Hi Persuader,

Some of the most interesting conversations come out of working with my advanced students one-on-one. The conversations are never one sided and I ultimately learn nearly as much from them or from interacting with them on the level of their industry as they learn from me. It's an amazing process.

Recently I was talking with a student/client/friend who's an advisor and I got on a roll (as I am sometimes apt to do). What came out of this was a really fascinating take on problem solving. My suggestion is that you can never solve a problem on the same level that the problem was created. You have to move to a different level.

Ultimately, this is the basis for all professions in the world today. There are a lot of people who like to do it themselves, i.e. try to do their own taxes, try to sell their own houses, try to fix their own cars -- but most of us go to an expert because we realize that there are things accountants, advisors, realtors, and mechanics know how to do with more expertise and more efficiency than us, non-experts, in the given field.

If you are capable of solving the problem yourself, and if you don't mind getting your hands dirty or reading up on the tax code, you wouldn't go to an expert. If you were capable of resolving the issues (and maybe liked tinkering or ciphering), you wouldn't ask for someone who specializes in resolving these issues. You would have no need for it.

Take for example the chiropractor. Chiropractor's have spent many years studying how the bones in the body work to give support to the back so that when the body is not properly supported and is thus in pain, they can make adjustments that will help eliminate the pain and put people back into order again.

Further, they know how to tell their clients how to strengthen certain areas, how to do specific exercises, so they won't return to the problem again. If you were in pain right now and you laid down on the floor and tried to move and twist and maybe you decided sleeping on the floor would straighten you out and it didn't work at all, what are you going to do? What is your next step? You can't move, you can't go to work, you're in constant pain; what are you going to do?

If you're like me, or like most people, you're going to look for somebody that can see the big picture, someone who can look at the larger problem than you can, that can see from a greater perspective, someone who understands more than you and can go to a different level to bring a solution to you than you're able to do. That's the basis of all professions today.

For purposes of persuasion, this week, figure out the bigger picture on your profession and see if there's a way to market and sell with that in mind.

Until Next Time,

Kenrick E. Cleveland

"The most important persuasion tool you have in your entire arsenal is integrity." --Zig Ziglar

Hi Persuader,

I'm not a persuasion cop. I'm not any kind of cop. In fact, I actively dislike cops. My job and my passion in life is to teach you what I have learned about persuasion. Without attempting to monitor or pass judgment, part of that teaching is guiding you the in the ways in which this information can be misused for manipulation. I learned tough lessons the hard way when I was a young, eager, foolish man. As a result of those lessons learned, I know a thing or two about integrity and my hope is that you will learn from my heartache and trouble.

As we apply these social influence skills it is my sincere hope that we will go forward with an application towards ethics and integrity.

Ethics and integrity go hand in hand with congruity, and congruity forms a key component. Why? Congruity is like someone making a mistake and being genuinely sorry they made it. Whereas you can really tell the difference between that and someone who says I'm sorry but doesn't necessarily mean it.

Ethics and integrity allow us to use these kinds of powerful skills and do so with a good clean conscience because we know that we're using things on others that we're comfortable having used on ourselves. And as you know, by participating in my program, the importance of integrity is something we constantly discuss. I encourage and promote good uses of ethics and integrity, however, I try to use good ethics and integrity in talking about ethics and integrity and not force them but bring them up, constantly showing why it's helpful and useful to use them.

My belief is, that without ethics, integrity and congruity, a sales person will never rise above mediocrity.

Trustworthiness is one of the most valuable perceptions a client or prospect can have of us as people who sell for a living. Their perception needs to be in line with the reality for it to be truly powerful.

When I really started living my persuasion life with total integrity, I noticed amazing things start to happen for me and for my business. I began to draw more of what I wanted to me, I began to draw higher end clients and students who were also trustworthy whereas previously many of my clients were not people who I really wanted to do business with.

Having built up that aspect of my personality, having an abundance of integrity in the bank is like having built up my 'f-you' money. I could walk away from any situation that was not comfortable because I no longer "needed" to take on just anyone but could be very selective in my processes. Consider never compromising yourself again as the first step to never compromising yourself again. It's an amazing feeling.

Until Next Time,

Kenrick E. Cleveland

"To sit patiently with a yearning that has not yet been fulfilled, and to trust that, that fulfillment will come, is quite possibly one of the most powerful "magic skills" that human beings are capable of. It has been noted by almost every ancient wisdom tradition." -- Elizabeth Gilbert

Hi Persuader,

I absolutely love this quote. It transcends fads and what's popular in the moment, and connects to deeply rooted wisdom that has been inside of us all probably since the dawn of man.

