"Forgiveness means that you do not hold others responsible for your experiences." ~Gary Zukav

Hi Persuader,

What do you have in your attic (or basement)? Old clothes that don't fit anymore? Paperwork that you'll never need? The children's old toys that they don't care about anymore, but to which you have a sentimental attachment? Maybe boxes and boxes of things that belonged to a deceased relative that you do not need?

Maybe these things are holding you back, maybe they're not. They are certainly weighing you down, if not physically, perhaps psychologically. But unless you have a problem with 'collecting' or being a pack rat, then the stuff in your attic might not be that big a deal.

Now I'd like you to think of the things that you're storing in your mind. Sure, there are some great memories of weddings and births, successes and the pleasures of life. There are even some sad thoughts, which are absolutely necessary to create a complete life, the ups the downs, the ebb and flow, the yin and yang. There's knowledge up there, and appreciation of beauty, and ability - the ability to persuade, the ability to change the oil in your car, the ability to build a campfire or make your grandmother's secret soup recipe.

But there's some stuff in there that needs to be disposed of and in an upcoming article ("Cleaning Out The Trash") I'm going to to give you the specific steps on how to shed some of that resentment and bitterness.

The short answer is forgiveness.

The purpose of forgiveness is not to benefit the other person that you're forgiving (though it probably will). The purpose of forgiveness is is not to make you a better person (though it probably will). And the purpose of forgiveness is not to make you right with God (though if you believe that it will, it probably will help).

The purpose of forgiveness is to clear out what is holding you back from achieving your dreams. To clear out that part in your unconscious mind that is constantly pulling and dragging that negativity from you.

The Bible says, 'By beholding we become changed.'

What does that mean? It means you become more like what you focus on. Are you focusing on the greats of business and money creation? If you're not, what are you focusing on? Are you focusing on your day-to-day drudgery? What is that going to cause you? More day-to-day drudgery.

If we're focused on bitterness and challenges and lessons hurt, then a part of us is, all day, every day, bringing a piece of that to our lives over and over. I believe that one of the greatest reasons we are here on planet earth is to learn to understand that we're here to be able to manifest anything we want.

Let's divide up our unconscious mind into sections and let's say that we can lump all of our troubles, our problems, our bitterness, our resentments, all into one area of our unconscious. For sake of argument, let's say we've done that now.

How much of our unconscious mind is tied up with that garbage?

If we took all of this anger and bitterness and we assigned it a value in our unconscious mind... Well like, let's say that there is 5% down in there somewhere, even 1%. How would that affect you? It's like Chinese water torture. It's a drip, drip, drip, pain, pain, pain, agony, agony, constant problems dripping, dripping, never stopping. If we could somehow root that out, get rid of it, and instead, focus on our universes, what would our life become?

The process of forgiveness is how to clear that out. You'll understand this more clearly when we continue that discussion in two days.

Until then, think about the fundamentals of forgiveness... How do you think they affect your ability to persuade?

Kenrick E. Cleveland

Hi Persuader,

What's Your Story?
Using Stories To Persuade The Affluent

"To be a person is to have a story to tell." ~Isaac Dennison

Telling persuasive stories is the ultimate form of persuasion that exists. People are naturally wired to be able to hear your stories. It's just a phenomenal way to communicate and it's a phenomenal way to persuade.

You literally could do nothing but tell stories and be very, very successful.

If you aren't telling a story and telling it persuasively, you're missing out on a huge amount of persuasive power that you could otherwise have in your possession. Stories put the listener in a place that let's him/her more easily accept what's being said. Stories bypass resistance and touch the heart. That's the key. Everyone wants to feel proud and important. You can tap into these feelings very effectively with stories.

People need to have faith in you, to believe in you, and stories give you the chance to persuade them to do so. Facts, on the other hand, will not accomplish that.

Most people have well-trained B.S. detectors. They don't want to feel persuaded; they want to make up their own mind. Stories give them the ability to make up their own mind the way you want them to, to see what you want them to see. That's the beauty of stories.

