Category Archives: Persuasion

Beware The Dangers of Safety

Unexpected Chains Of Events

The other day I had one of those nights where things end up much different than you planned. I figured it be a night when you start off thinking you are going to go out, grab a bite to eat, maybe watch a few play of the game on TV at your local sports bar over a beer or two and call it a night. Sometimes, despite not having any plans on a Saturday, it still feels good to hit the sack early on Friday.

But, thirteen hours after my night had started, things didn’t look like they were going to slow up any bit. In fact, they seemed like they were just getting started.

I used to work with this guy that kept a religious schedule when it came to sleeping. He would wake up early during the weekday, and he was a subscriber to the idea of never sleeping in, even one minute later than normal, on the weekends. He thought that would completely ruin his sleep pattern, and make it much more difficult to “catch up” if he cheated.

I suppose that makes sense, but all that willpower you can seemingly muster every morning when the alarm goes off just isn’t there on a Saturday. I mean what’s wrong with hitting the snooze a few times?

Keeping a strict, routine, predictable schedule is important to a lot of people. I know folks who have gone to the same restaurant for years and only order on or two things. To them ordering even a different dessert is a stretch. There is plenty of marketing data that clearly indicates, as we get older, they are much less flexible in their thinking. For companies that rely on brand loyalty, that is a good thing.

But for new companies, or companies that are trying to launch a new product that is targeted toward an older market, this can be quite a tough sell. The trick is to make it seem like by choosing the new product, they will be holding fast to their old beliefs and habits.

This isn’t as hard as it seems at first, as it all gets back to your ability to leverage criteria. Many people have a criterion of familiarity. All you need to do is convince them of all the things about this new product that they are already familiar with, and it will make the decision to switch products, or start using a new product that much easier.

There has been a lot of research done that whatever it is that we value in any particular thing is not only largely subjective, but internally generated as well. The actual object, obviously, is not internally generated, but the feelings and ideas and beliefs we have about the object are. Recent studies have shown brain scans which suggest that up to 40% of ALL of our perceptions of the world are internally generated. That is we perceive something with one or more of our senses, and our brains only detect enough of whatever it is to fire off an internal memory of that particular object. Then the internal memory is referenced as much as possible. Just like a huge memory cache, in order to save on neural processing speed.

We take our brains for granted, but twenty percent of our energy goes to keeping our brains active. That’s a lot of energy, so it makes sense to have some kind of built in system to maximize its efficiency.

So if you’d like to convince somebody that something that they’ve never seen before is actually quite familiar to them, you just need to figure out what their criteria are for that particular thing. It’s just matter of developing enough rapport to be able to elicit sufficient information regarding that internal representation, of whatever it is, and then showing them that the new object fits that representation just as well, or even better, than the old one.

When I used to sell cars, I was amazed at how well some of the salespeople would “switch” customers from the car they thought they wanted, to one that was available. And it wasn’t any kind of strong-arm persuasion tactic. I sat in, as a trainee, on some of these conversations between salesperson and customer. It was almost as if the salesperson was simply helping the customer come to the conclusion that the other car (the one they were “switched” to) was actually a much better choice for them. And they always allowed the customer to believe that it was all their decision, and the salesperson was just there to help them fill out the paperwork.

Personally, though, no matter how much I intellectually know that waking up at the same time every day makes much more sense, I still have developed sufficient willpower to go to sleep at the same time on a Friday night, let alone wake up at the same time on Saturday. Maybe I just need to persuade myself that waking up early on Saturday fulfills the same criteria as staying up late on Friday, so I can get some better sleep on the weekends.

But by the time Saturday afternoon rolled around, and I realized that I was going on more than twenty four hours without any sleep, the fact we were all at the amusement park with those foreign exchange students let met to pretty much give up on anything turning out normal that weekend. My two drinks and make it an early night had gone down in serious flames, and I had given in to the energy of the moment. And what happened after that was what really made me realize something needed to be done.

But that is for another story.

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Success with NLP

Success with NLP

Virus Of The Mind

Real or Staged?

A few days ago I was at this new bakery downtown. They had hired one of those guys dressed like a clown to stand in front and spin one of those signs around, to try and get traffic to come inside. It had caused quite a commotion, and there were plenty of people there for the grand opening. They had been advertising heavily beforehand, so they were going for a big splash on the first day rather than a slow spread through word of mouth.

I suppose that the slow spread through word of mouth marketing approach is more of a organic method, meaning they don’t really expect to have people running around town talking about their shop, it just kind of happens that way. Depending on word of mouth is a tricky marketing ploy, and I’m sure not too many small businesses rely on it exclusively.

There’s always those “engineered” word of mouth marketing plans, usually for movies, but sometimes for other things, although for movies they are primarily done on the Internet, and are referred to as “viral” marketing. A couple that stand out in my mind are “The Blair Witch Project,” and “Cloverfield.”

“Blair Witch,” although they did have several trailers in the theaters, had quite a big online presence. And “Cloverfield” took it a step further, going so far as to have fictitious myspace and facebook pages for the characters in the movie.

Another example of a “viral” marketing plan is that several million times viewed video “Where the Hell is Matt?” Now before I go bursting your bubble, let me say that the following is only my opinion, I have absolutely no inside information on the subject. Perhaps this has already been debunked in other sources, as the video is a few years old, but let allow me to share my opinion on the subject, despite how obvious it may seem.

The video is presented as a naturally occurring journey by this guy “Matt,” and whoever went along with him to hold the camera. It starts out with him giving directions to some “random” stranger to hold the camera in a specific spot, and then various clips are edited together, and whoever is holding the camera in the various spots is not clearly defined.

