Hello Persuader,

Hey everyone, I've just emerged from my persuasion lab where I've created a new motivational recording for you.

It's called "The Intention Multiplier."

If you've studied my works or trained with me, you'll note that I talk often about setting your intention before your persuasion work.

To me, it's integral to my work and success as a persuader.

I don't just walk in and accept whatever happens.

The first step to success is setting your intention.

And since most people never set their intention, I thought I might help you ramp
up your persuasion skills by creating the "Intention Multiplier" recording.

You can't BUY this recording anywhere.

But I will GIFT it to you if you will do me (and you) a small favor.

I'd like to know what your persuasion needs are and I've constructed a short survey.

I'm interested in creating courses and seminars that fit your needs.

So here's the bribe -

I will give you the "Intention Multiplier" recording if you help me help you by
filling out the survey.

Just answer all of the questions and you'll be directed to a secure download page.

I look forward to serving you better and this will help me laser target your needs.

https://secure.maxpersuasion.com/survey/

Frankly, people doubted me.

They told me no one has strategies that can work at increasing sales in
today's economy.

They told me that even if they worked, they wouldn't work in THEIR
particular field.

You know what I did?

I gave all I had to the Persuasion 911 series.

And people responded.

I didn't even have room for all the testimonials I received.

These are people who took action on what I've been teaching.

They took action and immediately noted - these strategies work.

So if you think there isn't anything new to learn, you better get your butt
on the last two calls.

This is ALL NEW material I've been developing.

When you sign up, you'll get access to the calls you missed.

As long as you sign up during the series, you get the discount price.

WARNING: the price goes up by $200 next week.

No, I'm not kidding.

This call series will take your breathe (and your doubts) away.

Get with the program.

Pick up the phone and dial 911.

That's Persuasion911.

http://www.persuasion911.com

Go out and persuade someone,

Kenrick Cleveland

Hi Persuader,

I want to just mention this basic truism of persuasion: the power is in the presentation. The power is not in the closing.

When I was a young man, I had been in sales for a couple of years and I was excelling quickly so they made me a closer. I would be the guy that when the sales person was missing his or her mark, I would come in and try to still get the sale.

I was good at it. I did really well. But after a couple of months of doing this, I began to see some patterns emerge. It was funny because each of the people that worked for me at the time, I could tell exactly where I would have to shore up their presentation in order to close the deal because I knew what they weren't doing well.

Further, it seemed like the same people had the same patterns and I always felt, back then, that if they would just do a better job in presenting, my job would be really easy. In fact, I probably wouldn't be needed nearly as much, if at all.

Most of the time I was able to turn it around; sometimes I couldn't. The bottom line is, that the power of every single sale is in the presentation, not in your ability to argue or close.

My Magical Objection Mastery series, the 24 doorways into a person's mind, enables you to persuade before the objections come with huge success in overcoming the objections that will inevitably come up in a person's mind. Knowing how to do that kind of framing and reframing is incredibly important and there's nothing finer in my opinion than the Magical Objection Mastery program.

There are some incredibly important characteristics of having really convinced someone. If you've done that, closing in the typical sense isn't really necessary anyway.

Imagine just for a moment that you bought something that you were really happy with and the product or service worked well for you. Identify this in your mind. One you have done this, I want you to go through this list. Did you feel trust towards the person? Are you aware now as you think back about it that you didn't have much doubt at least about the person? Did you feel an urgency to get what they were trying to sell you?

You probably had a desire for it. I'll bet you saw the value in the product and you were visualizing owning it and benefiting from it. Buying it was relatively easy.

Now imagine for a moment that you did that and then the person started doing some kind of old fashioned closing techniques. They said, "If I can show you a way to get this and save time, energy and money, I'm sure you would be interested in doing that now wouldn't you?"

As you hear that statement and you're contrasting it with the good feelings you had at that time, I'll bet you that kind of statement doesn't sit well with you. In fact, it'd feel pretty funny if someone tried to do it to you.