People need to have two questions answered in order to trust you: 1) Who are you? - which is what you're going to be focusing on - and 2) Why are you here? Once they know those two things, they can trust you.

When you're sitting down in front of an affluent prospect talking and they don't know who you are or why you're there... they're not really going to trust you.

You could say "I'm an advisor and they need help with their money." Nope. That's not it.

Your affluent prospects really have to know who you are and why you're there.

Imagine the power of this strategy. Now imagine it combined with the physical and verbal rapport techniques that I teach in my Persuasion Factor program and with my Elite Coaching Club members.

Now do you see why it's important to keep sharpening yuor saw with these techniques?

There's so much to learn. If you feel like you need more support, you can wait to read all of my future emails in the coming months, or you can get on the fast track by starting with my Persuasion Factor program. www.PersuasionFactor.com.

But it's a beautiful thing to be able to add all these techniques and strategies together and telling a story is the perfect format for doing just that.

A story can drastically speed up the process of learning who you are and in turn cut down on the time it takes for your clients to trust you. Instead of having to discover who you are over a long period of time, a story can stimulate the clients into seeing that very quickly.

Stories mesmerize and suck people in. They fit into the indirect permissive model, not the direct authoritarian model of communication. And once again, therein is one of the most significant powers of stories.

What's your story? Are you from humble beginnings? Have you overcome adversity? Did you beat the odds in some facet of your life? Is your story a fairy tale?

Map out your story - could be something as simple as your struggle with an employer that forced you to set out on your own and seek your own fortune, or it could be something as vast as a family history. You'll know it when it feels right - and so will your affluent prospects.

Until next time,

Kenrick E. Cleveland

Taking It Down A Notch:
The Power of Simplicity in Persuasion

“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.”—Henry David Thoreau

My daughter, Victoria, is becoming a beautiful pianist. Beginning piano students have a huge body of knowledge to learn—how to read music, hand position, tempo, foot pedals, where on the keyboard to place their hands. It takes lots and lots of effort to make a piece sound effortless. Students are not simply given a Beethoven Piano Sonata and expected to put it all together at once and play it.

Even an advanced player learns a piece ‘hands alone’, as in, learning the right hand separately from the left hand and then, eventually, putting them together.

There’s a long road from

beginning student to a sonata.

Breaking things down to their element and practicing, practicing, practicing... that’s the goal with learning anything, from the piano to persuasion.

I think everything is powerful in its simplicity and

when we start junking it up

with too much complexity,

that’s when it goes awry.

When I first got involved in the world of persuasion, I thought about all the trainers and teachers in this field who have not succeeded. I realized that it’s partly because they are trying to do all these complex things all together and none of it works.

So what I started doing is going back to the real basics, to the real simple things and say, ‘I’ve got to master this basic idea until I can do it in my sleep, blindfolded, when I’m exhausted, in the middle of my dreams, in the middle of my third dream, I want to do it that way.’

So I started working to do that and I started to put those things together. But all of a sudden the more complex things just started happening. I wondered,

"Why is it that I work on

the basics and the complex things

get better? I don’t get it."

Well now I get it, and I’ll tell you something, the most profound things in the world are that which are really simple. And when you get really good at it, the big things start coming together more and more.

Take a few moments and evaluate the core of what you’re persuading people to do. What are the simple principles? Focus on these, and watch your results begin to climb.

Remember to connect them to your prospect’s deepest values. To learn more about how to do this, check out the Persuasion Factor at www.PersuasionFactor.com.

Have A Profitable Day,

Kenrick E. Cleveland

We're Up and Running!!!

The world's #1 persuasion resource is finally here! After much diligence and hard work, our new blog-powered site is up and running for you at

www.MAXpersuasion.com

As soon as you get a spare moment, come check it out. You'll find invaluable information on how to effectively influence the affluent.

Don't forget to tell us what you think. We love hearing from you and appreciate your feedback.