In many of the spots, it’s quite obvious it took some hiking to get there, and even in one place he’s underwater. So at the very least he had to enlist the support of a cameraman for more than just a few minutes.

There has been a few theories floated out there that the video is fake, and there are various special effects employed to make it appear he is in place where he really isn’t. While I don’t doubt that this “Matt” character actually went to all these places, I do doubt that it was as spontaneous as we are led to believe. I believe to be just as engineered and corporate financed as any viral movie marketing effort.

I believe this for a couple of reasons. The first is that international travel is not cheap, especially if you are winging it as you go along. It’s one thing to show up in a country and kind of make your way around, deciding each day where to go, but it’s quite different to travel from country to country in the same manner.

For one thing, not too many countries allow for a “landing visa.” This is where all you do is show up, and they stamp your passport with a 30-day visitors visa. Many countries require that you get a visa prior to visiting the country, and this requires a visit to that particular countries consulate, and in many cases an extensive itinerary, and proof of sufficient funds, as well as an air ticket leaving the country. You can’t just hitchhike down to the airport and buy a one-way ticket to some African country, for example. Before selling you a ticket, they’ll ask for to see your passport and visa.

So any trip to as many countries that were visited in that short video would require a huge amount of planning, and a lot of upfront cash to pay for all the airline tickets up front.

The story presented in the video, or about the video was some guy got laid off, had some cash, and decided to travel.

Of course, I could be totally wrong, but having been to a few countries, it’s been my experience that it requires a little bit more effort and planning than just hopping on a plane to some random destination. At the very least I believe that video was some kind of viral marketing effort backed by a big company with big money. For what reason, I have no idea. There is a blurb at the end of the video indicating some kind of sponsorship, but I’m not sure what that actually indicates.

My point in all of this is that word of mouth advertising is a powerful way to spread he word of any business, as it is much more believable and reliable than paid advertising. When we see a paid advertisement, we know they have a stake in whatever they are advertising. But when somebody that we know, or somebody that we suspect has nothing to gain by convincing us to buy some product or service, we are much more likely to believe them.

Because most successful word of mouth advertising plans are completely spontaneous and organic, it can be hard to consciously duplicate them. If you look at some popular Internet “memes” (Corey’s glasses, Chocolate Rain, Star Wars kid, etc.) which have spread over the past years, they don’t have much in common. People have tried to reverse engineer them, and then build new ones, but only with varying and seemingly random degrees of success. Even recent successful memes owe their success in large part to big media corporations picking them up and propagating them.

Even political campaigns, which try very hard to have a “grass roots” feel to them, are completely planned and engineered.

One thing is certain, thought, there are certain “memes” which spread much quicker and more readily than others, and some of the ones that have done so have literally changed the course of human history. Communism is one example. The idea was developed by some nobody in some small library, and then later propagated by a couple of opportunist politicians, and it literally changed the face of Europe within a few decades.

I suppose if it were possible to consistently engineer successful meme after successful meme, that would mean that human nature was completely predictable, and we would be at the mercy of marketers and social engineers who wanted nothing more to make us into obedient servants, like in “The Matrix.”

Luckily, human nature is not so predictable, and those that would control us aren’t always successful in their efforts. So long as videos of laughing babies and sneezing pandas spread around the world and are viewed by millions and millions of people, the human race is safe from exploiting itself into obedient slavery.

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Powerful Metaphysics

Powerful Metaphysics

How To Unleash Your Powerful Potential

Why You Should Study NLP

Have you ever been window-shopping, and maybe decided to venture into a store to get a better look, and one thing led to another and you ended up buying something that you hadn’t set out to buy that day? Or maybe you were kind of in the market for something, like maybe a TV or something, and weren’t quite ready to make a purchase, but you came across a salesperson that somehow seemed to make buying a TV that day the most obvious choice in the world?

We’ve all had the experience of being hounded by a salesperson that just wouldn’t take no for an answer, and know what it feels like to be on the receiving end of hard sell after hard sell. You know a salesperson is desperate for a sale when they relentlessly follow you around despite your clear indications for them to take a hike.

So what’s the difference? Why does on salesperson seem to be helpful, and when you do make the decision to buy something, you feel grateful and want to tell your friends about him or her, while other sales people, they just emit an aura of desperation that triggers every single one of your warning signals?

Or more importantly, if you are trying to persuade somebody, whether it is in direct sales, marketing, or other form of persuasion, how do you be the first salesperson and not the second one?

Most people will tell you that being able to sell things is a natural gift that you either have it, or you don’t. Like a guy being a “natural” with women, wherever he goes, women follow. And no matter how hard you try to emulate him, you just can’t figure it out.

Part of the problem with so-called “naturals” is that they themselves have no idea how they do what they do. Unless they’ve gained their skills through long concentrated practice, they likely have no clue what makes them such a persuasive and charismatic salesperson. And unfortunately, many books on sales are written by these “naturals” and aren’t all that helpful, as they don’t really know how to describe what they are doing in a way that makes it easily repeatable by others.

They may say things like “respect the client,” “develop rapport,” “be sincere,” but these are particularly vague. How exactly do you “respect the client?” What is the best way to “develop rapport?” if you ask ten different successful salespeople these questions, you’ll likely get ten very different answers, which will likely be just as vague and unhelpful.

Enter NLP.