How much of our powerful magic skills do we ignore? It's really sad that the tip of the iceberg is spent on fairly mundane activities while we let the real power languish under the surface.

I once had a conversation with a man who called himself a healer. He told me that not all of us learn the lessons we need to learn in each lifetime. Not all of us become conscious or access our true essence. Sometimes we're just here to rest. Sometimes we get a vacation life. Other times we have hard lessons to learn and are born into dire circumstances.

Now, whether or not you or I believe in the concept of reincarnation was irrelevant to this healer. He had a certainty about him that was compelling. His work was clear in this life -- he knew he was alive to take care of people's spirits and help them to find their paths. That sounds like an amazing calling.

I feel I have a calling too. I love to teach. I love to be a catalyst to help people improve their lives. And over the next few months as an addition to my work in the field of persuading the affluent, I will be starting another aspect of what I feel is my calling. I am strategizing and setting out the most powerful, life-changing, paradigm shifting, wealth creating systems that has ever been created.

I'm incredibly excited about this new addition because together we're going to discover our ancient wisdom, excavating everything that's under the surface, with the assistance of our other than conscious minds, through teleconferences, light and sound sessions, online tools, emotional freedom technique, interactively learning and gaining tools to access our own personal ancient knowledge.

Patience is not something I was born with but I was blessed with a very trusting nature. Yet over the years I have grown to understand the importance of patience and have finally come to realize what can happen when patience and trust combine. I'm eager, I'm excited, I'm enthusiastic, and raring to go. Stay tuned for some thrilling things to come.

Until Next Time,

Kenrick E. Cleveland

"I think it's very important that whatever you're trying to make or sell, or teach has to be basically good. A bad product and you know what? You won't be here in ten years." -Martha Stewart

Hi Persuader,

There's a parody commercial, an older one, from Saturday Night Live where Sam Waterston represents 'Old Glory Insurance'. The commercial sells supplemental 'robot insurance' for seniors. 'I'm Sam Waterston of the popular TV series law and order. As a senior citizen, you're probably aware of the threat robots pose. Robots are everywhere and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.'

It's hilarious but also poignant and, as with a lot of satire, cuts to the core of an issue in a way that only satire can.

Senior consumers and our elderly affluent clients and prospects control 70% of the country's wealth and are obviously targeted, but not with as much or as savvy advertising as you would think. Just watch a show geared to an older demographic (Wheel of Fortune or any of the daytime soaps come to mind) and notice the advertisements-denture cream, supplemental insurance (maybe not robot insurance, but other kinds which may or may not be superfluous), pharmaceuticals, pain killers, adult diapers-it's all very ageist if you think about it.

There's a reason advertisers gear more toward emotions because studies have shown that as we age, we become less attuned to rational, persuasive arguments and more into visual, subjective appeals. You'll notice the 'Old Glory Insurance' parody is not at all geared towards reason, but towards emotions and a 'better safe than sorry' mentality and to fear (something our government has taken to heart, or in my mind, to an all time low, in the 'global war on terror' with a constantly elevated terror 'threat' no matter what the reality is.)

So how can we utilize this information with integrity and honesty? How can we ensure our affluent senior prospects, through emotion and visual means, that we actually do have their best interests at heart especially in a world that seems to want to take advantage of them?

First things first, your way ahead of the competition.

Until Next Time,

Kenrick E. Cleveland

"Keep away from those who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you believe that you too can become great." -- Mark Twain

Hi Persuader,

My clients and students are at the top of their respective games. I know this, because I work primarily with very high end financial advisors, real estate agents, speakers, sales professionals, and the like, and they did not get to where they are by falling into it or because of luck. They got there because they have goals, they have work ethic, they have the intelligence, they have the education, and they have ambition.

Ambition is a very interesting force. Some people have it, others clearly don't. What is the difference between the two camps? Is it an internal spark? Self confidence? Is it something you have to be born with or something you can acquire? If you think about some of our more recent presidents and the raw ambition it takes to become president, and then consider their brothers (just as an example -- Bill Clinton/Roger Clinton, Jimmy Carter/Billy Carter), then we can sort of see where this isn't much of an argument for the genetics of ambition.

The true mark of an ambitious person is being able to bounce back after a setback, not getting mired down in the 'oh, woe is me, I didn't achieve what I wanted to', that many people succumb to after not at first succeeding. Real ambition lays in the 'try, try again' part.

