Dear Persuader,

In an email a few days ago, I said, "It would almost be funny, if it didn't have such a catastrophic impact. Never before has the skill of persuasion been more necessary. In a world that has quickly gone from consumerism to thrift - if you don't persuade, you don't sell. Yet at the very same time, there's been an explosion of persuasion advice - all with different opinions, different approaches and different theories, leaving potential persuaders in a quagmire of sorts... because it's never been more necessary and it's never been more confusing."

Then today while perusing facebook I see a glaring example of just this sort of thing.

Here is a quote from a provider of persuasion advice (whom I do really like and respect):

"I am most passionate in win-win scenario's as I have always worked on this basis, everyone has to gain but more importantly to enjoy every moment of the process. Have you ever found yourself being sold to or seduced for that matter only to find out how you enticed and increased the speed of the sale? As you become aware of the numerous techniques I can show you why its important to recognise the ethics in creating sustainable relationships for all involved."

Look again at this line:

"As you become aware of the numerous techniques I can show you why its important to recognise the ethics in creating sustainable relationships for all involved."

Does it sound convoluted to you? Would you want to write like that to your prospective customers or your friends or family? I'll explain what he is trying to do in a moment and why it doesn't work, but first...

Yesterday was the big day for our teleconference where I threw down the gauntlet for myself and promised to eliminate any confusion, dispel any doubts, expose any and all lies, and put you on a path to powerful (and ethical) persuasion absolutely free.

You have no idea how excited I was to do this call with you, but alas the "God of technology" ruled against me. Try as I might, I could not connect to the call. So, we rescheduled the call for tonight at 8:00 PM Eastern. If you have not yet asked your question, go ahead and do so now and you can still get on this call and the bill is on us. I do intend to sell this once done but this is your chance to get this information gratis.

The call in issue is resolved and barring some other catastrophe, the call will go on as scheduled.

Just go here to ask your question:

http://www.maxpersuasion.com/teleseminar

Ok, back to what our guy tried to do in our example above.

And before I give you my analysis, let me just say that this is a good person. I know he means well. This could have been an oversight or simply not understanding how it impacts people in writing as opposed to speaking. Moreover, I just learned he is planning to be on our call tonight (of course he's welcome) and I hope he takes this in the spirit it is offered.

The first thing he did was clumsily use an implied cause and effect language pattern (As X, Y). "As you become aware of the numerous techniques I can show you..." Note this is just stuck in the copy and sticks out like a sore thumb. It is not elegant, nor is it persuasive.

This is the antithesis of good persuasion.

Here's the thing... many of the several hundred questions I got centered around concerns of how to sound normal and not manipulative. And I'm going to talk about that in our call tonight. You will want to hear what I have to say on this.

Let me show you how he could have used that pattern to create a good result, one that would have not turned off the majority of those who read it.

He could have said, As you become aware of the numerous techniques that can help you ethically move your clients to enjoy agreeing with you, you'll watch your income shoot upward.

Do you see the difference? It's implied that the person who wrote it can help you. You don't need to hit the reader over the head.

Ok, one more pattern for you.

He wrote:

"As you become aware of the numerous techniques I can show you why its important to recognise the ethics in creating sustainable relationships for all involved."

If you look at the sentence as a whole, he is attempting to use another more advanced pattern called sentence structure ambiguity. In essence this is combining two sentences. Here they are:

"As you become aware of the numerous techniques I can show you..."

and:

"...I can show you why its important to recognise the ethics in creating sustainable relationships for all involved."

It uses the words "I can show you" as the end of one sentence and the beginning of the next.

This pattern doesn't work well in writing! It looks "tricky", confuses the reader, lowers response by encouraging them to click off the page and worst of all diminishes rapport.

Probably not what you want to do.

But unfortunately this is what you, dear reader are forced to sort through these days.

There is of course an easy answer.

Ok, my intention today is to show you how to take something that misses the mark somewhat and turn it around to make it work better. You'll be amazed what you can do when you know how.

Let's end anything that is holding you back from getting people to choose you.