Have a Profitable Day,

Kenrick Cleveland

Side Stepping Logic to Get to the Boss:

The Unconscious

"Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding." ~ Ambrose Bierce

When it comes to persuading the affluent, or anyone for that matter, we've got to dig deeper... into uncharted waters... where most business people are afraid to go. We've got to appeal to the unconscious mind, using emotions in our selling.

Our conscious mind can only hold seven (plus or minus two) bits of information at a time. Seven bits of information. . . that's not a whole lot, is it?

Think about how many things there are to think about--the smell of a peeled orange, the way the ceiling fan feels, the pebble in your shoes, the feel of the ring on your finger, the sound of the car outside, the child crying, the rumble in your stomach, the itch on your neck, the song on the radio. . . on and on and on.

There are so many things going on around us at any given moment that there is absolutely no way for the conscious mind to pay attention to and process almost all of it. It just goes to show you just what a huge job our unconscious has.

So what happens to the information around us that is available to us at any moment in time, but that we don't pay attention to. Where's it going? Well, it goes into our other-than-conscious. It's not that it isn't perceived--it is often being perceived--it's just that we're not consciously aware of it.

I would argue that there's too much being made of what we are as a consciousness, so to speak. People think that we have logic therefore we are and that's not true. What's in our conscious mind is of the least importance.
It does separate us from lesser conscious things like maybe dirt or trees or a building, but the mind is like an iceberg; It's the tiny sliver that sticks above the water compared to the giant amount that's actually underneath.

The same is true with the way our conscious and unconscious mind works. We pay attention to that tiny little sliver that we see out there in the world when in reality it's all of the other perceptions that are also coming in to influence us.

How do we take the conscious mind of another individual, the tip of their iceberg, and set it aside so it doesn't object to us as we go directly and access the real boss, the unconscious mind?

Knowing that this is the case, we need to realize it's true that people are actually persuaded based on emotional things that are going on with them, not logical things. Logic helps, but people make the decision emotionally and they back it up logically.

So we want to give them some logic at the end so that they feel good about what they've done emotionally, but that's about the extent of it. We need not over-stress about what the person is consciously thinking, but learn to appeal to the unconscious through all these different kinds of strategies that we're talking about here in these posts.

When we elicit criteria we're side stepping logic and getting to the core of what's important for the prospect or client.

For example, let's say their top value is 'Freedom'. When we trigger their need for freedom we're stirring up a whole cauldron of emotions. For an 'away from' personality this could range from when that ex-employer humiliated them, to when they felt trapped in a bad relationship, to, possibly, when they were stuck in traffic on the way to see you.

For that 'towards' person, they're feeling that time when they were on their yacht or the day they finally had enough money in the bank, I like to call it 'F-you' money, to dictate their own terms in business and in life. They're feeling that freedom and want more of it.

So the way you interact with that emotion of humiliation or frustration or rage (in the 'away from' person) or the liberation and feeling of dominion (in the 'towards' personality) and make your product or service the antidote (away) or access to more of (towards), then you will have succeeded in navigating the uncharted, murky (emotional) landscape where most business transactions are afraid to go.

What are some examples from your business life when you allowed yourself to be fearless in the face of (gasp!) emotion? How were you able to make a connection that transcended the logical mind?

Keep checking in to the MAXpersuasion blog for upcoming posts on hundreds of other persuasion topics!

Until next time,

Kenrick E. Cleveland

P.S. Like what you're reading? Want more of it? Want more of something else? Let me know your thoughts by writing to newsletter@MAXpersuasion.com.

The Power Of Need: Using Need To Persuade

"Nothing has more strength than dire necessity." ~ Euripides

One of the most basic strategies in sales and marketing is fulfilling a need. You always want to feed a hungry crowd. Every crowd has a different hunger, so how do you know who wants what? And how do you use this strategy to persuade your affluent prospects?

What are you thinking about right now? Maybe the words on the screen, maybe just the sentences as you read them. You're probably not thinking about bananas. Well. . .now you are, but you weren't before I brought them up. Right? But if your doctor told you that you needed to eat one banana a day to help with your potassium levels, you might think about bananas more often.

