Category Archives: Sales Skills

Covert Hypnosis And Persuasion

Can you really use it to quickly and easily get what you want?

There has been a lot of interest in recent years about something called “covert hypnosis.” It sounds like something very sinister and perhaps evil. If you’ve ever seen some of those videos on youtube, or have ever had the pleasure of watching a good stage hypnotist, you know what I’m talking about.

There are a few videos where some powerful hypnotist will talk up to somebody, say some strange words to them, and then leave them standing there with their hands up in the air for a few minutes before they realize what’s going on.

Then there’s that one where the guy walks up to strangers on the street and gets them to give him their jewelry, watch and wallet without even knowing about it.

And some stage hypnotists are really skilled at getting people to forget their names, forget letters of the alphabet or even numbers. I saw one particularly entertaining show where one volunteer thought he heard a voice coming from his watch every time he heard his name.

The guys who do this on stage have an advantage. They are doing something that is called direct, or authoritative hypnosis. The person knows they are being hypnotized. And what makes it actually pretty easy for the stage hypnotist is that he or she asks a room full of hundreds of people who wants to come up and be hypnotized. So whoever volunteers, you can be sure that they:

  • Have no problem acting like a fool in front of complete strangers
  • Are open to the idea of being hypnotized
  • Are at the very least aware of hypnosis, and have an interest in it

So in reality, hypnotizing somebody on stage is likely the easiest way you’ll ever hypnotize somebody. Even if you completely suck as a hypnotist, the people that volunteer will often times pretend they are hypnotized, even if they don’t feel anything. There are a lot of other factors involved in this. Volunteering to be hypnotized, going up on stage, and then admitting that you can’t be hypnotized can be embarrassing. So many people play along, just for fun.

The guys on the street are practicing a powerful form of covert hypnosis. That is they are hypnotizing the people without their direct knowledge. You’d think that the person would think something was up when they saw the camera, but in many cases, the camera is hidden. So they are doing it completely through conversation and massive skill.

However, it is not as powerful as you think. The actual interaction that you are watching is real, on the street hypnosis. The thing they don’t tell you is that in order to get that one fantastic interaction, the hypnotist likely had to approach, start a conversation, and try their “trick” on perhaps a hundred people until they found somebody that worked. And they only show you the good ones, and not the people that looked at him like he was nuts.

So what does that mean? That all these shows are fake? No. What it does mean is that only a small percentage of the population can be hypnotized quickly and deeply like those people on the street. And only a small handful of people would ever volunteer to go up on stage and be hypnotized.

So where does that lead the rest of us, who want to hypnotize each and every client to buy our products, or go on dates with us, or vote for us? We need to use a much more subtler form of covert hypnosis. One that gradually sneaks in through the person’s conscious awareness, and carefully suggests a course of action over time.

Stage hypnotists and street hypnotists are in it for entertainment. They need a quick reaction to sustain the audience’s interest. Otherwise they will flop.

But in real life, covert hypnosis can be just as powerful, but you need to go a bit slower. You still need to develop a relationship with somebody, but with covert hypnosis, you can develop that relationship through a few minutes rather than a few days.

Once this relationship is established, you can slowly elicit their criteria in a conversational way. Once you have their criteria, you can carefully attach your outcome to their getting their needs met by their criteria.

It may not be as quick as pretending to steal some guy’s watch on the street, or convincing some guy he’s a chicken, but it can be just as powerful. Over the course of an hour, it is completely possible, (and rather easy) to establish a deep rapport with someone, get their most important desires and needs, and then creatively attach your outcome to their getting their needs met. They will leave happy, you will leave happy, and nobody will be clucking like a chicken or forgetting the number four.

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.

How To Use Neurolinguistic Programming To Maximize Your Sales Skills

If you’ve ever heard of neurolinguistic programming, then you know that it is an incredibly powerful tool to be used in almost any area of life, from almost any perspective.

Many people are aware of neurolinguistic programming, or NLP, as a tool for persuasion in both sales and seduction. Many sales techniques employ NLP to increase sales and income for astute salespeople, and others use it to improve their dating skills.

One of the often passed over areas of NLP is the method through which it was discovered itself. The word ‘discovered’ isn’t quite the right term, nor is invented, or created or any other terms that are used to describe a new technology.

The reason this is so is that NLP is not new technology at all. It is a collection of many techniques that were modeled and codified from people that were “natural’s” in there respective fields.

