feel about..

What do you like about…

What is your favorite part about…

Just pick out a few words here and there, follow up on them while you speak, and they will think you are the greatest conversationalist since Dale Carnegie. Make sure to throw your name out in there someplace, don’t wait for them to ask. They’re probably nervous. It’s not everyday people get approached by a wicked word master like you!

Make sure to come back often, and tell your friends, as I will be posting several “How To..” articles that can easily improve your life in many ways.

Instant Charisma

How would you like to be able to develop such powerful charisma that you naturally and automatically turn people’s heads when you walk into a room? How good would it feel to realize that people can’t wait to see you, talk to you, just hang around you? What happens when you imagine, now, all the reasons why having such incredible charisma can easily lead you to not only be able to achieve your goals more quickly, but almost unconsciously enlist the support of others in doing so?

Yea, yea, I know. Just about now, you’re probably wondering what it is that I might be trying to sell you. Or perhaps your are hoping that I have something to sell, so you can buy it, and immediately use it to create such powerfully wonderful feelings that you can’t help but to imagine how fantastic the world will change once you realize these largely overlooked truths.

Well, I have good news, and I have good news, depending on how you look at it. (Yea, I know, that doesn’t make any sense).

The first thing you might want to do is take a deep breath. Slowly. And another. And one more. Good. Now ask yourself.  What do I want? Got it? Ok. Now ask yourself again, what is important about that? Wait, it’ll come. Got it? Good.  Now one more time. Relax, no hurry. Take a deep breath if you need it. Ok. Ready? Ask yourself one more time, what is important about that?  These are called your values. And guess what, pretty much everbody can see the same values inside. Love. Respect. Safety. Recognition for a job well done. Acceptance. Peace.

And since you can now fully understand not only what other people want, but realize that it’s the same thing that you do, how many ways do you think you might look at people differently now? When you know, really know, that deep down, despite all of our differences, we share much more that we are even capable of imagining. And when you breath into that perspective, and look at people from that source of wisdom, what happens when you become aware that as you discover similarities in strangers that you’d never even noticed before, you will automatically be able to share an unconcious bond that can cut through all mistakenly percieved differences?

Not only will people wonder just exactly why you stand out, if only a little bit, but they will feel compelled to feel a desire to start a conversation with you just to see what you are all about.

So I’ll leave the choice up to you. Will you consciously take on this new perspective, and see how many ways you will discover it already making your life easier and smoother, or will you just stand back, and simply notice the obvious results?

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Pools of Magic

So my plane, or rather the plane I was riding in, was coming down for what I hoped was going to be a routine landing.  I had never flown in a plane this small, and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t just a tad bit nervous. It was only a 8 seater, and I happened to be the last aboard, so I was sitting up front, next to the pilot. While it was really exciting while we were flying above the island.  Gliding around clouds. Able to look down and see the water as it looks really different from this angle. You can see all the way through. 

Kind of like when you fly on a commerical airline. Like when you are flying over a city, the residential part. And you can look down, and see how everything is really well organized. Especially if you compare the experience you can remember, now, of when you drove to your friends house for the first time and when you looked around. Everything seemed strange and out of place. Were you supposed to turn right at the gas station, or left? Everything seemed so difficult back before they were putting talking GPS maps in all the cars. How were we able to find your way around?

Another thing I think is really cool when you fly on a commerical plane, at least when you remeber to ask for  window seat. It sometimes is frustrating when you forget to ask for what you want, you know? But the interesting thing to me is how many people have swimming pools. When you look down, they are obvious. Which is another wierd thing. If you are still confused, and driving around looking for your friends house (assuming you took the right turn back at the gas station), you can’t tell who has a pool, and who doesn’t. You can’t even tell who has lawn furniture. But from a different perspective, things you wouldn’t have noticed before turn into things that you can’t miss.

It’s like when you meet somebody for the first time.  You can’t help but to look at the outside. Thier clothes, their speech patterns, they way they gesture with their hands.  I had a friend who told me that it was really important to keep an open mind when meeting people. She always said that although it’s really easy to judge by looks, its much more useful, if you want to be resourceful to kind of withhold judgement for a while. Give the person time to get comfortable, you know, like when you are able to express yourself without worrying about what other people think. She said that this was the best way. If you do this, you can really develop good relationships with people.  And that is important, right?

Of course the plane landed safely, and we all got off, and unpacked our bags. I had probably the most enlightening vacations of my life. At least up until now. How about you? What insights did you discover on the most enlightening vacation of your life?

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Grazing Cows or Gazing Anxiety

I was getting more and more worried. Stress was increasing with every 18 wheeler that blew past my 4 cylinder rice burner, going a bit more slowly than I should have been. HONK! Sorry, I mumble under my breath. I should see the turnoff by now, where is it? I check my watch. Still ten minutes. Look around. No turnoff. What if I missed it? I don’t know where the next one is. I’m in the middle of about a million rolling hills populated by grazing cows. They sure don’t seem stressed. Don’t they know what they’re in for? I try to peek up ahead above the speeding traffic. Is that a turn off up there? Could that be me?

Not completely unlike when I was sitting across from Cheryl. Nervous. Shaky. Eyes briefly making contact then quickly escaping into the many available distractions around us.

“So, uh, what do you like to do?”

“Um, play tennis, and uh,” deep breath, “uh, you, know, stuff.”

“Wow. That sounds cool.”

I don’t remember leaving my brain at home. I was able to talk to her ok over the phone. Can’t the waiter come any quicker? Maybe I can spend an hour pretending to thoughtfully think of something interesting, while I’m looking at the menu, or maybe he will spill something on me so I can think of a reason to bail out. It’s not like this is my first time. Why is asking one person a simple question seem so much more difficult than asking somebody else the exact same thing? It works the same way, right? Brain makes thought, thought goes to vocal cords, mouth and lips and tongue move, sound comes out. It’s not like I’m going to do something different this time, am I?

My friend never has this problem. Of course he is a firefighter, and everybody knows that firefighters attract girls like Bill Gates can attract money. He was telling me the other day about this training exercise, where they have this old building set up, and they practice going in and putting out the fire. And I asked him, “why don’t you practice on different buildings?” He told me that most buildings basically have the same structure. They might look different on the outside, but on the inside they are similar enough. And when you train frequently, you start to to realize that what something looks like on the outside doesn’t really matter. All you really need to do is be able to notice the structure. And sometimes I ask  him why he doesn’t always have girls surrounding him. He told me he was tired of having the same conversations over and over and over.  He says that he learned that when you stay with something long enough, you really start to notice the small things that make you realize that this person stands out from the rest.

So anyways, after we ordered, it got a bit easier to talk, because she asked me if I was as nervous as she was. When I gladly said yes, that kind of broke the ice a little bit. I guess we both agreed on some level that it’s ok to embrace being nervous. We actually ended up not having that much in common, but it was an enjoyable conversation anyhow. And after I arrived at my destination on time, (actually five minutes early, because I hit all the green lights after I realized the exit was indeed mine) I was able to have another enjoyable chit chat with the suprisingly cute girl that was working there.

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