We do not, nor could we, think about bananas twenty-four hours a day. But necessity (i.e. a doctor's advice for your health) can bring them to the forefront more often than normal.

The part of the brain responsible for consciousness is the Reticular Activating System. It is thought to be the center of motivation and arousal and is involved in most of the central nervous system's activity (including sleep and wakefulness). The reticular activating system is what helps us pay attention to things that we need to pay attention to and put away those things we can afford to disregard.

Studies have shown that the conscious mind can hold about seven bits of information at any given point in time. (What happens to all the information around us that is available to us at any moment in time, but that we don't pay attention to? Look for more information on this in an upcoming article: 'Side Stepping Logic to Get to the Big Boss: The Unconscious'.)

I just got a new car. When I was shopping around and finally decided on what I wanted, a Lexus 350 ES, all of the sudden, everywhere I went, I began seeing Lexus 350 ES's on the road. I thought, "I had no idea that there were this many Lexus 350 ES's out there".

The thing is. . . they were there all along. I just wasn't paying attention to them and so didn't realize how many there were. My Reticular Activating System didn't direct my attention to this particular car because it had nothing to do with what I needed (or wanted) until that point and therefore wasn't necessary in my conscious mind.

When you're driving down the freeway, singing along to the radio, you're probably thinking about what you're going to do when you get to your destination, you aren't thinking of using the bathroom, unless you need to. You aren't thinking of getting some water, unless you're thirsty. You aren't thinking of stopping at a gas station for gas, unless you're running out. You aren't thinking of stopping for food, unless you're hungry.

But once you need any of these, they become extremely important and they are part of your conscious thought processes until the need has been satisfied. All of the sudden, it doesn't matter what's on the stereo or what the scenery looks like. All that matters are the road signs telling us what's available to eat, where the next gas station is, etc.

What happened to those thoughts before? Well, they really weren't in our consciousness. Once these thoughts begin to hold relevancy we can seize control of them and leverage them to our advantage, then put them away when they're no longer applicable to us.

This speaks a lot to criteria (the values, wants, and needs of a person). By eliciting a person's criteria we can bring to bear those subtle aspects in a person's reality that apply to their criteria. When you elicit the criteria of your affluent prospect, you speak to their values at even a higher level and essentially you are fine tuning their Reticular Activating System to your advantage (and to their's).

What are some examples of how we can use 'need' in business? In real estate? In financial planning? Criteria elicitation (finding the very deepest desires of your prospect) is crucial to pointing us in the right direction to satisfy those needs. Once you know the direction to take a person, persuading him/her will come naturally.

Until next time,

Kenrick E. Cleveland

I Just Can't Help Myself:
Framing The Third and Fourth Taboo

Let's see if this stirs you up. It's a stretch, and a pretty volatile subject. But maybe, just maybe, I'm trying to stir us all up.

We're all familiar with what they refer to as "the oldest profession". And we've all got our ideas and fears on the evils that arise from such a profession. In our society, prostitution is illegal. It's connected to drugs, violence, disease, abuse, and other problems. That's the frame. We can all agree on that, right?

How about looking through someone else's frame? A former student and acquaintance of mine sent me an e-mail recently with a link and all it said was, 'Check out this frame.' The link was to the International Committee for Prostitute's Rights. http://www.walnet.org/csis/groups/icpr_charter.html

I did a little further research and found that there's an organization called C.O.Y.O.T.E. It stands for Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics. This is a 'sex worker's' rights organization. (Notice the shift from 'prostitutes' to 'sex workers'.)

There is a strong movement in many major metropolitan cities in the USA and, in fact, all over the world, to decriminalize the profession and give 'sex workers' rights and protection by regulating the industry.

Wow. Talk about a changing perspective. I had definitely never heard of such a thing and it totally blew me away.

The idea is to differentiate between people who are being victimized and people who feel empowered in this industry. It's a hugely complex issue with the added emotional intensity that only religion, politics and sexuality, can incite.