Many times people will look at somebody that is naturally persuasive, or naturally charismatic and say “Oh, look! He’s using NLP! I wonder where he studied?” usually the person in question is not using NLP at all, at least not to their knowledge. They really are a “natural.”

A natural is anybody that is skilled in on area. Salespeople, public speakers, and guys that are wildly successful with seducing women. Most of these people have no idea that they are using “NLP.” They just do what comes “natural” to them, and it gets them massive success in their field.

History is filled with people that use skills that are “taught” in NLP, even though they existed thousands of years ago. One good example is the letters of St. Paul. In case you’ve never heard of St. Paul, he a was this guy who used to be named Saul, then he had a vision of Jesus one day. At the time, Saul was against the rising cult of Christianity, and persecuted them every chance he got. When he saw Christ in a vision, he quickly changed his tune, and became a champion of Christianity.

He traveled to all of the Christian communities made it his life mission to spread Christianity. If any of his letters are an indication, he was a powerfully persuasive speaker. And his oration, if it was anything like his writing style, contained many elements taught in NLP.

Where the idea of NLP came into play was through the area of “modeling,” one of NLP’s most overlooked but perhaps most powerful application. Everybody wants to know the right patterns, the correct vocal inflections, how exactly to read people.

Having decent modeling skills is much more powerful. With modeling skills you have the ability to learn anything, from anybody, and apply in your own area of choice. You don’t even have to model all the characteristics of the person you are modeling, only the one’s you’d like to use for yourself.

The secret to modeling is to model everything about the person you are modeling What are they doing, how are they doing it, what do they believe about their own skills, how do they prepare themselves mentally for what they are doing.

For example, if you were to model Tiger Woods, you’d need to first model your body after his as closely as possible. Muscle strength, muscle flexibility, body fat percentage, etc. Then you’d have to model his technique as closely as possible. Exactly how far back he swings, his weight distribution on his feet as he hits the ball, the exact force with which he smashes the ball a million yards down the center of the fairway.

But you couldn’t stop there. You would next need to model his mindset, his beliefs, and his self-talk. What does he say to himself about his skills? What exactly does he visualize before he shoots? Does he get any physical sensations in his body while he is visualizing? If so where?

Most people (myself included) only get as far as holding a club and swinging it clumsily at a ball before declaring that they suck at golf.

One mistake many make when modeling is by asking somebody questions that they can’t answer. For example, lets say you want to model a fantastic salesperson at your company. So you ask them, “why are you such a good salesperson?”

If you’re lucky, they became a good salesperson because they studied sales technique after sales technique, tried them in different scenarios, kept the ones that worked, and improved on them while discarding the one’s that didn’t. They can then share with you the precise methods they studied, how they practiced, what exercises and drills they did to get to where they are.

Unfortunately, most people that are good in sales are just naturally good in sales. And they likely have no idea why they are good in sales. So you’ll get an answer like “Well, when I was a kid I always like mowing other people’s lawns and got really interested in figuring out how to make money, I guess.”

Not very helpful.

Better, more in depth questions would be:

How do you feel when you sell?
What do you say to yourself when you sell?
How do you feel when you don’t get a sale?
What do you say to yourself when you don’t get a sale?
What kinds of things do you visualize just before you meet a prospect?
What happens when a prospect has objections? What do you think, feel, and say to yourself?
How do you feel about our prospects as you are talking to them?
How do you feel about the product you are selling?

These are just a few of the questions that will help you to model somebody and be able to improve your skills.

All humans are natural modelers. Everything we learned, we learned from modeling. We learned to walk and talk by watching and copying others. We learned our ideas, beliefs and models of the world by looking at the adults as we grew up and simply copied them.

It would be fantastic if the top salesperson at your company would let you follow him around for a few months until you were selling as good as he was, but that isn’t likely.

As adults, we need to model consciously as well as unconsciously. One way is through a relaxed visualization. Take the top salesperson as an example. Say he or she let you tag along with them on a few sales. You just sat back and watched them in action.

Then later, you can relax, close your eyes, and visualize them making a sale. Then slowly replace yourself for them in your visualization. Do this a few times, and let your unconscious learn from them how to sell. This is a particularly powerful method, and when combined with asking them the right questions, you can dramatically improve your skills. When you add in learning proven methods from other materials, you can safely assure yourself of massive success.

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.