If you've been persuasive in what you've presented, if you've been careful to observe whether or not your prospect is with you the whole way, agreeing with you, if you've been continuously linking to their values and more then getting the sale will be really easy.

Until Next Time,

Kenrick E. Cleveland

Hi Persuader,

Okay, so not only is there this economic crisis percolating, but there's an election coming up pretty darn soon. (I wonder if these two things have anything at all to do with each other. )

In the spirit of the season, I'd like to talk about the politician's most favorite past time: spin. No, I'm not talking about spinning classes you take at the gym. Those are incredibly difficult and the seats are painfully hard, if you ask me. I'm talking about the process of spinning a story (a political debate, a campaign speech, what have you) to put it in the best light for your side. The idea behind spinning is that everybody wants to put their slant on an issue.

I'm going to go back to the salad days just for an example here. I'm going back to a State of the Union address from many years ago -- I won't name names, but I'll say that the president at the time was talking about what to do with a surplus in the budget. (Wow, that was a long time ago!)

So in this address, he said that for the first time in history, we had an excess in our budget. His plan for the surplus was to "be responsible with the surplus" and not just dump it back into people's pockets to be spent. He wanted to put it towards Social Security and do the "responsible" thing by investing in American companies and in the American stock market.

Well, what happens after any political event? Well, depending on which network you're watching either one or both sides make comments and attempt to persuade you to think how they think (as opposed to you thinking for yourself). This presupposes that there are only two sides which I absolutely do not agree with.

After hearing the speech, we then get to hear the "opposing" side put their two cents in. When this surplus existed, we had a democrat as a president and the republican talking heads got up and said something to the effect of, 'The president says he wants to be responsible and he says that you can't be responsible. Do you mean to tell me the great citizens of this United States can't be responsible with their money? The president wants to control you. He wants to control how you spend your money and where you spend it.'

The basics of this are the frame of responsibility and what they do then is they try to knock that frame out and say, control freak, government interference.

Then the democrats come back with their own spin. And if you were going to spin it the other way, you would analyze the emotionally charged words the republican spinner used. How do they knock out control freak/government interference and put back 'for the people'?

They come back with their argument. One that may work is, well, you could certainly call that being controlling and trying to take control of the money, but by the same token, the citizens of the United States, while great and sovereign, have demonstrated that they're more willing to spend their money on other things besides long term savings. We've got an obligation as a government to deal with these people as they get older. '

The "two sides" can go on like that until they turn blue in the face. Who wins? Well, whoever is able to implant in your mind the highest frame and hold it there. And that's really what this is all about.

Until Next Time,

Kenrick E. Cleveland

"Hope is the expectation that something outside of ourselves, something or someone external, is going to come to our rescue and we will live happily ever after." -- Dr. Robert Anthony

Hi Persuader,

Seven hundred billion (plus) dollars. How did they end up selling it? Well, there was fear. There was scarcity. There was impending doom. And it lead to panic and more fear and more doom. They said if it didn't happen, surely we'd be ruined. They called it a bailout and when the public outcry was so strong that the house refused to pass it, they switched it to a rescue plan.

White House spokesman Tony Fratto told journalists who had been using the term (as were we all) "bailout" to describe the $700 billion package. "It's really unfortunate shorthand for a very complicated issue." The White House prefers the word "rescue."

Those in charge believed that they would be in a better situation if this were known as a "rescue" rather than a "bailout." Bailout sounds terrible. Rescue is safe. It gives you a warm feeling -- like coming to while on the operating table.

And then Senator McCain got on the framing bandwagon and said, "Well I think what happened is we didn't convince enough Republicans and Democrats…that this was a rescue package and not a bailout." Convincing and persuasion was in order because face value wasn't good enough.

I watched a bit of the CSPAN, the CNN, the FOX and the MSNBC while this was going down, as much as I could handle, and mainly from the perspective of, who's being more persuasive in this deal. (CSPAN wins because they have no pundits at all.)