One of their arguments is that this kind of work is an important part of the economy and that just looking to the legalized prostitution in Nevada and in other countries, points to how some of the dangers can be taken out of the industry by way of regulation. Get rid of the pimps, the violence is cut down. Mandatory monthly medical treatment and safe practices, nearly eliminate the medical and health dangers.

The proponents have taken this highly charged issue out of the frame of morality, and put it in the frame of 'important part of the economy'. Advocates of legalizing drugs use the same argument. And, as with prostitution, point to Amsterdam as an example of how a shift in strategy can work.

How much is spent each year on imprisoning petty pot growers/users, and 'working girls'? If no violence or pain to another human being takes place, these are 'victimless crimes'. I'm absolutely not advocating this, but just showing, yet again, where once we thought ours was the only belief possible to have, there are intelligent, thoughtful opponents to our construct of reality.

Again, this is just an exercise in framing and when you can reframe a very strong argument with another strong argument, whoever has the better frame, wins.

For more framing, instigating, cajoling, stirring up, and prompting, call Kim at kim@MAXpersuasion.com.

Until next time,

Kenrick E. Cleveland

We received some very interesting feedback after we began our discussion on framing last week. I enjoy hearing from you, so whenever you feel compelled to comment on or question a topic, please feel free! It is our committment to our readers to continually provide engaging content that delivers an interesting and educational message. Occasionally it will also be controversial.

It is our number one priority to deliver every possible idea and strategy to you that has to do with persuasion, specifically how to persuade the affluent. We will continue to bring up relevant and real life issues as they relate to the persuasion topic at hand. I'm so glad that you share this passion for persuasion, and I hope you enjoy this type of quality information as it applies to your reality.

This is why we've poored all of our energy into creating an absolutely unrivaled, blog-powered website completely dedicated to the ongoing discussion of how persuasion is engrained in every facet of our lives. On this new site we'll be able to continue to work through our discussion together to ensure we all become more empowered in our lives.

I know you're on the edge of your seat waiting for the launch of the number one persuasion blog on the planet! In the mean time, let's continue our discussion on framing...

Reframing Framing

An employee of mine lived in New Orleans until August 28, 2005. That's the day she evacuated with her boyfirend and their four cats and all the valuable things they could pack in to their two cars. They booked a room in a pet friendly hotel in Tennesee and rode out the storm there.

For months after her subsequent move to Portland, people, when they found out where she was from, would say, "Oh, you're a victim of Hurricane Katrina?" Her response was always, "Not really. I had two cars and plenty of cash and credit cards. I was 'inconvenienced' by the hurricane and flood and it was a changing point in my life, but I'm not a victim. The victims were the poor people who didn't have the means to leave."

She goes on to frame this even more positively, "It was an opportunity for a new life, a new profession and a new city where the values are more in line with my own."

Of course, not everyone was so lucky and she has definite feelings of loss and sadness and anger about the hurricane and the subsequent nightmare of New Orleans, but for the most part, she turned this upheaval into a happy new life.

Framing is a powerful tool for positive change. It can be an unbeleivably potent instrument for persuasion.

Look at the frame that we now put on the Holocaust "victims": Survivors.

Thousands of social workers use framing each day. Gang members consider killing an opposing gang member honorable, but social workers and parole officers use framing to show how ugly murder is no matter who is the victim.

Advertising is all about framing. To appeal to younger audiences, advertisers usurp "rebellious" or "indie" mentalities in order to sell their products to the "alternative" youth culture. So now even a carton of eggs seems "edgy" and cool when advertisements imply that these aren't your daddy's old-fashioned, lame, square outdated eggs, these are cool eggs and only the truly awesome are eating our eggs.

Although politicians use framing to put their own spin on issues, who's to say they're wrong? Although I don't understand it, for some reason Bush believes that the war in Iraq is just. He uses framing in every speech he makes, and was successful in 2004 when he convinced more than half of the nation that his view was right. He used 9-11 to frame us into believing that we're all in imminent danger and that "It's better to fight them over there, than to fight them over here." This also presupposes we'd have to fight them over here.