Join me tonight. Just click here to ask your question.

http://www.maxpersuasion.com/teleseminar

Talk soon,

Kenrick

“That which does not kill us, makes us stronger.”  Friedrich Nietzsche

Dear Persuader,

I had a dream about shoes last night.  Shoes have always been sort of an issue for me because I have large feet and it hasn’t always been easy to find ones that fit me (especially before the internet existed and before I had the means to have custom made shoes).   This dream was about a quest for the perfect pair and it began with the frustration of never being comfortable, having blisters, feeling exhausted at the end of the day, having to loosen the laces after a few hours, really being miserable on a daily basis because my feet hurt like the dickens.

And then finally I experienced the excitement of finding a pair that fit perfectly and comfortably.  Like Cinderella and the glass slipper, I went through ups and downs in this dream and it put me in mind of the Hero’s Journey and how anything we struggle with can be put to good use in the stories we bring into our persuasion.

It boils down to inspiration and relevance.    What does your topic have to do with your business?  What does it have to do with where you are today?  Do you feel passionate about it?  Is it topical and interesting?

My dream was very detailed.  The shoes I eventually found molded perfectly to my feet and it felt like I was walking on air after I put them on my feet.  There was no tightness or pressure.

I started out by telling you how much pain and frustration was involved and moved into the pleasure and satisfaction of finally finding a good fit. This outcome became more important because I started out by telling you about how uncomfortable my feet were at the beginning of the journey.

With your stories, your journeys from darkness to light, from poverty to affluence, from sorrow to happiness, from instability to security, you can give your prospects and clients glimpses into who you are and where you’ve come from to create the person you are now.  A very useful side effect of this is that these glimpses into your inner workings create deeper rapport and an almost instant trust (if crafted well).

Did you become a financial advisor because your father died at a young age leaving your mother to struggle to support your family?  Did you get into real estate because you grew up with a friend whose family lived in a small apartment?  Did you make mistakes you’re not proud of but which taught you valuable lessons about honesty and integrity?  Fill your stories with emotion and personal revelations and all those things which did not kill you, but made you stronger and more powerful and I can guarantee you that not only will they connect you deeper to your prospects, but they will connect you deeper with yourself.

Come up with a few stories and polish them.  They can be one minute long, two minutes, five minutes, and they can be touching or humorous.  The key is to link them back to you, your product, and your service.

Be sure to post your thoughts and comments... even your journey on the blog below.

Here's to the hero in all of us.

Kenrick

Dear Persuader,

“Intuition is the supra-logic that cuts out all the routine processes of thought and leaps straight from the problem to the answer.” ~Robert Graves

Logic versus instinct.  Reason versus intuition. Fortunately for us, we don’t have to choose one way of thinking over the other because both are absolutely necessary in order to be good persuaders of ourselves and others.

However, in the West, specifically the educational system in the U.S., our schooling has focused 99 percent of its time developing the logical, reasoning aspect of the student/citizen.   I believe this is a huge mistake.  It’s like cutting off one of our senses (actually, it’s not ‘like’ cutting off one of our senses, it is cutting off one of our senses).  And the self actualized person necessarily begins on a journey of developing the other side of our natures.

True, some people are more predisposed to the intuitive -- artists, musicians, writers, philosophers -- and it comes very naturally to them. Others of us have to make a very conscious decision to nurture instinct and intuition.

So how do the intuitionally challenged begin to flex this muscle?  First step is to begin to check in to our bodies.  I know that sounds a little odd, but many of the “sighs” of instinct and intuition are very body oriented.   Think of how some people describe it, “I just felt it in my gut,” or “I had a lump in my throat”.  The physical manifestation of instinct can feel sharp and intense, or it can be a slow burn that spreads.   Part of the reason it’s hard to pin down is because people experience it differently.

The key is: pay attention.  And once you begin to hear it, you must begin to trust that small voice inside of you.

What does this have to do with persuasion?  Well, think about it.  How do people make decisions to buy?  It’s not logic, I can tell you that.  People buy based on their feelings and then they back it up with logic.   If we understand how our own feelings, intuitions and instincts work, we’re in a better position to understand how our prospects and clients are processing their decisions to buy or not buy.