How to Add Subscribers Through The Fog of History

When I was a kid I had a newspaper route, like a lot of kids did in my neighborhood. It wasn’t for a large newspaper; it was only for our local town newspaper. I think it was free, and they made money off the advertisements only, which were only for local businesses. It wasn’t a very large operation. They had an office downtown, with about five people working.

I’m not sure where they printed it, because the office was pretty small. Maybe they outsourced it somehow, and used some other printer, much like a lot of micro brewed beers use the facilities of larger breweries.

The route I had wasn’t that large; it only encompassed my own neighborhood. There were maybe fifty houses I would have to go to every week. It was only a weekly newspaper, so it wasn’t like I had to get up at four in the morning every day so I could have stories to tell my grandkids about how I used to have to get up in the morning to trudge through the snow eight hundred miles to school every day.

Every once in a while we would have a subscription drive. I’m not sure how that worked, being as how the newspaper was free, but I think they had two different levels of service, or something like that. People that paid to subscribe, rather than get the free version got some kind of benefit. Our boss explained it to us, but I wasn’t really sure I understood then, which means I’m almost certain I don’t understand now.

Something that is foggy and vague when it happens can only get foggier and more vague with the passage of time. Except for those that are capable of re-writing history, in which case the past can get clearer and clearer despite the events and the eye witness accounts getting further and further away.

I think that happens with some aspects of history. There is no way they really know what all those old times Greek scholars were really up to. There are all kinds of stories about what Socrates said before his death, and what his intentions were and all that. But they didn’t have any video cameras back then, so I doubt anything that is attributed to him is any way remotely accurate.

When you think about how events from the distant past have been squeezed and distorted through the lens’ of various cultures throughout history, it’s amazing that we even remember their names, let alone their intentions and the social pressures of the day that influenced them and there decisions.

Kind of like that telephone game. Where you get a bunch of kids in a large circle. And you whisper something in the ear of one, and he or she whispers it to the kid next to them, and so on. You may start with something like “I like red fire engines,” and end up with something like “Let’s go to Nigeria.” Which of course is always good for a laugh (playing the game, not going to Nigeria, but then again, I’ve never been to Nigeria, so I wouldn’t know. I imagine it’s pretty hot.)

So what we would do is we would knock on peoples doors, and say:

“You really need to subscribe to this,”

To which people would usually say something like,

“Why do I need to subscribe, I get it for free already,”

To which we would say,

“Yea, I know but when you subscribe, you get all kinds of extra stuff,”

And then they would say something like,

“What kind of extra stuff?”

And we would explain, and they would quickly realize that by subscribing you get all kinds of wonderful benefits, such as extra stuff, and secret stuff, and other go straight to the front of the line kind of stuff. Which is pretty cool, if you ask me.

Two Powerful But Little Known Secets Of Persuasion That You Can Use Today

There are two powerful and almost irresistible elements of persuasion that when used correctly, can have a profound effect on the target of your influence. Without these two items, you will have to put a gun to somebody’s head, or implicitly promise some kind of sexual or monetary reward in order to move their thinking towards what you want them to do.

The fact that many advertisements you see today blatantly (and some very covertly) use sex in any way possible to promote products and services shows that even huge marketing and advertising companies are unaware of the power of these two elements.

Because you’ve come across this blog today, you are about to learn them. When you finish reading this, you’ll have a firm understanding of how and why they work, and some sneaky tricks that will allow you to use them starting today to get other people to do what you want.

So what are they?

Social Proof, and Authority.

Humans are hard wired to make decisions quickly. Back in the old days, before agriculture, people lived in small groups of around 200 people. If you made a wrong decision, you usually didn’t last long. Because the environment and living conditions were extremely dangerous, you couldn’t afford to make any mistakes.

Imagine going out chasing a woolly mammoth, and you always had the fear that if you twisted your ankle, or tripped over a rock, or got an infection from a small cut on branch, you were done. Game over. You’d likely be left behind, and probably wouldn’t last long. That’s hard to imagine today when almost any kind of medical ailment is easily treatable.

So humans developed a few shortcuts in decision making. One was social proof. Social proof is a powerful influential factor that causes people to get rid of logic and rational thinking and simply follow the crowd.

This worked beautifully on a woolly mammoth hunt. It kept everybody together and safe from predators. It worked terribly in Nazi Germany when everybody agreed it was ok to murder Jews. It is still working everywhere you look today, from fashion trends, to car styles, to popular restaurants. People don’t like to admit it, but at our core, humans are pack animals.