NLP, or neurolinguistic programming was developed as a powerful modeling tool to figure out exactly what these “naturals” were doing that made them “naturals.” It all started with therapists. Most people, when they think of therapy, they imagine going to a shrink every week for many years, and talking endlessly about childhood problems and parental issues (like Tony Soprano). But when NLP was first developed, they studied a few therapists that could “fix” people in just a few sessions.

Somebody would have this deep emotional problem, they’d go see one of these “naturals” and in a couple of weeks, through three or four sessions, their problem would be completely obliterated. And these weren’t your basic problems like not being able to smile at a pretty girl, or ask your boss for a raise. These were deep emotional problems that had to do with sexual abuse, alcoholism, and other serious relationship issues.

So how did they do it? The interesting thing is when one of the co-founders of NLP, Richard Bandler, showed one of these therapists her specific language patterns, she was surprised. She herself didn’t even know that was how she was doing it. Bandler basically showed her that she was using the same language structure over and over again with her clients, and it was creating magical results. Much better than that stereotypical image of a useless psychiatrist who just sits there and says, “how do you feel about that? What do you think that means?” over and over again.

Through the creation of NLP, people were suddenly able to model excellence in human behavior and human communication. By asking the right questions, and paying attention to the specifics of the communication structure, they were able to figure out exactly how those “naturals” were doing what they were doing.

And a major part of their “natural” abilities was a strong belief about their capabilities. This went far beyond affirmations in the mirror every morning. This was a deep, powerful subconscious belief that they totally capable of doing what they were setting out to do, whether it be curing a child of his bedwetting, or selling a fifty thousand dollar car to somebody who was merely “looking around.”

There were subsequently several method and procedures developed in NLP to install these beliefs in people, or for people to install them in themselves. It became possible to become a natural without experiencing the random childhood that produced a natural salesperson or therapist. As Richard Bandler put it, with NLP, it’s never too late to have a happy childhood.

There is a huge amount of free NLP information available on the web, and there are several great sources of self study NLP courses, as well as NLP based self development products. With NLP, there really isn’t any reason why you can’t be a natural in your chosen field.

One powerful program that many people have been having massive results with is success with NLP. If you check out this website, you’ll find that this is just one of the many programs that uses NLP to help you become successful in any field you choose.

Success with NLP

Success with NLP

One thing about studying NLP is that it is by no means a “quick fix.” Many of our beliefs that we’ve been carrying around for a while can take some effort to re engineer, but once you do, you’ll be amazed at how much you can accomplish in life. Take a look at success with NLP and see for yourself.

Many people discover that once they start down the path of self-development with NLP, they realize that the sky really is the limit, and studying and mastering NLP becomes an obviously essential skill of life.

Social Manipulation Or Shrewd Marketing?

Beware The Door Buster

I was waiting in line down at this new electronics shop last weekend. They had this massive grand opening, and they were going to give away this really cool flat screen TV along with a home theater system. They said they’d give out free raffle tickets to the first five hundred people that showed up, and then they’d draw later on in the afternoon to see who won. The catch, of course, was you had to be there to claim your prize. And since they gave out the free raffle tickets at eight o clock in the morning, they were assured that five hundred people would not only likely buy something that morning, but make plans to come back later. Marketing plans like this are fairly obvious. Give somebody a gimmick to get them in the door, and then do your best to up sell them while they are there.

Car dealerships are notorious for doing this. They’ll run an add in the paper for a certain make and model for a ridiculously low price. Of course they’ll say in the small print that there is only one particular car at that price, you can tell as they list the VIN, or Vehicle Identification Number of the car in question. Sometimes they’ll have three or four at that price. People see the ad, and mistakenly believe (to the hopes of the dealer) that all of the cars are at that price.
Then when they show up, they’re told they all sold out. When that happens, the dealership has two powerful tools of influence naturally working in their favor.

The first is something called “Commitment and Consistency,” as pointed out in the often referenced “Influence, Science and Practice,” by Robert Cialdini. When people make a public commitment, they are much easier to be persuaded to do something that is along the lines of that commitment. Political campaigners know this. When they phone people the week before an election and ask them if they are going go out and vote, most people naturally say yes. Since they’ve made a public commitment, even to a complete stranger over the phone, they are much more likely to vote than the average citizen who hasn’t made such a commitment.

By going to the car dealership in search of a good deal on a car, you make a certain commitment. It’s not like the car salesman pulled you in cold off the street.

Another powerful factor they have working for them in this case is social proof. As much as we’d like to think otherwise, we humans are pack animals and are extremely susceptible to crowd behavior. We love to follow fashions, stick to the status quo (unless you are a singing basketball player), and follow the crowd. So when you show up, and the car you wanted is “all sold out (all one of them),” it gives the impression that many people are after the same car, which makes it more desirable.

So by putting those cheesy ads in the paper, and getting you to make a trip to the dealership, just by showing up you have two powerful forces of social influence guiding you to buy a new car.

It’s no wonder that stores use the same tactics. They work, and they work beautifully. Stores use them so much because they work so well. All those incredibly insane “door busters” that you see the day after Thanksgiving, or black Friday, are carefully designed instruments of social manipulation. In case you are unaware, the reason it’s called “Black Friday” is in reference to the black ink bookkeepers use when they are making a profit. In this case black is very good.

To make matters worse, sometime they’ll have free giveaways, but the “winner” is actually a ringer. A plant that works for the store. Even though this is clearly immoral and unethical, it’s pretty hard to uncover and prosecute. The only danger lies in a store being found out, and it’s business getting a bad reputation. Even when people have a suspicion that the winner may indeed be a “ringer,” they still line up, “just in case.” We humans can be terribly easy to manipulate sometimes.