So what to do when you begin to feel it and begin paying attention?  Well, start going with what it’s telling you.   If the path you’re on is dark and feels unsafe and the hairs on the back of your neck are standing on end, quickly get to safety.   If the person you’re hoping to make a deal with strikes you as untrustworthy, don’t push forward just because you want to make the deal but trust yourself to know the situation lacks integrity.

Albert Einstein, a very logical and highly intelligent guy by most everybody’s standards once said, “The only real valuable thing is intuition.”   As you work to develop yours, you’ll begin to understand the truth in this statement.

To your success!

Kenrick

PS... Don't forget to post your comments to the blog below.

Dear Persuader,

I want you to think about the process of persuasion a little differently today.  I want you to think of it as a spark, a spark that creates fire, okay?

If you’ve ever used a magnifying glass and started a fire with a little piece of paper or wood, you know that you have to focus it.  You’ve got to have that so finely focused that it ignites from the heat.   If your focus is too broad, you may get that paper warm but it's certainly not going to ignite.

You need to focus the client so strongly on what they want that all of the sudden it’s going to burst into flames.   And, one of the things that will burst it into flames, that will take it to that next level so fast and so powerful is that level of rapport you can bring to the table, that spark of interest that you can get them to feel as a result of what you’re doing.

I want to speak about that spark of interest for a moment.  I want to speak about it in a way that you probably haven’t heard me talk about before.  I’m not going to talk about using their predicates and I’m not going to talk about using their tone of voice... I’m not going to talk about any of that.

What I want to talk about is you thinking about this in terms of a spark of interest, a spark of personality, a spark of rapport.  And I want you to put that image in your mind and if you put that image in your mind then here’s how it would look as I see it.

You start off by gauging the level of interest that the client has, you immediately apply your magnifying glass to begin to magnify that level of interest.

Now, who’s magnifying it?  You or them?

They are.  You’re providing the questions that cause them to go inside and focus more on where the spark hits, and that spark is a magnetic personality that makes the person feel good about what you’re doing and makes them turnaround and come your way.

It’s a spark that happens through belief.  You need to believe so much in what you do and in who you are and in what your products are, that you simply focus on that belief in light of what they’re there to do and magically you’ll feel that spark happen.  I say magically... you can break this into a million different strategies but I’m telling you, if you’ll put this one in your head and run with it for a little bit, you’re going to see that you start creating dramatic results and fanning big flames of desire, and that’s exactly what we want to do.

So focus on that magic.  There’s magic in imagining that you have a spark that will bridge the gap from their few questions to a burning desire and all you have to do is create the heat.  And the heat’s created by focusing them in on what it is that they want and need along with your spark of personality that can get them to start to see the value and the benefit that you’re bringing to the table.

And it happens more in your mind than anywhere else.   In your belief that you’re creating that spark, it exists... and now the flames of desire.  I want you to put in your mind and I want you to see with every client, and I want you to be able to tell me afterward, if I were to ask you, when did that spark hit?

You should be able to say, "Well, it hit when I said...", or "When he or she said...".  You can tell, you can feel it, you can hear it, you can see it, and if the sale didn’t happen, you’d probably respond by saying, "I never did feel that spark, Kenrick, it just didn’t seem to happen."

If that takes place, I want you to begin to analyze why. Was it because they didn’t have a real need or a real desire?  And be very careful not to jump to the conclusion of yes, because my next question is, were you able to sufficiently focus them through your magnifying glass and create the heat that comes when they think about their values and their beliefs as it relates to their questions and what they’re needing from your company?

For you advanced persuaders, I want you to focus on the image.  For those of you that are lesser advanced, I want you to focus on the strategy and the image and you may have to do it part by part which is absolutely fine.  Go at it part by part.

So, the first part is the interest and the interest comes by focusing them through the magnifying glass of their desire, which is another way of saying, their criteria and their values.

The rapport I want you to think of as a spark, a spark that happens as a result of you focusing in on just how madly in love you are with your products and your services, with your company’s values, with the way you are able to interpret and deliver those values and services, that get people to want to be with you.