The second “shortcut” in thinking is authority. Whoever is recognized as the authority in the group will usually be obeyed without question. This goes hand in hand with social proof. The more people follow a leader, the more authority he will have, which of course gives him or her more social proof as a leader.

If you were walking down the street and some homeless guy that reeked of alcohol asked you for your drivers license, you’d laugh. But if a well built police officer with two smaller officers following obediently behind him asked for your drivers license, you probably couldn’t get it out quick enough.

If the man that collects your garbage told you that eating three raw onions a day is the secret to a hundred and fifty years of good health, you’d think he was a nut case. But if you heard a famous doctor, who has written several best selling, and well regarded books on health, say the same thing, you’d likely head straight over to the onion shop. And if you saw many others buying onions by the cartload, that would cement your decision even further to eat three raw onions a day.

The same message from two different sources can have a widely different effect, based only on the source. Shortcuts in thinking.

So how do you apply this to your own persuasion? Simply suggest that some kind of authority agrees with whatever you are saying. And suggest or imply that many people have already done what you are suggesting your target (or mark) do.

For example, if you are selling cars, which do you think is more persuasive:

This is a great car. It gets great gas mileage and will fit nicely in your garage. It’s got many safety features that will keep you and your family safe. It’s red, and red is a good color. I think you should buy this car. Whatta ya say?

Or

Car and Driver is just one of many leading consumer magazines that has given this car a five star rating, based on many factors. When this model first came out it won three awards at the International Car Show in Italy. And of all the thousands of people that have bought this car already, two of the reasons they like it is the great gas mileage, and the incredible safety features. Of course it’s red, which is a very popular color. Many people have found that when they drive a red car, for some crazy reason they feel a boost in self-confidence. Leading Psychological experts have shown that driving a red car boosts your sex appeal as well. Of course, because this model is so popular, you’ll have to make a decision pretty quickly. I have three more appointments today that want to take a look at this car.

Which do you think is more persuasive?

Many experts in the science of persuasion have shown time and time again that the leading sales people who use these two powerful techniques of social proof and authority have quickly become the leaders in their field. Not only that but they get a lot more money and sex. And when you begin to use these powerful techniques in your daily conversation, you’ll be amazed how effective you will be.

Have fun.

Embedded Commands for Powerful Persuasion

One powerful tool that you can use in your toolkit of persuasion and influence is the embedded command. An embedded command is likely the most popular, easiest to learn, hardest to detect (and therefore one of the most powerful) ways to influence others.

They do take some time to learn, but once you have them down, you’ll notice that you are using them in your everyday speech. When you combine an unconscious skill of embedded commands with a strong win/win intention or outcome, you can be a powerfully unstoppable and charismatic force.

It’s no secret that most people would rather rally around a strong, charismatic leader than step up the plate themselves. Humans are designed to follow one leader in every group of people. Many studies of psychology and sociology have been done that illustrate this simple point. If you’ve every been in a business meeting, you know that most people would happily submit to a powerful, authoritative leader than take responsibility for themselves.

When you develop the use of embedded commands, you will be tapping into peoples deep evolutionarily based need to follow directions, and become incredibly influential. And the great thing is that they are very simple to use and apply.

First, take a short sentence, which is in the imperative form. A short command. Some examples.

Eat sushi.
Drink CC Lemon.
Watch Television
Add water.
Buy my product.
The structure is the first word is a verb in its basic present tense form. Then you have two or three words after it, that go along with the verb.

Next, you need to say them with the right tonality. Pretend you have your own personal robot. They will do everything you ask, and their feelings won’t get hurt. Say each of the above sentences with a slight downward tonality.

Ok? Ok. Next, take the above small snippets of speech, and put them into a larger sentence. This is where it gets tricky. You’ll need to say the command part a little bit different from the rest of the sentence. But make sure not to linger too long when you say the command, otherwise the people you are talking to will know that something is up. Pause just a little bit before the command, and a little bit afterwards, and then continue on with your sentence as if nothing happened.

This way, even if the person you are speaking with suspects something is up, by continuing on as if nothing happened, they’ll quickly forget their suspicions. Even if they notice something is up, they likely won’t know exactly what it is (other than maybe, you are talking funny, but this rarely happens.)

For example, let say you want to convince your girlfriend to eat sushi. You could try looking at her like Rasputin, and say EAT SUSHI! But she’ll likely think you are a nutcase. Or you could say something like this:

The other day, I was listening to this doctor on a radio talk show. He was discussing a study about people who eat sushi, and how they are healthier. He says that when you eat sushi, you get lots of good monounsaturated fats, and people that eat sushi on a regular basis tend to live longer. Hey, I’m getting kind of hungry by the way; do you want to get something to eat?