If you can figure out a way to get the free stuff, without giving in to the temptation to buy whatever they convincing you to buy through their masterful social engineering, so much the better.

One thing I usually do in a case like the free TV giveaway is only take five dollars with me, and leave all my credit cards at home. That way even I’m persuaded by the slickest of salesman, I won’t be able to buy anything. Hopefully by the time I race home to get my credit card, I’ll stop and wonder if I really do need that beef jerky machine. It’s not like I eat beef jerky every day, or even once a week. Why in the world do I need to cook the stuff?

So as I was standing there in line, looking at all the awesome electronic gadgets that I would surely buy if I were rich enough, I started talking to the guy behind me. He was involved in several MLMs and told me places like this were a great opportunity spread his business. People were surrounded by all this stuff that they wished they had enough money to buy, so naturally they would be open to opportunities to make more money, at least in principle. This guy said that he had great success recruiting people for his “downline,” at these “free” offerings. He scans the paper every week, and goes to as many as these as possible. He said the best time is right before the actual drawing, when people’s interests are the highest.

He said he was kind of “piggybacking” on the social manipulation of the business. He would show up in the morning, talk to a few people in line, and not mention anything about his business. Then he would come back that afternoon, strike up a conversation again with the people he already met, like he was an old friend. Then while the excitement and expectation was high, he would slowly ease the conversation into his well-crafted sales pitch.

He said that if he only gets one person per “giveaway,” then it is well worth his while, because in the long run, each person that joins his “downline” is worth potentially thousands of dollars, if not more.

And, of course, I didn’t win the TV, and I bought this cool little vacuum cleaner for my keyboard, that plugs into my USB port. And a new computer mouse, because my old one, was, kind of, you know, needed replacing. Or something.

Leverage Criteria For Ultimate Power

One of the most powerful ways to easily persuade somebody to your way of thinking is elicit and leverage criteria. Everyone you will ever meet is a walking talking collection of unmet wants and needs. And for most people, most of these unmet wants and needs are sufficiently vague so that you can easily leverage them to your benefit.

Be careful though, you can easily misuse this power to trick them into doing something or buying a product that is against their interests. If you do this, then woe be unto you.

So how do you elicit criteria? Simple. Once you establish rapport, and generate a sufficient level of comfort, just ask them what’s important about something. Be sure to ask respectfully, and with genuine interest. Most people are a little bit shy about talking about their deep desires and criteria, and will quickly close themselves off to you if they smell any amount of incongruity.

For example, let’s say you are on a first date with a girl. Or maybe not even a first date. Maybe you are just talking to her at a party or a bar. You look around, comment on all the single people. Say something about how hard it is to find the right person for a relationship. If she agrees, then that’s good. It’s usually good to go first, and reveal a little bit about yourself first.

So you mention something about your relationship (make sure not to say anything bad about anybody) mention some of the good things, and mention something more that you were looking for. For example, you could say that your last boyfriend or girlfriend was a good friend, and a good conversationalist, but they really didn’t like to travel. They were a great guy/gal, but they weren’t as adventurous. So you needed to move on. Being adventurous is important to you.

Then you ask the person you are talking to about what is important to them in a relationship. It’s key to make sure to agree that whatever they say is important.

Then ask what is important about that? For example, if they said they want to meet somebody with a good sense of humor, casually ask what they find important about that. They may say that they want somebody that can laugh at themselves. Somebody that doesn’t take themselves too seriously.

One of the great things about this is that just by talking to somebody about what is important to them, they will subconsciously start to think of you in those terms, provided you have enough rapport. If you do this several different times, they will really start to develop deep feelings for you.

Another example.

Let’s say you are selling long distance plans. You get somebody on the line, get them talking, and ask them what long distance they are currently using. Instead of jumping right into switching them, like most people do, ask them what they like about their current plan. Ask them what is important about those things that they like. Be sure to agree with whatever they say.

Lets say they mention they like that it is part of their current bill. And you ask them what is important about that (make sure not to sound like you are going to convince them that it shouldn’t be important, agree with whatever they say). They will say something like they don’t have to worry about two separate bills. It’s easier that way. They don’t have to worry.

Then simply convince them that with your new plan, it is totally simple, and they won’t have to worry. Just let them know that it will fulfill their existing criteria, and will save them money.

This can take some time to get down, so that you can use it conversationally, but when you do you will realize how powerful this is. You will notice a significant increase in your sales and your ability to conversationally persuade and influence others.

The Power Of Influence – Tool Or Weapon?

Do You Know When Your Strings Are Being Pulled?

There are two laws of influence that can be used in a particularly powerful combination. These two laws have been identified by Robert Cialdini in his bestselling book, “Influence, Science And Practice.” If you are interested in influence at all, and would like to either become better at it, or just to understand how pretty much everybody around you is using these techniques, you should read this book.

There is a vague belief that persuasion is kind of an “art,” and that people that are good at it are like musicians or painters who are born with some natural talent. But Dr. Cialdini has shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that persuasion is indeed a science, rather than an art. A science that can be learned and applied either to benefit an individual, a company, or the leader of a nation.

There are several examples of how these principles of influence have been used without much concern for ethical considerations, but they still work nevertheless.

There is one fantastic example that comes to mind, which I’d like to share with you today. This was illustrated in “Influence.”

The first principle this involves is one of “commitment and consistency.” This is the idea that people are much more willing to do something if they have already publicly stated they will something, or have done something before that is similar.