In other words, you’re coming in with the magnifying glass of criteria, you’re focusing it through the questions that you’re asking, and then you’re making that magic leap through that nebulous something that you and your company possess and you need to focus on that nebulous something and feel it in your heart and feel it transfer to the client.

If you’ll use that strategy, I guarantee you that you’ll start to see things through different eyes in a short period of time.  You’ll start to imagine things happening differently and you’ll be able to focus on what your clients are doing in a very different way.

Kenrick

P.S. Don't forget to post your comments on the blog below.

Dear Persuader,

By now, if you’ve been reading my blog for a while or if you’ve taken a seminar, been involved in my coaching club or gone through one of my self study courses, you know that the basis for persuasion is the ability to build rapport and the basis for rapport building requires questioning your prospect or client with the magic questions “What’s important about. . . ?”

Well, here’s another way you can ask the ‘what’s important about’ question.  This way is to create a fantasy in the mind of your listeners and in doing so giving them permission and the opportunity to answer either silently or out loud to you.  This works phenomenally in a group setting (and works phenomenally one on one, so whichever way).

Here’s an example.  Say you’re speaking in front of a group, you might say, “You are walking along a road by the beach and out near the water, you see something that catches your eye.  You look at it and you walk over to it.  As you get to it, it’s just out of the water so slightly and you kind of dig it out of the sand a little bit and sure enough, it looks like an Aladdin’s lamp.   You think to yourself, wow, could it really be?  You rub the lamp and out pops the genie, with a magic wand in his hand and he says, ‘If I could grant you any wish you wanted as it relates to your business, what would it be?’  How would you answer this question?”

Let your group think about this for a moment.  Say, “I want you to answer that question in your mind right now silently, and I’ll give you a minute just to do that.”

The beautiful thing about imagining and fantasy is that each and every person in the room has a very richly textured, complex idea of what they are viewing, which is highly personalized.  You’ve just accessed the criteria of an entire room full of people.  How cool is that?

Using a magical environment such as a genie in a bottle on a beach also has the benefit of pulling people out of their shells and lulling them to a place of receptiveness to the rest of what you’re going to say.

Why does this work?  Well, here’s a little bit of theory behind it.  School teaches us that vertical thinking is the be all end.   They start with an overview of a subject, like the base of a pyramid, and then build up from there until we get very specific.  Horizontal thinking teaches us how to gain a wider view about things, encompassing more and more, becoming so expansive that we can hardly believe how much there is.

When we get really vertical, we become logical, systematic, and we have a right-wrong, good-bad, black-white mentality.  When we start going too horizontal we get too metaphysical, too out in the zone, and too much into meditation or something, and we don’t take any action.

However, if we start horizontally and we do a big scan of what’s going on and then we get down to the vertical, we win, really, really big, because we can implement the right things

If you want to stay with your fantasy for another question or two you could say, “Now suppose the genie says, ‘Before I grant this wish, what’s important about that?’”

You’ll get people to really open up and come up with answers that really move them instead of just a politically correct answer which you could care less about and accessing both their horizontal and vertical views of the world.

Give it a try and post your stories on the blog below.

Kenrick

Dear Persuader,

A student of mine once posted a comment about my use of the relationship between teacher and student in an example of presupposition. They suggested, with a wink and a smiley face, that maybe I was being a little sneaky in using the example in a persuasive way.

It’s kind of interesting in life how when people know that I’m an expert in persuasion; they assume I’m using my persuasions skills on them all the time. That’s been something that I’ve struggled with my whole life. People actually say, ‘Well, I don’t know if I can really trust him, because, after all, he’s one of the top persuasion experts.’

This always kind of upset me until finally I just kind of got used to it.  I just realized, people are going to think whatever they’re going to think.

I really am just genuinely myself. And I’ve had to struggle to remain un-jaded. Not always having ulterior motives is part of operating with a lot of integrity.

But what is an ulterior motive? An ulterior motive lies beyond what is evident, revealed, or avowed.  That could be a negative thing, especially if the motive is being concealed intentionally so as to deceive. But there can be ulterior motives that aren’t sneaky.