This pulling yourself up by the bootstraps mindset was so well illustrated by Thomas Jefferson when he said, "Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude."

So it's all a matter of -- do you want it or don't you? If you want it, and you don't have it, what are you doing or not doing that's preventing you from having it? If you want it, and you don't have it, that's enough of a start, it's a platform from which to make that jump.

Stop one: start with a simple list. I'm a HUGE fan of lists. Make a list of what your goals/ambitions. Get specific. These things don't come to fruition if they're vague and unformed in your own mind. Get down to the nitty gritty details. Flesh it all out and read over it every morning when you wake up and every night when you go to bed. This will speak to your sub/other than conscious mind and set it up to help you begin to form solid plans for how to achieve the goals you have in mind.

And if or when you cup up against some adversity, remember that the small defeats are not the end result. The end result is your goal, the small defeats are tiny speed bumps (or flat tires) along the way -- both overcome-able and temporary.

My last bit of advice -- start now. Do not pass Go!. Get to it.

Until Next Time,

Kenrick E. Cleveland

Hi Persuader,

Previously in Let’s Get Emotional, I described the ‘whys’ of appealing to our clients and prospects on an emotional level. Now I’m going to give you some ‘hows’.

We all want to believe that we’re doing the right thing. We all want to believe that it makes the most amount of sense for our clients to act on what we tell them because we can back something up with logic does not mean the client will part with their money. In fact, backing it up with logic is largely irrelevant.

If you get emotionally involved with your product or service and you believe in it your odds of passing that enthusiasm and feeling onto your prospects and clients is greatly increased.

Say you’re a financial advisor and you nearly twisted somebody’s arm to buy life insurance one day, and they did, and a few years later one of them dies and the life insurance pays off and saves the family. The spouse calls you, in tears, crying, telling you that the loss of their loved one -- they don’t know how they’re going to get over it, but at least they don’t have to worry about money. They tell you, ‘I want you to know, I didn’t like you very much. I told my husband I thought you were pushy when you were on us to buy insurance but I want to tell you, I was the one who was wrong and I’m so grateful that you did what it took to get us to make that happen. I don’t know how I’ll get over my husband’s loss, but financially I’m going to be okay.’

When you get involved emotionally with your product, you will most definitely pass that on to your customers, to your potential customers, to your current customers, to everybody, and they will know that they’re dealing with someone who really believes. That goes so far to help you sell powerfully.

On the other hand, think about what it would sound like if you were to logically argue the actuarial tables about the client being this age and by that age, odds are they’re going to die, and if they don’t have insurance up to this point, it’s a mistake. I’ll tell you, this is much, much less likely to work for you.

I heard a story about a Japanese insurance firm who hired widows to sell life insurance. It’s a somewhat manipulative tactic as I see it, but think about how ingenious that is. These women are calling secure non-widowed housewives and laying their story about -- they too were once secure and had a husband and now they’re reduced to having to sell insurance to make ends meet. (Incidentally, I happen to believe that selling insurance is as noble a profession as any other and have no perception of this being something someone does when they are ‘reduced’ to do it. I am passing on the story to illustrate how one firm managed to really manipulate the heck out of emotional selling.)

Real estate agents, financial advisors, sales people of every sort -- post some examples of the emotions your clients experience in the course of your interactions with them have impacted your business and think about how you can incorporate into your selling these stories for maximum persuasion.

Until Next Time,

Kenrick E. Cleveland

Hi Persuader,

Here's a bold statement, but one I'm willing to stand behind: forget about appealing to your prospect or client logically. In sales, appealing to logic comes a (way) distant second to appealing to their emotions.

To illustrate this, I'm going to tell you a story about some college kids who learned this and put it to the test.

The students all got together and agreed before class started that if the professor moved to the right of the classroom, to the student's right as they were facing the classroom, the students would sit up and pay close attention. They would be very quiet, smile, and nod approvingly at the professor. But if the professor moved to the left of the classroom, the farther left he went, the students would cut up, act out, throw things, look away from the professor and act disinterested.

Class began. They followed through with their plan and it didn't take but about a half an hour and the professor was pegged into the right side of the room, standing there for the entire rest of the class with the students absolutely gobbling up everything he said, excitedly listening, nodding, smiling and showing their approval of all that he was doing.

The next day, they decided that they would do the exact same thing but just reverse it. So class began and what they did is as the professor would move to the right, which he started right off towards the right of the room, they immediately would cut up and act up and act disinterested and as the professor would go to the left of the room, they would act interested and they would do what they should. It took not too long and the professor was pegged over into the left of the room.