A great Internet example is “click through.” If you visit a website of somebody trying to sell you something, you’ll likely have to click through several different pages to actually get to the point where you type in your credit card number. The reasoning behind this is people are much more likely to take the next step if they’ve already taken several previous steps.

If you land on some web page, and read some advertising text, and there is a button at the bottom that says “Buy Now!” The percentage of people that click on it is fairly low. But instead, if you shorten your sales page, and on the bottom is a button that says, “Click to Read More!” You’ll get much more people clicking through. Once you get visitors to click through three or four pages, they’ll be much more likely to click on a “Buy Now” button.

Another example is in jury trials. When they finish a trial, and the jury convenes they will often conduct a “straw vote” meaning that just give their first impression, guilty or not guilty, before the jury starts to discuss the case. Here’s the interesting part.

In jury deliberations where each juror publicly states, out loud, whether they feel the defendant is guilty or not guilty, the deliberations last more than twice as long as those where they jurors submit their initial guilty or innocent vote via anonymous slips of paper.

When people state their opinions out loud, they are much less likely to later change them. But when they submit their opinions in private, on an anonymous slip of paper, they later change their minds rather easily.

Another principle is one called scarcity. I’m sure you are well aware of this. Limited supply. Sale only lasts for two days. Only the first one hundred customers.

Study after study shows that people will give something a much higher value when they think it is scarce. A group of researchers did an experiment where they had people sample a cookie. In one case, they convinced the samplers that there were plenty of cookies, and the test would be going for quite a while, etc etc.

Then they told a different group of testers that the cookies were a limited batch, and it was a recipe that was only being tried out for a short period of time, and the testers were lucky to be in on the experiment. Keep in mind the testers or samplers were never sold anything, so there was no buying pressure.

The results? The samplers who were told there were many more cookies of the same kind gave it an average rating. The testers who were told that it was a small group of cookies, and they were a select group of testers gave it an excellent rating.

But they were the same exact cookie. Simply by telling people it was scarce, it made the cookie taste better.

Now for the powerful, Christmas time combination. I have no idea if this still happens today, but this story was illustrated in “Influence,” the book I mentioned previous.

There was a toy manufacturer. They made a toy, and put all kinds of TV commercials on, directed at little kids. They used all kinds of marketing tricks, mainly scarcity. Only a limited number of dolls made. Get yours today. Everybody wants this doll for Christmas.

Only when the parents went to the store to get the doll, they were all sold out. So they had to get a substitute gift for their kid. Then, a couple months after Christmas, they somehow found a hidden warehouse filled with these dolls. Of course, the kids saw this, told their parents, and their parents were pretty much obligated to buy the toy, as they had promised to buy it at Christmas but couldn’t find it.

Here’s how it works. Kid sees toy, bugs parent. Parents promises kid to buy them that particular toy. When buying time comes, toy isn’t available. Parent buys replacement gift. Two months later, toy reappears. Kid says, “But Daddy, you promised!” Daddy now has to go and buy gift.

Simply by manipulating the supply of the toys (scarcity) to increase demand, and depending on commitment and consistency (Daddy, you promised!) the toy company was able to double it’s Christmas sales. They sold a slew of replacement gifts (jacked up in price because of daddy’s guilt for not finding the promised toy) and then again a couple months later, when the original gift magically appeared, they had an increase in sales when all their competitor were suffering from a post Christmas slump

The beauty (or evilness, depending on how you look at it) of a plan like this is that this is almost impossible to defend against. What parent is going to tell their child they can’t have what the TV has said every other kid is getting? What parent is going to break a promise to their kid?

Everywhere you look, there are advertisements developed by companies who know and apply these principles on a daily basis. It helps to understand these principles so that you can use them yourself (in an ethical, win win scenario, of course) and to defend against them when they are used against you.

Rapport Building Secrets That Will Skyrocket Your Persuasion And Seduction Skills

How To Master Body Language To Maximize Your Covert Persuasion With Seemingly Psychic Abilities

Several people have emailed me asking to write more about creating rapport. So today I’ll delve a little bit deeper into exactly how to create rapport, and exactly what to do with it. Many people have a misconception about rapport. The word seems to be thrown around in certain circles, mostly sales and seduction.

You can usually tell by the way it’s being used that most people aren’t really sure exactly what it is, how to get it, and how to test to make sure you have it. Another cool thing, (at least for guys) is that once you learn how to see it in other people, you can pretty much read a room fairly quickly, just by scanning everybody’s body language. You can tell who is into whom, who is fighting, who is wishing whom would leave them alone, etc. Most women, of course, are naturals at this. With practice, men can get just as good.

Let’s first talk about what rapport is. Rapport is a deep, usually unconscious feeling that you feel connected to somebody. You feel safe and comfortable. You don’t have your defenses up. For example, if you went to a Mets game, and you were the only one in the stands with a Yankees jacket on. You would likely feel very left out. But if while waiting in the hot dog line, you saw another person wearing a Yankee’s jacket, you would suddenly feel connected to them. You share something with them that you don’t share with all the other people around. And this would be regardless if they were a different gender, age bracket or ethnicity.

Another example. Lets say you are on a flight from Chicago to Nigeria. And you are sitting on a plane full of Nigerians. You start talking to the person next to you, and after a few minutes of conversation you realize that not only does she collect stamps, but also she collects stamps that were produced by previous Soviet Bloc countries (if they indeed exist.) You both know all the ins and outs of that particular niche hobby, and you have a long and wonderful conversation regarding methods and your respective collections, etc.