When an ulterior motive is supportive, I have no problem with that. An ulterior motive, in a sense, is behind the scenes. If I were to use skills to help people to stay involved with me, provided that I’m really giving them value, I find no problem with that whatsoever.

For my suspicious student, I would suggest that people find I’m providing value regardless of me attempting to install it or not. And you’ll find the same is true for you.

It is kind of a humorous topic so I thought I would show you a little bit about the inside workings of my mind, how I’ve dealt with some of those kind of things and how it affects me.

Early in my career, I too would find myself asking those who I was studying with, if they were using persuasion on me because I wanted to see where their minds would really go.

It doesn’t mean I’m actively attempting to do it, though I know full well that my intention is to not only provide information but entertainment. Not only information and entertainment, but longevity for my clients and me to be work together.

That’s going to come out. These are my intentions. And my intention is to help and help and help some more. As long as that is recognized then I feel really satisfied and I think this is something you might want to examine in your own life because it will be something that comes up from time to time and it’s nice to have thought it through so that you know where you stand on it.

Be sure and post your thoughts and comments on the blog.

Kenrick

Dear Persuader,

You’ve heard the saying; you can’t know someone until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes. This is a technique on how to gain rapport by jumping into another person, stepping in, sliding in, moving in, being in that person, figuratively walking a mile in their shoes.   Harper Lee wrote in To Kill a Mockingbird, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view...until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

We are going to learn to climb into the skin of our prospects, experience them, their decision making mechanisms, their emotional states—so that we can better give them what they need and get what we need.

Our unconscious mind is a goal-seeking mechanism, and it’s a pattern recognition device that is incredibly brilliant and it can immediately pick up characteristics of others so that when we step into them, it already has formulated what we’re going to be experiencing.

How are we going to do this?  The way I do it is I just look at you and jump in.  I imagine in my mind that I am now you looking at me. It’s that simple.  When I look at you, my unconscious, knowing that I’m going to step inside you, can very quickly build a pattern of who and what you are, such that when I step inside you, it already has constructed what’s going to happen.  Once I’m inside you, I’m modeling you, or mirroring you so completely and so powerfully that the results can be startling both for you and for the person that this is being done with.

Is it real?  I don’t know.  I don’t really care.  It’s a mental construct.  I am making it up in my mind.  I’m making up that I’m now in your body looking through your eyes.

Another option, one that I’ve had students tell me about, is building a picture the person you’re ‘becoming’, then you turn around so you’re facing the same way I am and just step in.  This can be thought of as mirroring and this is one of the fastest ways of gaining rapport I have ever seen or used.

What if you work with people on the phone and you have no idea what they look like? Could you do the same thing anyway? Sure. What is it that you know about that person when you’re talking to them? They’ve got a phone to their ear, and they’ve got a voice, and their voice has characteristics, and those characteristics have conditions that your unconscious mind has seen before.

If we assume that there is a finite number of patterns that exist, and if we chunk up a little bit, go to a bigger level, we can say, for example, there are twelve astrological signs.  There are seven major personality types, depending on the system that you’re working with.  There are all sorts of different classification systems that will seek to limit the number of possible combinations.

Of course, humans are infinite.  However, wouldn’t it be interesting to know that your unconscious, in its vast experience of dealing with all the people it has dealt with, has come across most all of the major patterns and major characteristics of the people that you’re dealing with?  It knows what that other person can be like. Could you build an image of that person?  Sure you can, you absolutely can, and you can step right in, even if you’re just on the phone.

This is a construct. We are constructing an image. Will it be accurate?  Not exactly, but that’s okay, because if we’re in front of them, and we’re hearing them and we’re seeing them, and if they’re moving, we keep changing our construct until it’s identical to what they are, so for every minute, every second that goes by, ours gets better, and more complete and more powerful, and we’re locking right in to that person.

When you step in, you want to leave yourself behind and see through their eyes.  When you do this, it establishes rapport at a very, very profound and deep level.  Once you’re in them, you’ve really moved along the process of rapport, and you’ve moved it along because you’re so completely identifying with all of their behaviors, and all of who they are.