Throughout the whole process, the professor had no idea what was going on. The professor didn't know that they were doing this and had no way of knowing that they were doing this. He was massively affected by what they did.

Why? Well, we like it when people approve of us, we love to be smiled at, we love encouragement, we love to know we're having a good impact on people, we love it when people have interest in what we're saying and doing. These are all fundamentally emotional reactions.

How would you like to be able to affect people in that same way and get them doing things and responding to you in ways that up to now has been happenstance?

The thing to remember first and foremost is that people are led to decisions based on their emotions. Emotions bring people to decisions, logic cements or potentially breaks that decision. The logical aspect is actually is very minor. Obviously, for each person it's slightly different, but if I were to just grossly generalize, making decisions based on emotion may be as high as 80, 85 percent while logic is only a very small 15, 20 percent to back it up.

A person who makes their living persuading but can't use emotions well will most likely never make much money, at least the cards are stacked strongly against them. And similarly, a person who can make strong logical arguments but is not adept at utilizing emotion also has the cards strongly stacked against them.

So how do we do this? Well, stay tuned for an upcoming post for more information about getting to your prospect's and client's emotions.

Until Next Time,

Kenrick E. Cleveland

Hi Persuader,

While the concept of 'energy' may seem new-agey, I personally find it integral to the understanding of self, which is the first step in understanding persuasion.

At a recent seminar I had in Tucson I really got deep into core drives which we can use to put our persuasion fingers on our clientele's triggers. These triggers are universal.

The Ancient Indian concept of Chakras are definitely considered 'woo woo' by a great many people, but are an excellent metaphor, if nothing else, for the core values and drive within each of us. Chakras are energy vortices along the body, each corresponding to a need.

Irregardless of our spiritual or religious affiliations, these energy centers are interrelated with the notion of self mastery which is in turn interrelated, in my view, with persuasion. Simply, we, as persuaders, have the ability to pick and choose from the abundance of life, spirituality, business, economics, literature, politics, popular culture, history, or anything at all, and take what is valuable and shape our world out of what we've gleaned.

I also have a personal belief that there's a certain reality to the different kinds of energy flows in our bodies. Chinese medicine practitioners would refer to that as Qi (pronounced Chi) and they can trace those energetic flows throughout our bodies in energy rivers called meridians. Meridians control different things in our body, corresponding to different organs, and to the extent that we have some awareness of this, we can use it to help ourselves. So call it DNA or Qi or Chakras or meridians. . . it's all power.

In that spirit, how can we absorb value from chakras, as one of my students suggested, even simply as a metaphor?

The base chakra is concerned with security in the same way as core values of continuing on, fight and flight. The second chakra is about sexual reproduction as is the fourth core value which I've discussed. The third chakra is about power-very similar to the third core value of fight.

As we get higher on the chakras, we also get higher in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Maslow was an American psychologist in the mid 1900s who created a scale in the form of a pyramid that explained human needs. If the bottom levels of needs aren't being met, nothing else matters.

At the bottom of the pyramid are two of the four core values in addition to biological functions. The physiological basis for physical human existence-food, water, air, sleep, sex, excretion and homeostasis (internal balance)-has extreme power where persuasion is concerned. Obviously, we're not really able to utilize air or sleep (unless you're selling mattresses) or excretion or homeostasis (unless you're a doctor).

The next level up for Maslow pertains to security-the fight and flight core values-and also corresponds to the third chakra of power.

Also for purposes of persuasion, there are imperative psychological needs that are represented at the top of the pyramid including: the need to be needed, the need to feel hope, the need to believe problems are a result of something outside ourselves, the need to be noticed and understood, the 'law of being right', and the principle of giving people a sense of power. These fit in with the rest of the chakras-the fourth one representing love and energy, the fifth one representing communication, the sixth one requiring an inner sense of knowingness, and finally that higher spiritual plane which is represented by union, bliss, God.

When we elicit criteria and gain rapport correctly and thoroughly, we tap into these needs. When you're really in deep rapport with someone, they feel noticed, they feel necessary, they feel listened to, and within that, we can really hone in on the core values of safety, security, reproduction and sustenance.

Until Next Time,

Kenrick E. Cleveland

Hi Persuader,

I read a story about the Ritz Carlton Hotel recently that has me thinking about what it means to truly court and cater to an affluent clientele in a way that will keep them interested and involved with your product or service.

The Ritz Carlton Hotel has a policy that any employee (and I mean, any employee from the housekeeping staff to the desk clerks) can spend up to $2,000 a day (without prior authorization from management) to solve the problems or needs of any of their clients.