Both of the examples above are deep and powerful rapport. If either of people asked to borrow five dollars to buy a drink, you’d be much more willing if they were a total stranger you only exchanged a couple words with. There is one problem with both of the above. One, it was completely random, and happened by chance. Two, it is purely contextual. Meaning that so long as you are talking about stamps, or the Yankees, you’re allright. As soon as you deviate from those two topics, you’ll likely lose rapport rather quickly.

That is how most sales people, and most people trying to create “rapport” with would be boyfriends/girfriends go about doing it. They start a conversation, and hope to find similar interests, backgrounds, hobbies, etc. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. This is what people usually mean when they say they are “trying to build rapport.” They are talking to the person and hopefully creating that feeling of trust and connection.

But there is a much more easier way. A much more powerful way, that cuts through any surface small talk filled conversation you might be having. And because it is not dependent on the conversation, you can still create strong rapport even if you are talking about something you both vehemently disagree on.

How do you do this? You simply match everything you can about the other person. No, I don’t mean go out and buy an outfit just like theirs. That would take too long, and they might suspect you are up to something.

You match their body language, and other non-verbal behavior, and everything you can about their speech. If they speak slowly, you speak slowly. If they smile when they speak, you smile when you speak. If they cross their legs, you cross your legs.

Many people are afraid they are going to get caught doing this. But this hardly ever happens. If they scratch their nose, and you stare at their nose intently, and then stare at your hand, and then bring it slowly to your nose, they’ll know something is up. Usually, however, they will have no idea. They’ll only know that they feel a strange connection to you.

Try this with a friend. Sit facing each other. Try to be as open as possible (e.g. no crossed legs or arms). And match each other’s body language as much as possible. Then talk about something you disagree on. Focus on keeping the match between your body language.

Then switch. Mismatch body language as much as possible. Then talk about something you both agree on.

What you’ll discover is that when talking about something you disagree on, your matching language has more of an effect than the subject you’re talking about. And likewise when you are purposely mismatching. Even though you are talking about something you both like or agree with, you’ll have this funny feeling that something is amiss.

So how do you test to make sure you really have strong rapport? Simple. After you’ve spent five or ten minutes on normal, everyday conversation, and you’ve slowly matched their body language, start to lead a little bit. This means that you move first, and see if they follow. Like lean back in your chair, or cross and uncross your legs, any small movement. Most often they will follow, without even knowing.

Once you get to this stage, you can use a number of any other persuasive techniques to get their agreement. If you are talking to a girl in a bar, you can ask for her phone number. If you were a salesperson with a client, now would be a good time to suggest moving to the next stage in the sales process.

Knowing this gives you great insight whenever you see a room full of people. Next time you are at Starbucks or a similar public place where people are sitting around in groups, take a look around. Who is in rapport with whom? Who is out of rapport with whom?

If you want to use this to help meet somebody, here’s a neat trick. Get close to them, wherever you are. Party, bar, friends house, Starbucks, wherever. And just get into rapport with them before you go and introduce yourself.

People have much more powerful peripheral vision and brain computational capacity than most of us realize. At all times, people are scanning the area around us and checking every single person to determine if they are friend or foe. We may be advanced, but we still carry baggage from our evolutionary days.

If you are nervous, and scared, and you go and approach somebody, they will know it before you even open your mouth. However, if you take the time to develop rapport with them before you talk to them, they will feel this as well. Their guard will be down, and they’ll be more likely to engage in friendly conversation without getting nervous or anxious about being approached by a complete stranger.

Despite how powerful the above methods are, this is just scratching the surface o how to develop powerful, unconscious rapport with people. Try these, and see how they work out. Have fun.

Sales And Seduction Tips From Milton Erickson

What The Creator of Conversational Hypnosis Can Teach us About Sales And Seduction

Every time you open your mouth, you have an intention. Whether this intention is conscious or not, planned or not, automatic or not, realized by you or not, this intention is there. Perhaps if somebody asks you the time, your intention is to behave in a socially appropriate manner without drawing undue attention to yourself.

If a homeless person walks up to you and asks for change, your intention is likely to end the uncomfortable conversation as quickly and painlessly as possible. For some this means to ignore him. For some it means giving him a dollar. For some it means an automatic physical altercation. As politically incorrect as it sounds, unless you set out specifically to volunteer in a soup kitchen or a homeless shelter, most people feel uncomfortable (for many, many different reasons) when approached by a homeless person asking for change.

If you are a guy, and you approach an attractive girl in a bar, your intention is likely to get her to like you, and perhaps more.

Most of these intentions are extremely vague, and largely unconscious. Very rarely do we stop and plan an outcome when somebody stops us on the street to ask us for directions or the time. Even though our response is automatic, we are trying to achieve an outcome of maintaining safety. Our automatic responses are largely based on protection, or defense.

Even the guy approaching the girl in the bar, although he has a somewhat conscious intention of getting her to like him, he is still likely operating from a frame of protection at the same time. He would love to be able to walk up to her, be as open and expressive as possible, make her laugh, show her his stunning personality and conversation skills. However, most of us guys are terrified of the public shame that the rejection of our advances would bring. So we hedge our bets, so to speak. We engage, but protect at the same time. This can prove extremely difficult.

The same goes with salespeople. Rejection can be awfully painful, even for the most seasoned veterans. Many times they approach the prospect with the same mindset of the guy approaching the girl in the bar. They’d love to proclaim how wonderful their product is, and clearly suggest that the prospect buy the product, but many are afraid to do so. One main weakness of almost anybody who has even been in sales is an inability to simply ask for the sale.