You can make this more powerful in a couple of ways.  First, marvel at what it feels like and what their clothes feel like.  If the person is of the opposite sex, you might feel what it feels like to be a woman or a man, whatever the case may be, and actually take on those characteristics.

What are their physical characteristics? How does it feel to have those characteristics? Notice when you step into the other person, where you feel the connection to them.  Do you feel the connection in your stomach, in your feet, in your hands, in your chest, in your head?  Where do you feel the connection?  By asking yourself these questions you’ll deepen the rapport.

Before trying this, here’s something to keep in mind: if the person’s sick, if they have something considerably wrong with them, if you know that they’re not a particularly good person or they are someone you just don’t like, you might not choose to use this level of rapport, because you may not be able to shake it all the way off.

This is incredibly powerful. Even if you’re not particularly in touch with your energy, you can still use this effectively.

All the best!

Kenrick

PS... Don't forget to post your comments on the blog.

Dear Persuader,

Have you ever gone into a supermarket or drugstore for a tube of toothpaste and found yourself confronted with forty different varieties?

It’s a simple enough substance—toothpaste—which we use every day (hopefully - don't get me started on Jessica Simpson), and yet there are dozens and dozens of choices.  There are toothpastes with whiteners and/or baking soda; toothpastes for sensitive gums; natural toothpastes; toothpastes of various flavors —cinnamon, spearmint, fennel, wintergreen; kids toothpastes--silly strawberry, bubble gum, berry. And once we figure out the brand, we have to figure out what size and then tube, pump, squeeze bottle etc...

It takes most of us seconds to choose because we don’t stray from what we’ve been using ‘forever’ or staying brand loyal to what our parents used. But when our parents were growing up, there weren’t nearly as many choices.

It’s a minor, run of the mill decision, but one that illustrates just how very many choices we make every single day, from our toothpaste, to cell phone provider, to the brands we eat, wear and use.

Barry Schwartz, professor of Social Theory and Social Action at Swarthmore College, has written a book called, ‘The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less—How The Culture of Abundance Robs us of Satisfaction’.  It is a very interesting look at how the ever expanding amount of ‘choice’ we have in every dimension of our lives is eroding the simple pleasures that used to be omnipresent.

This is an important perspective especially as it relates to our professions, products, and services. How many of you are there out in the world? Are you one in a million or one of a million? And how can your existence simplify the life of your prospect or client?

The goal of choice has been to liberate us, to give us a degree of control over our lives, to give us autonomy and distinction. However, as Mr. Schwartz suggests, ‘. . .as the number of choices keeps growing, negative aspects of having a multitude of options begin to appear. As the number of choices grows further, the negatives escalate until we become overloaded.’

As people who sell a product or service, we need to keep in mind that there are a multitude of similar products or service providers out there and that what makes us special is that, as persuaders, we are able to reach into the core of our prospects and clients to discover their specific key, their unique combination of values and criteria. When we establish rapport, elicit criteria, and establish ourselves as ‘the answer’, there is no need for this unbearable overload to occur in the minds of our prospects.

Schwartz writes of the political philosopher Isaiah Berlin, who beautifully described the continuum of towards and away in his distinction between ‘negative liberty’ and ‘positive liberty’.  He says, “Negative liberty is ‘freedom from’—freedom from constraint, freedom from being told what to do by others. Positive liberty is ‘freedom to’—the availability of opportunities to be the author of your life and to make it meaningful and significant.”

Wow!  A better description of the ‘towards/away’ continuum doesn’t exist. Do we see in our prospects the desire to be free from constraints? How can we show them that our product or service is the answer to this? Do we have a towards person who wants to take in all the amazing opportunities our products and services have to offer? In what ways to do you see the paradox of choice at play in your business life?

Be sure and post your comments to the blog.

Kenrick

Dear Persuader,

"Our value is the sum of our values."   --Joe Batten

This is a great process that will help you in your persuasion skills. I think you’ll find it quite interesting.

I’ve always said that if you want to make advancements in your persuasion ability, you need to make advancements in yourself. This is advancement.