Problem is, this is so complicated that you have to be an economist or financial advisor or banking expert to understand it. It's enough to make the common man's eyes gloss over except for the fact that the taxpayer wasn't having it because it was coming out of their pocket.

And now that there's been a "rescue" (not that we the people have been rescued, but that big banks and such have been rescued), it seems like it's not gotten any easier to understand.

The frame stuck, however, that this had to happen. The frame was that if it didn't happen, the world would crumble starting with "Main Street". The frame was that there was no way for the market to correct itself. The frame was that socializing the banks (in my opinion this is a form of socialism), was the only way for us not to head into a tailspin.

The real problem isn't in the framing of this. The real problem isn't the persuasiveness or lack thereof of the parties involved. The problem with this plan is not that it has been improperly spun. The real problem is that it won't fix the crisis.

Until Next Time,

Kenrick E. Cleveland

"Our mind is capable of passing beyond the dividing line we have drawn for it. Beyond the pairs of opposites of which the world consists, other, new insights begin." - Hermann Hesse

Hi Persuader,

Who am I? Why am I here? These are thoughts that separate us from animals. We also have the ability to drive, finger dexterity with opposable thumbs, and a very strong impulse to cover our animal bodies with clothes, not only to protect us from the elements, but to look sharp and stylish.

When we're talking about the big questions -- the ones philosophers have been asking for -- well, since the dawn of man -- we are expressing the very essence of being human, the state in which we examine our primary state.

Primary states refer to something in our external environment. When we're dealing with our states of being, we are dealing with emotions. When we talk about our primary state, we are referring to events, people, information, etcetera, in our outside or external world. I am happy.

Animals do that. My dog does that. He is happy. He is sad when I leave. He's ecstatic when I throw a stick for him or give him a treat. He is excited for dinner or a walk. His primary state is an absolute pure emotional state. He's not excited about his happiness. He doesn't experience how he feels about feeling sad that he has to be on a leash. My dog doesn't examine his feelings about me leaving, throwing a stick, giving him a treat, having his dinner or taking a walk. He just is. It's a Zen, 'be here now' existence for him.

What distinguishes the way we humans think -- in addition to being happy or excited or sad -- is that we can further examine our primary states within meta states. We can take a bird's eye view and reflect.

A meta state is above or about a primary state or another meta state. When we are in a meta state, we are examining and/or talking about another state. It's that simple.

In order to achieve a meta state, we have to dissociate from our primary state. We can't be 'in the feeling' but instead take that step back, remove ourselves from the actual feeling, and then look at the feeling or what we're thinking about that feeling.

What does this have to do with persuasion? Well, knowing about primary and meta states leads us to an understanding of how people's beliefs work. When we understand our prospects and clients at their core, when we latch on to their values and criteria and examine them in their primary state and then bring them to a meta state about their primary state, we can add in to their model of the world -- maybe marry what we are offering with their criteria.

As Herman Hesse, a writer who was known for his exploration of the individual's search for spirituality outside of organized religion, wrote, "Our mind is capable of passing beyond the dividing line we have drawn for it." This is an extraordinarily meta observation and an exciting place to be.

Until Next Time,

Kenrick E. Cleveland

"The results you achieve will be in direct proportion to the effort you apply." -- Denis Waitley

Hi Persuader,

I've been noticing something fascinating lately that I want to share with you, my readers. I have a group of students who I've been working with, my advanced students, all of whom have been with me for over a year, and I can't tell you how incredibly proud I am of them and the progress that they've been making. I mean, it's really leaps and bounds, off the charts, unhinged progress.

I'd like to give myself a big pat on the back for being such a great teacher and really caring about what I'm teaching them on their weekly coaching club calls and twice monthly advanced calls, but I can't take even most of the credit for the advances I'm seeing despite being the common denominator ; - ).