I remember when I was a kid; I went to some amusement park. In the amusement park they had this animal show, where they had a dog and a cat do a bunch of tricks. They had a sort of joke trick, where they would pull a kid out of the audience, and the trainer would tell him to whisper an article of clothing in the dog’s ear, and then he would go and get it.

Every time they kid would whisper women’s underwear, and the dog would come back with a bra, and you could hear a woman scream from backstage. They called me up on stage, and sure enough, I chose to whisper in the dog’s ear a woman’s bra. I thought it was my own choice to choose a woman’s bra, but my brother later explained what was up.

He would describe all the things I could choose, but he always used embedded commands (although at the time I had no idea what they were) when he mentioned to “choose a woman’s bra,” so inevitable, all the kids that went up on stage would choose that. And that was the only thing the dog was trained to go and get from back stage. It was a pretty good way to set up an easy trick.

These are great to use over the phone if you are in sales, or are talking to your girlfriend or boyfriend. They are particularly powerful if you start with a command that is easy to accept, and slowly lead to a more powerful command that you’d like your listener to perform.

For example

Become interested.
Get curious.
Get excited about this.
Want this.
Make a decision
Get this.
Buy this.
Do this.
Choose now.
Be happy.
Share with your friends.

Whatever it is you are talking about, if you start slow, and work your way up to a big finish, this can be very powerful. At first you’ll have to think these through before you deliver them, but after a while (with practice) you’ll be able to choose a destination and then automatically give people easy steps to get there by following your commands.

Of course, like any other powerful persuasion techniques, these should be used with caution. The quickest way to make a bad name for yourself is to convince somebody to commit money or emotions to something that isn’t in their best interests. The reasons powerful leaders are so powerful, and that people trust them is because they truly have the people’s interest at heart. You don’t have to look back through history to find reviled, hated and despised dictator that took advantage of their leadership.

When you use these ethically, they can be a lot of fun, and make a lot of people (including yourself) very happy.

How to Sell Your Car Easily and Quickly for Maximum Profit Using Little Known Secrets of Psychology and Persuasion

If you need to sell your car, and aren’t sure how to go about doing it, there are few simple ideas that will not only help you to sell your car faster than you’ve ever thought possible, but also to get the best price, perhaps even a little bit more than you were expecting.

These techniques are based on emotions and psychology, and have been used for years by salesmen and women to maximize their profits and to get their products into the hands of happy customers.

First of all, make sure your car is really worth what you are asking for it. If there is damage that you aren’t willing to disclose, then you will have an angry customer on your hand. Even though these techniques will likely work, regardless of the condition that your car is in, you need to be upfront and honest with any repairs or drawbacks to the sale.

Now that’s out of the way, let’s get on to the good stuff. I’ve been studying sales and persuasion for many years, and have worked in various industries, including car sales. I know the techniques that work, and what doesn’t work. When you apply some of these ideas, your car will be gone, and your wallet will be filled with money eagerly given to you by a happy customer.

The first concept is social proof. People want to buy what everybody else is buying. Social proof was illustrated brilliantly in Robert Cialdini’s book “Influence, the Psychology of Persuasion.” When you can get across to your potential customer that there are many other people that also want to buy your car, their own desire to buy will naturally increase.

How to do this? If you are placing an ad online, be sure to mention that your make and model is very popular. How do you do that? Easy. Just use the words “very popular” to describe your car. For example, instead of saying “for sale, 1998 Toyota Corolla,” you can say “For sale, the very popular 1998 Toyota Corolla.” Sounds cheesy, but it works. Another way to use social proof is to imply there is a high demand for your car. Instead of saying, “for sale, 1998 Toyota Corolla,” say “For sale, the very popular 1998 Toyota Corolla. This car has been always been in demand.” Again, sounds cheesy, but it works.

The next concept, again illustrated in Cialdini’s book, is the concept of scarcity. Whatever might not be around for a while, people seem to want more of it. When the Concord announced it was going to stop flying, demand for tickets suddenly skyrocketed. There is a reason many ads will say, “For a limited time!”

They use that corny phrase simply because it works. So how can you use this to sell your car? Think of a legitimate reason for putting a limit on the sale.