What we’re going to do is get our top values and put them in rank order. It’s pretty easy to do, and in future articles we’re going to take this on to new and interesting levels for you and then show you how you can use it to help persuade.

I’m just going to give you some examples of core values and please, feel free to add to the list.

• Honesty
• Freedom
• Security
• Passion
• Freedom
• Recognition
• Integrity
• Health
• Family
• Spouse
• Friends
• Spirituality
• Money
• Love
• Success
• Recognition
• Education
• Self improvement
• Adventure
• Fun
• Financial independence
• Variety
• Knowledge
• Self actualization
• Wisdom
• Accomplishment
• Power

Notice that happiness is missing... that’s because happiness is not a value but what will come if the core value is actualized.

Now, we’re going to put them in rank order. Take the top ten from the above list and with the ones you’ve added in and from there we’ll determine the top five in this way: Say your list, in no particular order is, health, love, money, passion, freedom, knowledge, wisdom, friends, accomplishment, recognition. These are your top ten core values.

We’ll start with health and move through the list. If you could have either perfect health and no love or you could have perfect love and no health, which would you choose? We’ll just randomly choose health for the sake of this example. So if you could have the best health or all the money you wanted, which would you choose? And we’ll choose health again. Okay, if you could have perfect health and no freedom or absolute freedom and poor health?

In this way, we go through the list to determine the top five.

What’s the value in this, you might ask. Well, if a sales professional had these top five values, (security, wealth, family), do you think they might be able to effectively interweave your security, wealth and family into the conversation about their product or service?

Of course, this isn’t information that we readily give out to everyone, nor do we elicit our prospect’s values, but what are we doing when we elicit criteria? We’re eliciting their specific values/criteria as they relate to the situation we’re asking about.

Eliciting criteria is one of the most effective ways to connect your prospect with what you’re selling.  It’s easy to do and once you really get the hang of it… it’s really fun!

Happy persuading,

Kenrick

Dear Persuader,

Americans love to talk.  Americans also love to be talked to -- listening to the TV or the stereo or talk radio -- anything so that there’s no silence.  Silence we seem to delegate to those few days a year when we get back to nature.

In conversations, especially, there’s a real fear of silence, an awkwardness that sort of permeates the in between spaces where there is no one talking and most people will do anything possible to fill up that silence with noise regardless of whether or not it’s going to damage their chances of selling their product or service.

Part of this filling in of the spaces, is the chatter.  We’re all familiar with the classic sales persona, looking at the photographs on the wall or desk of their prospect, asking how the wife and kids or husband and kids are, how the golf game is -- basically, chit chat.  And even more detrimental to sales, is the chit chat that happens after the sale is in the bag, but not signed off on.  This is the stuff that breaks the deal because maybe we’re excited about having made the sale and we begin to blather on and on. . .

Personally one of the biggest breakthroughs that happened for me in my career in sales is when I realized that I didn’t have to spend a tremendous amount of time in chit chat.  I can tell you I can’t even count, as I was growing up and starting out in sales, the number of times when chit chat derailed my objective.  It was a constant.  I would say something wrong or I would go on too long about a particular topic and next thing you know, I was derailed.

If a prospect or client was looking for a way out, I would give it to them eventually if I chattered on too long.  I kept wondering why they didn’t want to be more like my friend, why they didn’t want to talk about more personal, day-to-day stuff.   I can tell you the reason this is the case is because they weren’t getting the answer to a burning question within them.

Granted, I’ve been blessed with the gift of gab.  The shift in my thinking came when I realized I had to fashion what I was saying to focus intently on the prospect and their needs and not my own agenda.

So what is the burning question?  The question is, “What can you do for me, Kenrick?”  Our prospects are ultimately wanting to know, “What’s in this for me?  What is it that you’re going to do to help me?”   The only way to find the answers to these questions is to elicit their criteria and once you’ve elicited their criteria, then we have to get to the meaning.

Criteria and its meaning have got to be the foremost thing in your mind when making a sale, no ifs, ands or buts.  Remember this, and you won’t be derailed.

To your success,

Kenrick