What I'm seeing as an increase in orders of magnitude of their persuasion skills is a result of their incredible hard work and diligence. I am constantly hearing, especially on my one-on-one coaching calls, how accelerated their learning is coming to them. They are receiving incredible results in an unpredictable economy and realizing that persuasion is reaching every aspect of their lives.

One of my star pupils told me just recently that she's started realizing that persuasion is permeating all parts of her life, not just in business, not just in putting together more contracts, not just signing more deals, not just getting more listings, but all aspects of life. She told me, "(Persuasion) is in everything that I do no matter whether it's business or not. It's to make me more effective. And help me also understand myself better and understand others better. I think I'm achieving that with you."

This was kind of an 'aha' moment for her. It's something I often say to my students, but until they experience it, it's kind of an abstract idea. When you feel the results of your efforts, hard work, and study click into place and produce something quantifiable, that is an incredible achievement.

I will tell you that not only am I proud and thrilled for her, but it gives me renewed enthusiasm for doing what I do when I see the noticeable results in so many folks.

I have some other students, a husband and wife, who are in the real estate business as well, and despite the tough housing market, they are flourishing and really seeing the fruit of their labors as a solid, ever increasing number in their bank accounts and investments. They've also been really polishing their writing skills and have started a mastermind group to share the immensity of their knowledge with others.

I could go on and on with how proud I am of my students and despite it seeming like I'm bragging, I am genuinely thrilled to continue to bring the best and most up to the second persuasion material in existence.

Until Next Time,

Kenrick E. Cleveland

"Properly practiced creativity MUST result in greater sales more economically achieved. Properly practiced creativity can lift your claims out of the swamp of sameness and make them accepted, believed, persuasive, urgent." William Bernbach advertising executive, 1911-1982)

Hi Persuader,

I'll admit it. Sometimes I like to be tricky. I love to play with language. I love to wordsmith. I love to set harmless little linguistic traps and pitfalls for fun and profit.

One of my favorite strategies in this respect is when no really means yes. And this works especially well when closing the deal.

An example of this is: "Is there anything else you need to know in order to go ahead?"

Let's say that you were sold on something, you felt absolutely ready to go ahead and buy it, you had a need for it, you had the money for it, and the person asks you, "Is there anything else you need to know in order to go ahead?"

This question is designed to elicit a no, but in this case, the no means yes (i.e. yes to the purchase of the product or service). So you're ready to go and the sales person says, "Is there anything else you need to know in order to go ahead?" And your response is no.

So what's the power of that? Well, the power is that everybody wants to say no. It's human nature to want to say no to a sales person, so here you get to say no but where no actually means yes. It's relatively simple. You can memorize that one line if you want to, and that's one of the best ways I've ever found to ask.

Now what happens if the person says, yes, that in fact there is something they need to know before they move forward. Well, that's not really a problem. You're still in front of them (or on the phone) and you can give them the information that they need, as opposed to having questions later when you're not in front of them to answer their questions.

It's a really wonderful closing question, actually one of the finest in my opinion. It's very simple, very elegant, and very easy. It's gentle, it's unobtrusive, it's effective, it's strategic, and it leaves you in a good position if the person waffles in some way.

I think that's a really important question that you should learn to ask. And you need to ask it when you notice that the person is really sold. If you ask it before they're really sold, you'll get objections. If you ask it too late, in essence, you'll look like you're not paying attention. So you need to really watch closely if you're going to use this kind of a question.

Until Next Time,

Kenrick E. Cleveland

"Human memory is a marvelous but fallacious instrument. The memories which lie within us are not carved in stone; not only do they tend to become erased as the years go by, but often they change, or even increase by incorporating extraneous features." --Primo Levi

Hi Persuader,

What is a memory? Wikipedia defines it as an organism's ability to store, retain, and subsequently retrieve information.

We have long term memories, short term memories, working memories, cellular memory, sensory memory -- basically, lots of different ways to remember. The thing is, as Primo Levi described in the quotation above, not all memories are a) real, b) remembered correctly, and c) set in stone.