Most sales people beat around the bush, hoping the prospect will come to the conclusion on their own to buy the product. This rarely works. As most prospects usually need a nudge in the right direction.

However, there is another way. Actually a couple of other ways. Well, actually, lots of other ways, but I will only talk briefly about two of them. These were all “invented” by Milton Erickson, the father of conversational hypnosis. He came up with all kinds of powerfully persuasive conversation tools to help people overcome large life issues in a relatively short amount of time.

These two are very powerful ones that you can go out and use today, in a bar, with a girl, or with a prospect, or with your friends.

One is an indirect way of asking for the sale. This requires you be pretty good at reading body language, and facial expressions. The way you do this is to use what’s called an embedded question. Whenever you present a question to somebody, they will answer it, either verbally or not. But when you embed it in a sentence, then they don’t feel the pressure to answer it openly. But their body language and facial expression will give them away. Here’s how:

Say you are selling cars. You’ve been on the test drive, and your back in the office with the customer. They are still there, and they’ve been paying attention to you so far. You haven’t started talking about actual finances yet. You are still discussing whether or not they liked the car. You can say:

“Well, I don’t know whether or not you want to buy this car today, but before we talk about any kind of financial issues, let me talk to you about the extended warranty.”

Watch closely as you say the “buy the car today” part. If they seem like they are about to have a heart attack, you should probably hold off on asking them to sign a contract. If they seem to show any positive response at all, you’re in pretty good shape.

Same goes with the girl in the bar. You could say:

“I know we’ve been only talking for twenty minutes, and I don’t know if you feel comfortable giving your phone number to a guy you just met, but I think it’s important to be open when meeting new people. You never know when you are going to find somebody that could turn into a lifelong friend.”

Again, pay attention to how she responds when you say, “giving your phone number.” If she briefly lights up like a Christmas tree, she’s been dying for you to ask, and she’s into you. Proceed, and get her number. If she steps back and puts her hand protectively over her throat, you should politely excuse yourself.

That’s the “embedded question” method, and can be very powerful in testing how you are doing.

The other way is a bit more aggressive, and can be used by itself, or after you’ve successfully tested for a close. This trick is called the double bind. It involves giving them the illusion of a choice, when in actuality, both choices are the same thing.

For example, with the car example, you could say (as you pull out the contract):

“So were you going to use your current car as a trade in, or did you just want to make a down payment?” Either way they answer, it presupposes they are going to buy the car. This is, of course tough to do on a big-ticket item like a car. It can work better with smaller issues. You can use this for every part of the sales process, when you want to escalate to the next level.

“So did you want to test drive a blue one, or a red one?”
“So were you going to finance through us, or your own bank?”
“Would you rather test drive before or after we talk about financing?”

This works really well with phone sales when setting up appointments:

“I am going to be in your neighborhood next week, would Tuesday at 4:00 PM be OK, or is Thursday at 6:30 better?”

And you can also use it on the girl whose number you got:

“Say this is George from the other night, we talked at Flankies. I enjoyed our conversation, and I’d like to see you again, for a cup of coffee. Which is easier for you, Tuesday evening at 8:00, or Thursday at 9:30?”

You can use both of these together for a powerful increase in your closing percentage. Test their “buying temperature” with the embedded question, and then “close” them with the double bind. You’ll be amazed at your results.

NLP Techniques For Covert Persuasion – Is It Ethical?

Today I’d like to talk about the idea of using NLP techniques for covert persuasion skills. To begin, lets address two important concerns. Persuasion, and covert persuasion.

Most people are a little bit put off when they hear the word “persuasion.” Many people immediately call to mind a push car salesman, or that guy that followed you around in that shop and wouldn’t leave you alone. Or maybe you had some sales representative who came into your home in what you thought was an initial consultation, but they literally wouldn’t leave without an order.

I don’t know if you’ve ever worked in sales, but it can be a tough business. Many salespeople work on pure commission. That means if they don’t make a sale, they don’t get paid. And after a week or two of no sales, they can get pretty desperate. Sometimes they can be pushy, rude, and obnoxious.

This is not the persuasion I’m talking about here. The kind of persuasion I’m talking about is helping the client get his or her needs met in the most efficient and mutually beneficial way. There is kind of a fuzzy line here. It is entirely possible for a skilled and ethical sales person to actually create the need and desire, and then fill it with their product.

That is how marketing works in general. When Bill Gates designed the windows operating system he pretty much convinced the world it was something they needed. There used to be only two flavors of spaghetti sauce you could buy at the supermarket. Now there are plenty. There was nothing stopping people from buying a jar of plain sauce, and then adding ingredients to it at home. But nevertheless, they created all kinds of new flavors, convinced the public that they wanted them, and now they sell very well. Many people’s favorite spaghetti sauce is a flavor that didn’t exit before.

So persuasion isn’t bad, so long as the person you are persuading is going to benefit from doing what you persuade them to do. Persuading somebody to do something may very well even create a net increase of happiness and pleasure in their life.

So what about covert persuasion? When we think of covert, we usually think of some CIA spy sneaking around, or a band of Ninja’s surrounding the house of a Daimyo in order to assassinate him. But covert means without conscious knowledge.

There are many cookbooks that show how to slip healthy food in to seemingly unhealthy snack foods for kids. For example, slipping some carrots into a grilled cheese, or putting some vitamins into a milkshake. This is covert. Done without the knowledge or express consent of the consumer. Is it bad?

Most people have an aversion of salespeople. And when a salesperson starts talking, people usually clam up. Which means they likely won’t get to experience the increased happiness and benefits of owning a new product or service. And when people put up resistance, they usually don’t think very clearly. Most of their thought processes is in protection mode, which greatly reduces their chances of seeing opportunities.