On the other hand, the Democrats have framed the war as something that has been prolonged and has crossed the line of sacrificing too many American lives for a cause that is based on lies and is less than worthy.

We can use framing as a positive thing depending on what we consider to be positive. If you frame it in a positive light, almost anything can be positive. People use this strategy all the time to convince others to "do the right thing". Martin Luther King Jr. framed segregation as eveil convincing many people that it was wrong, and so here wer are today with millions of black and white Americans who've grown up together not knowing that kind of blatant inequality. Was he right? I think so. But for opponents of integration, he was absolutely wrong.

Frame a hardship into a challenge,. Frame a setback into a time for reflection. Frame a victim into a survivor. Frame an old-fashioned product or service into something cutting edge and indispensible and awesome. Frame everything!

Until next time,

Kenrick E. Cleveland

Who's Afraid Of The Big Bad Baby Killers?
An Exercise In Framing

"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." - Anais Nin

Politicians and pundits call it 'spin': The ability to distort any event or situation in a way that supports your position.

Take the Nuclear Reduction Treaty. That sounds like a good idea, right? Reduce the amount of nukes, how could you argue with that? This treaty was proposed to cut U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals. Well, at least that's what the surface claim is, that's what the public is being sold, but scratch the surface and you'll see the Orwellian overtones of the name because this treaty would actually prolong the nuclear standoff and encourage a stockpiling of weapons.

But doesn't the way the treaty was framed give a warm, fuzzy and safe feeling?

This happens all the time in naming political treaties and acts - The Clean Air Act (loopholes for corporate polluters), The Transportation Safety Act (could be considered the Transportation Control Act because they're putting us under their control and not letting us do whatever the heck we want), and my favorite name, The Patriot Act (limiting our freedom by suggesting that to not agree to having our liberties diminished would be unpatriotic).

Another great example of framing is the abortion debate. In one corner we've got the 'pro-lifers' who are 'anti-choice' and base their activities on villianizing the 'baby killers' even going so far as to bomb clinics in an attempt to save unborn babies (ironically, potentially killing fully formed adult humans and unborn fetuses in the process). In the other corner we have the 'pro-choice' crowd who are said to be 'anti-life' due to their wish to allow women to abort 'unborn babies'.

The anti-abortion/pro-life advocates have framed the debate most intensely by showing gruesome images and using the title 'baby killer' to make their point. Who would possibly want to align oneself with killing babies?

Framing is one of the most important tools we have in our arsenal of persuasion skills.

How can we start to use this kind of framing in our lives?

What if, for example, you had to meet with a particularly difficult client or prospect and there was a certain amount of resistance and uneasiness about having to do this? Or maybe you're ultra shy or socially uncomfortable about meeting with a particularly affluent or wealthy prospect.

Well, instead of looking at this as a chore or a necessary evil to doing business, how about putting a new frame on it? Say to yourself, 'Wow, what an awesome opportunity to use my persuasion skills. As I approach this next person to talk to I'm going to frame our interaction in terms of using the skills instead of in terms of do they like me and will I make it.'

An example from my life of how framing can be profound has to do quite literally with a frame.

My wife and I were looking at buying a Thomas Kincaid painting. They call him the painter of light. You can't buy his originals, they go to a museum, but he takes lithographs of them and then touches them up and the funny things is, if you put a light on them, like a spotlight, you can turn the light up or down and it looks like the painting is painted with day light or nighttime light. It's just unbelievable what he's able to do with his highlighting.

We ultimately didn't end up buying it, but the lady showed us the painting without a frame. And then she said, 'Now, for example, we could put it in a frame like this', and she showed me the same painting a little smaller but in this giant, ornate frame. 'Or, we could put it in this really simple frame over here that would be a lot less expensive, it would look like this.'