This makes the creation and utilization of memory and memories ripe for the persuasion picking.

I want to talk with you about creating future memories. This is a really fun persuasion technique. I really like this. Using this strategy you can have someone imagining doing something that will possibly affect them later in such a way that they feel as if they actually did it. Here's how.

Ask your prospect or client to imagine something that you want them to do or would benefit them in some way (i.e. purchasing more life insurance, taking the offer which was a little lower than they were looking for that was made on the house they've been wanting/needing to sell, et cetera).

Next step, talk them through this in great detail. See if you can use as much detail as possible because the detail makes it real. Ask them to pick something seemingly irrelevant that will unconsciously remind them of this like for example a landmark they see on their way home every day or when they put their shoes on or run their hand through their hair. It doesn't matter what it is, just that it is something that happens on a daily basis.

Then what you want to do is rehearse this with them a few times. Say to them, "This is really interesting, so imagine this thing that you're thinking of doing and imagine that you're actually doing it. And now imagine that every time you close your car door, that sound just triggers an image of seeing yourself do it. (Again.) So car door closes, and bam, your unconscious keeps presenting and representing this to your mind, to yourself.

You could ask them to pick something seemingly irrelevant that will unconsciously remind them of what they've just imagined. The words 'seemingly' and 'unconsciously remind' are really powerful. Pick something that's seemingly irrelevant. In other words, you're saying that passing that road sign really is relevant because it reminds you of what I just had you imagine. And it will unconsciously remind them. How are you unconsciously reminded?

The thing is, this bubbles around somewhere inside your prospect's mind and they may even think it's their idea. That's great. That's exactly what we're aiming for.

It's a really fun, powerful pattern.

Until Next Time,

Kenrick E. Cleveland

Hi Persuader,

Try this: I'm sure you'll get it real quick but because you're all such good folks out there, I want you to spell the word 'folk' three times. Do it right now in your mind. Spell the word 'folk' three times as fast as you can.

Now what do you call the white part of an egg?

Did you say yolk? Really?

Are you asking your prospects the right questions to get to their deepest values and criteria? When we elicit criteria, if we're doing it right, our prospects don't understand what they are really giving us.

So how can we make the most of each question we ask? An extremely important thing to remember is that the questions cause the answer. What does that mean? It means that as we learn to better ask the question, we're going to be a lot better at making persuasion happen.

If I were to look at you as a brand new client, and you've never bought anything from me before and let's say I'm an advisor and I'm there to help you with wealth planning throughout your generations and I say, "Would you just tell me the two or three things that you need to hear me say today to make you buy? Just tell me so that we can get this part out of the way. Go ahead. I'm listening."

What would happen? That's right. Nothing. They'd probably either tell you to leave or they'd get up and walk out. Yet magically, when we elicit their criteria, they gladly give that very same information to us.

Why? Well, to an extent, it's disguised.

Your prospect does not understand what they're giving you when you ask this way. They don't get it. Once in a blue moon you'll find someone giving you resistance to this, but it doesn't happen often.

Even if they did understand what they were giving us, it is socially correct and absolutely acceptable to find out what they need prior to recommending a product or service. Doctors don't just prescribe medicine prior to finding out about your history, finding out if you have allergies or without finding out why you're there to see them. Neither do consultants, lawyers, or sales people. We simply cannot give people any recommendation if we don't know what they want or need.

Here's the point and this is important: we're setting people's minds up so that we can enter them and we can get them to do what we want them to do. We can set them going along a direction that when we interrupt that direction, we can cause them to immediately, as if it was always so, go along with what we're saying. (What's the white part of an egg called?)

When I ask you 'what's important about X?' or 'if I were a magician and I had a magic wand and I could wave it and get you anything in business you want, what would it be?' I'm listening very intently for where you have the strongest emotional reaction to one of the words that you're saying.

We're opening the people's minds. We're opening them to their own desires, to their own things.

Until Next Time,

Kenrick E. Cleveland