Covert persuasion can be seen as presenting opportunities in such a way to make it easy to see all of the benefits, so they can better make a decision.

Ideally, clients would walk into your shop; give you a list of all their criteria, down the finest detail. You could then input them into your inventory computer, and out would pop the best product for them.

However, people are not robots. Our wants, needs, and desires can be very vague and slippery. Sure we want to buy a new car, but which one? What is important about it? What do we want to feel when we drive our new car? Safe? Envied? Powerful?

A skilled salesperson can make a client feel safe enough to share their desires, and allow the salesperson to match their product with the desires of the customer. And that is the heart of persuasion. To show others that what you have to offer, is a match for what they want.

Doing it covertly simply means that you are not treating people like robots, and you don’t expect them to spit out a sheet of all their exact criteria. You are allowing them to be fully human, and respecting the vagueness of their desires.

And the better you are at showing them that your product or service best meets their needs, the more they will enjoy it and benefit from it. And that is a fantastic win win situation. They get their needs met, and a product they will enjoy and use, and you get to make sale and a commission.

So if you are on a journey of learning NLP for persuasion, and covert persuasion, don’t be put off by negative stereotypes of sales and persuasion. Sure there are some bad apples out there who abuse these, but when used correctly it is much better for everyone involved.

NLP Tips For Covert Persuasion

If you are in sales, or if you’d like to be able to covertly persuade somebody, this will give you some useful NLP based sales tips that you can go out and use today. They are fairly straightforward, easy to learn, and extremely powerful.

There based on a couple of ideas. The first is anchoring, or in this particular case, spatial anchoring. Anchoring was first discovered by Pavlov, who was doing some other experiments. He was measuring the saliva from dogs, as they got ready to eat. He would ring the bell, and the dogs would come, and they would eat. He noticed that just by ringing the bell, the dogs would salivate, whether or not the food was actually there or not.

He took an automatic physiological response, and transferred it from its natural trigger, the food, and moved it to a new trigger, the bell. Effectively setting an anchor in the rigging of the bell that would not cause the same automatic physiological response as the food.

This works just as well in humans. If you fall in love with your third grade teacher, and she happens to have red hair, some of that feeling you had for her will be transferred to red hair. So now, twenty years later, you’ll have an automatic unconscious emotional response to women with red hair, and not likely have any idea why.

This happens all the time naturally, and in NLP you learn to use it consciously to influence the emotional responses of others.

The first step is to elicit the response that you’d like. The more specific response, the more complicated and involved it will be. It’s a lot easier to elicit a response for general happiness than it is for that feeling you get just before you sign the deed for your new house.

What you can do is to elicit a response for happiness, anchor it spatially, and then take that and anchor it to the action or thought you’d like them to have, with happiness.

A spatial anchor is just a visual cue that they can see. In Pavlov’s case, he had created an auditory anchor. You can also create a kinesthetic, or touch, anchor, but that requires a deep level of rapport. If you are a salesperson, you probably won’t be able to get away with touching your clients on the shoulder or knee repeatedly.

A simple way to do this is to use your left hand for bad, and you right hand for good. Whenever the client is talking about something unpleasant, listen intently, and describe whatever it was back to them, as exactly as you can, and while they say something like “oh yea, that’s terrible,” or whatever, simple hold your left hand out to the side just like you normally would.

Similarly, get them talking about something good. Anything. It doesn’t have to be related in any way to what you will be persuading them to do later. Just do the same thing, only this time gesture with your right hand whenever you are feeding them back their words to elicit their “good” feeling.

After a few minutes of seemingly casual conversation, you should have a strong anchor for “bad” in your left hand, and a strong anchor for “good” in your right hand. Now it’s time to go to work.

Whenever you make a suggestion you’d like them to take, gesture with your right hand. Whenever you talk about something they might do that you don’t want, use your left hand. Shopping around, waiting to make a decision, anything regarding your competitor goes on the left. Buying your product, enjoying your product, telling all their friends about your product, your idea, whatever, goes in your right hand.

This one simple trick will put you light years ahead of everybody else when it comes to persuasion. It will be like having two secret buttons inside your clients mind, one for good feelings, and one for bad feelings. Of course, it goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: This is very powerful, and could easily be misused to convince people to do something against their will.

Some, I repeat, some, politicians are very good at this. In the debate with Senator Dole, then President Clinton used this extremely effectively. Of course he was not in one to one conversation, so he had to kind of “guess” at things to say that would evoke good feelings and bad feelings. Whenever he said things he assumed would evoke good feelings? He covertly pointed at himself. Bad things? You guessed it. He covertly pointed at his opponent, who didn’t stand a chance.

Do you think that may be the reason he had such popular support, despite all his transgressions? He was, and is, a master of persuasion. This may even be one of the reasons why they sent him, instead of somebody else, who actually worked in the current administration, to North Korea to free those two journalists.

Now that you know this powerful technique, it’s kind of fun to watch politicians give speeches, and to see if their gestures match up with their words, or if they are just random hands flying around. You’ll find that most politicians don’t have a clue, despite having the best advisors and public image coaches in the world.

Their hands fly all over the place with no discernable match between good feelings, and bad feelings. Many times they use the same gestures for good stuff, and for bad stuff, effectively shooting themselves in the foot.

When you can match your gestures with your message, and be consistent and congruent, you can be easily be more persuasive than the world’s most powerful politicians.

I’m sure you can think of some uses for these new skills.