“In demand 1998 Toyota Corolla, for sale only until the end of this week. Email for details.”

You don’t even need to give a reason, and it can still have a powerful effect on your sale.

The next idea is authority. When people hear something from a recognized authority, they are much more likely to be influenced. So how do you connect authority to your car sale? Google the make and model of your car along with “awards” or “consumer reviews.” Doing this with a 1998 Toyota Corolla yields several results. One was a four and a half star review from epinions.com.

So lets see what happens when you combine, social proof, scarcity, and authority all in one.

“For sale until the end of this week ONLY. The always in demand 1998 Toyota Corolla. This very popular and reliable model received a 4.5 star recommendation from epinions.com. Please email for details.”

Now, doesn’t that sound better than:

“For sale. 1998 Toyota Corolla. Email for details.”

Not only will you get more hits, but also more people will be interested in buying your car. Which brings up yet another psychological influential factor. Competition.

In the above-mentioned book by Professor Cialdini, he illustrates a story where a fellow made some money on the side while in college. He would buy used cars, spend a few weeks cleaning them up and fixing minor damages, and then re-sell them. Whenever people would be interested in the car, he would schedule an appointment with them at a specific time. But he would always schedule two or more people at the same time. They would show up, and start a bidding war right there on the spot, and he would always sell these cars for much more than he paid for them.

While that might border on unethical sales practices, it illustrates the almost untapped power that exists when you apply simple psychological influence ideas to selling your car. You’ll sell it a lot quicker, and make more money.

How to Remove Public Speaking Fear and Skyrocket Your Sales Skills

If you are in sales, any kind of sales, there is one skill you can learn that will have a powerful effect on all your other skills for selling. And when you realize in almost every interaction you have with others, you are selling something at some level. An idea, your point of view, a behavior that you want others to perform. Whether you are going to convince that gorgeous woman to come over to your place for dinner, or persuade your kids to finish their homework before watching TV, you are selling something.

And there is one powerful skill that can dramatically help you in all aspects of this. That, of course, is public speaking. I’m sure you know that public speaking is the number one fear of people today. Almost everybody dreads the idea of being called up to speak. If you’ve ever had to give a toast, or even introduce somebody to large group of people, you know how nerve wracking it can be. Overcoming public speaking fear can be the singularly most beneficial decision you can make. It will increase your self-confidence, increase your self-esteem, and give you much more clarity of thought when choosing your words during normal, every day conversations.

And if you are in an honest to goodness sales job, where you have to put yourself in front of people day in and day out, overcoming the anxiety of public speaking can do wonders for your closing ratio. It’s a well-known fact that giving talks on a regular basis, regardless of what business you are in can do wonders for your income.

So how does one go about reducing public speaking fears? How can you banish public speaking anxiety once and for all? There are two ways to approach this. One is through various forms of mental imagery and visualization, training your brain to think of speaking in a different way, so it doesn’t cause you the anxiety that it might have before. These can be a wonderful way to make it feel easy and natural to not only feel comfortable giving public speeches, but to look forward to doing them as well.

One way to do this is to imagine the feeling you will get when you finish your speech, and you can hear the applause of the audience. Really get a good picture in your mind of what that looks like, sounds like, and feels like. Practice imagining that on a regular basis, until that thought becomes second nature, and not whatever thought you used to think that gave you the problems.

Another mental trick is to imagine the benefit the audience will receive from your speech. How will it help them? How can they use the information? When you think in terms of this, you will be less likely to imagine them judging and scrutinizing you, and more likely to imagine them thankful to you for doing them favor by sharing your unique information with them.

The second way of extinguishing your public speaking anxiety once and for all is to simply speak as often as possible. Every time you think of speaking, and grow anxious, and then get out of speaking, it reinforces the thought that public speaking is dangerous. When you begin to speak in public as often as possible, anywhere were there are people within earshot that don’t know you, you will gain confidence. Anywhere you can do this will work. Talking to strangers in line at the supermarket, making an announcement at the dinner table at home, if you have a large family, volunteering at your church. Toastmaster is a great place to practice these skills in a friendly, supportive environment.

When you combine the mental tricks outlined above, and the habit of speaking as often as possible, any fear or anxiety you have associated with public speaking will quickly vanish, and your skills of selling and persuading will skyrocket, not to mention your self-confidence and self-esteem. Learning to feel comfortable while speaking in public can very well be one of the greatest, and cheapest, self improvement and self-development programs at your disposal.