I am not exaggerating when I tell you that this almost destroyed the beauty of the painting to me to see it in this ugly little frame that was meaningless. I almost had to walk right out of the store so I could sit and contemplate what I had just experienced because it was such an intense thing to realize that people buy into the frames that we set all the time. And when we set a frame for somebody and people buy into that frame, a profound thing takes place.

This week: think about the frames you've established for yourself and how they may be ready to be updated.

Until next time,

Kenrick E. Cleveland

"People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others."
--Blaise Pascal (1623 - 1662)

I define criteria as that which needs to be accomplished or met in order to take action.

When someone is listening to you about what you do, they already have an image of buying or being involved with your product or service. That is the truism of all truisms. When you're sitting in front of somebody or talking to them on the phone, they already have that image in their mind. To the extent that you can focus them on that picture, and put yourself in it, the sale will be made. To the extent that you violate that picture and take them out of it, they will go away and you will be left empty-handed.

How can we make the power of what we do more powerful in persuasion? How do we make it seem like what we want them to do comes from their own thoughts? The fact is, it genuinely must be their own thoughts so we must start first with their own thoughts.

Criteria is, first and foremost, one of the most powerful things you'll ever do. Used right, it's going to increase your money, it's going to increase your skills, your persuasion will go through the roof, but most people either don't know how to do it or don't know how to do it right.

Criteria is what is necessary for you to aim your message. Without criteria all you're doing is thinking that you know what the person wants. That's called 'features and benefits' (and if you don't know how I feel about 'features and benefits' yet, you will find out soon in an upcoming article). So with features and benefits you're bringing up EVERYTHING about your products or services. This is the hit or miss way. That's what it really is. It's hit or miss.

Instead of directing everything you say like a laser at what they want, you're hoping you'll say something that will make them stop and go, 'Wow, tell me more about that, would you? That's really why I'm here. In fact, I'm so glad you said that because now that you've said that, I know that I want to do all of my business with you.'

This holds true no matter what industry you're in. If you can't get the criteria from your prospect, in my opinion, you need to stop presenting. You're not a sales monkey. It's a cooperative effort between you and the person and I would frame it as such right from the get go. And I would frame it without saying it in so many words but through your use of question. And that question that I would probably look to ask and have answered is, 'Why are we here?'

So why does eliciting criteria really work? Well, number one the prospect doesn't understand what they're really giving us. They think they're just telling us basic stuff. They don't realize that they're literally opening themselves up much like a book and allowing us to see deep within them and if they did, they may not give it to us. From time to time you'll find people that don't want to give this to you. That's an indication of your lack of rapport should that happen. If that happens, there's little reason to proceed. Stop immediately and get rapport.

Maybe you want to try to continue on a little bit, but basically if they're not going to respect you from the minute you begin talking, the situation is probably not going to work out well and you probably will not close the deal so stop kidding yourself and move on and work harder on gaining rapport in the future.

So even if the prospect does understand what they're giving us, it is socially correct to find out what is needed prior to recommending something. This is what doctors and lawyers and consultants do. You're simply doing what everyone believes is the appropriate and right thing to do anyway.

Can you remember a time when you stalled out because of a lack of rapport? What was your first indication? Were you able to go back, gain rapport, and move forward with the elicitation of criteria?

As you use criteria more and more, you'll be amazed at how far ahead you'll be able to get in life. You won't stall out anymore and you'll be able to recover more easily. We'll be delving more deeply into criteria in future postings and I'd love some stories from you to deconstruct and/or give as examples. Just post them at this link: http://www.askkenrickcleveland.com.

In July 2007, I'm hosting a 3-day seminar in Las Vegas where I'll be teaching some strategies that I've never taught before. These are strategies that will allow you to link to your prospect's deepest desires to you, even better than criteria and values. This is brand new material. We'll also be going into many other exciting persuasion topics that you will want to hear! Look for upcoming emails with details on the Vegas Seminar.

Kenrick E. Cleveland, CEO
Chief Persuasion Officer
www.MAXpersuasion.com