A business man was staying at the Atlanta Ritz Carlton and headed out to Hawaii for a very important meeting and presentation. He realized he had forgotten his laptop in Atlanta. Without his laptop, he had no presentation. He called the hotel and his call was routed to housekeeping who had informed him that they had found his computer.

The client asked them to send the computer by Federal Express. He explained that he had to have it the next day for his presentation.

Early the next morning, a woman from Atlanta Ritz Carlton's housekeeping department showed up in Hawaii and handed him his computer. She said, 'This was too important.'

Will this man ever stay anywhere else when he's in Atlanta? Doubt it. Will he tell this story to all of his friends? You bet he will. And his friends will tell their friends who will tell their friends. And the publicity and good will that was created by this one interaction will further ingratiate an already well respected organization in the mind of the clientele they cater to: the affluent.

Going above and beyond doesn't mean we have to spend $2,000 a day. Sometimes it means an effortless consideration. Sometimes it can be as simple as a note, a birthday card even.

One of my coaching students, a financial advisor, recently told me a story about sending a birthday card to one of her EX clients. This was an EX client only because she was prevented from courting her due to a non-compete clause which was about to expire. My student followed up the birthday card with a phone call a few weeks later and the ex client (soon to be reinstated client) said to her, 'You know, my husband's financial advisor sent out a birthday card as well. But instead of sending me the birthday card, he sent it to my husband, whose birthday isn't for seven months.'

Mistakes happen. But this was totally avoidable and costly for that other financial advisor.

Attention to detail, going above and beyond, simple pleasantries, even a kind word. . . all of these things not only make other people feel compelled to do business with you, but they make the recipient feel good. Funny thing is, they also have the added bonus of making the person giving them feel good.

Until Next Time,

Kenrick E. Cleveland

Hi Persuader,

Objections. I can safely say that if you are in sales of any kind, you've gotten objections before. (If you're in sales and you haven't gotten objections, then you're not in front of enough people and you've got yourself a marketing problem.)

What are some of the objections you come up against repeatedly? Think about this. We get the 'I have to think about it' objection, the 'I need to discuss it with my wife/husband/partner' objection, the 'I can't really afford it at this time' objection. These are common ones that everyone gets from time to time. And then there are objections that come up that are very specific to us.

And when the objections are specific to us, I believe that these objections have more to do with your own internal limiting beliefs. And once you figure out what your limiting beliefs are, you're going to find yourself sidestepping all sorts of feeble objections.

Most sales people want to simply know how to overcome the objection. I am of the opinion that the only way to overcome many objections is to start figuring out what it is within you that's eliciting these objections. How did you create the objection? What are you doing that enables your prospects to come up with their objections?

This isn't a simple task. On the contrary, this is tough. It's tough to even accept that we're the ones causing the objection in the first place.

Here's how you do it: Imagine it. Pretend that your mind is a blank whiteboard. Knowing what you know about this person, your prospect, build the model of their brain in your mind and figure out how it is that they're coming up with their particular objection. What must be true for them in order for them to come up with that objection? So what must they believe in order to have these particular thoughts? What must they believe and what must be true in their life, in their experience, in order to have that?

Here's where we get really interesting. How might you be creating the objections you are getting? What language are you using in the presentation that has created that?

This is something that dawned on me sometime back because I discovered an interesting thing about objections. They come in bunches. You know, for a week or two you'll get, 'I want to think about it' or you'll get 'the budget doesn't hold it' or you'll get whatever it is, 'I've got to talk to my partner'. Then, you're going to get one of the other ones and you'll get those for a few weeks or a month and then you'll get another one.

Well, what's happening? Is the whole world out there all of the sudden having to talk to their partner? Or is the whole world out there all of the sudden having a money problem? Is the whole world out there all of the sudden having a 'think about it' problem? No.

It's us. We're manifesting those objections through either something we are saying or doing.

Based on what you found thinking about it, now look inside to discover what beliefs you hold about the objection you're getting, the objection of the day. Your beliefs are what's creating the language that you're using that might be responsible for the objections.

If we consider the old adage, 'as above, so below' then, as within, so without, then we are manifesting the reality that we're living in. We're manifesting the objections that we get, the opportunities that we get, the people that are out there, they're all a mirror of what we are inside.

What is it that we believe about the objections that we get or about the service we provide or about the reality that we are wanting to have more of or less of? As we see it, we need to really start to consider what that means because in one way or another, we're creating it.

Until Next Time,

Kenrick E. Cleveland