Archive for April, 2008
Wednesday, April 30th, 2008
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I just read a very controversial article by Deborah over at New Media Marketing on how to be more influential in social networks, specifically twitter. Deborah wrote in this article that women are better persuaders than men, always have been always will be, and us men need to get our act together if we are ever going to make it in the new web 2.0 culture of marketing.
Some people have been calling this article sexist. Gee, I wonder why?/sarcasm
Deborah then went on to say that is mostly the men on the very popular social site Twitter, are not able to reap the benefits because men are bad at connecting and women are the queens of connection.
She even made the bold statement of claiming that women have been influencing men since the beginning of time, with Adam and Eve as an example.
By the way,I don’t think it was Eve’s ability to connect that got her to persuade Adam, I think she used other assets. That’s right, I went there >:-)
Seriously though, here is a quote from her article:
“Since the dawn of time, women have been influencing men–whether men admit it or not (Remember the apple? Bathsheba?)…I’m merely pointing out that connecting and influencing people is not something that comes naturally to men. But just as any skill can be learned in business in order to succeed, men are learning from women how to succeed in the New Media Marketplace that requires you to really get to know your clients, prospects and followers.” -Deborah Micek
Interesting idea Deborah, but I gotta school ya on this one.
I do agree that some twitterers just push their product and or blog without connecting with anyone and then they get frustrated and wonder why they are not getting all the benefits from twitter that they were told were possible.
I see what she is saying, and it makes sense, in the new web 2.o where social media and human connection is how people are finding information online. And women by their very nature are usually pros at making social connections, but I think she is still missing one important thing.
There is a persuasion philosophy that I subscribe to, and it applies whether you are influencing others face to face, online, offline, in person and on the phone.
Influence can be summed up and chunked down into two basic components connect and lead.
You must make the connection that establishes trust, rapport and credibility, and THEN you leverage that connection to lead them to take action.
You have probably heard of the Chinese philosophy of Yin and Yang. The concept of yin and yang (or masculine and feminine) describes two opposing and, at the same time, complementary aspects of human beings.
Feminine Yin energy is all about connecting.
Masculine yang energy is all about leading.
We all have both energies within us, but with most people one tends to be dominant.
Therein lays the problem grasshopper, when you are too dominant in masculine energy or too feminine in your energy you persuasion style suffers.
I think what Deborah is talking about on twitter with her examples of the Men who are less persuasive need to balance out their masculine and feminine energy.
Men who are too dominantly masculine in persuasion situations come across as the pushy salesman, too eager to close the deal, without taking the time to really connect, get rapport with a person, and really see what their needs are still not going to reach their full persuasion potential online or offline
So I can agree with her at least this much, however the same thing goes for women.
Women who are too dominantly feminine in persuasion situations come across as too compassionate, and too nurturing. This person might find themselves talking too much about things that have nothing to do with what you are marketing, because you are too busy trying to connect are neither reaching their full persuasion potential.
In this sense rapport and connection is a two edged sword.
Think of salesman or saleswoman who has such strong rapport and connects so deeply with the client that they feel too much compassion, and when the client offers an objection you agree with them, because you are too good of friend now.
It isn’t that masculine energy is better in persuasion of that feminine energy is more appropriate for influence. Masculine energy and feminine energy compliment each other.
In short, Deborah men and women can learn from each other, when it comes to persuasion.
Men can learn from women by balancing their dominant and at times pushy energy, with the nurturing caring energy that leads to rapport, connection, and trust.
Women can learn from men by balancing their strong compassionate, nurturing energy with masculine energy because it’s that energy which leads people to take action, which is what persuasion is all about.
To learn more about balancing your yin and yang energies for maximum persuasion power about the law of balance, in my article the 7 Inner Laws of Persuasion
P.S.
If you do not know what twitter is, it’s a new and unique type of social network, you can check out my profile here @persuasionrtist. It’s a great way to network with people, of similar interests, and a lot of big gun marketers and bloggers are using it to stimulate interest in their blogs and products.
I want to hear what you have to say about this controversial topic. Whether you agree or disagree with me, I welcome your feedback in the comment box below.
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Tuesday, April 29th, 2008
I cried as I walked home that day. I lost my job, I was days away from losing my apartment and I was coming to the realization that if I didn’t find a way to make some money quick I would be sleeping in my car.
One of my friends Shawn was a salesman, and he said he could get me a job, but I had to be able to sell. “I don’t know how to sell” I said. Shawn gave me a book, and said “Read it, this book will tell you everything you need to know about selling”
That night I read the book. At first it seemed like a foreign language, it was the first time I read about Neuro Linguistic Programming, matching and mirroring, rapport, presuppositions and other NLP and hypnosis based communication.
One of the things this book said that I will never forget is what it said about stories. It said that underneath the masterful language of the most powerful persuaders in history is the ability to tell a persuasive story.
Why are Stories so Persuasive?
1. Stories are Entertaining
You can’t persuade people who are not listening. People just don’t resist listening to a good story. It grabs people’s attention by the ears and gets them to focus entirely on you.
2. Stories Leverage Cultural Programming
We have been read stories since we were children; people are programmed to listen closely to every word as soon as you say once upon a time, or long ago, or the other day.
3. Stories Induce Trance
You don’t need to be swinging a watch in front of someone to lead them into a trance. All a trance is a narrowing of focus. When you tell a story well you are inducing a type of trance.
4. Stories Generate Rapport
If your story captures and leads a person’s imagination they will feel more connected to you.
That actually reminded me of the first time I was hypnotized. The hypnotherapist used a strategy for using stories to induce trance in me. The strategy worked like this; the hypnotist begins to tell a story that seems to be related to my problem, then before that story reached it’s conclusion, the hypnotist begins another story within the story, and then another story within that story, then one by one he ends each story until finally he ends with the story he first began.
Confused? I sure was, but that’s the point. Good hypnotists know that confusion is one of the easiest and most powerful ways to induce a trance. When the subject is hearing multiple stories it is difficult for the conscious mind to keep track of what is going on and they go into trance.
You should know by now reading this blog that when people go into trance, the critical factor goes down and direct suggestions and embedded commands have greater strength. Strength that allows the hypnotist’s message to be completely engraved in your mind.
This book taught me how to use this type of story in sales presentations.
The beauty of these hypnotic stories wasn’t in the use of embedded stories within the story alone, but that he used embedded commands within the story.
If this article is confusing that’s okay, I just want you to remember this phrase and it will all make sense, I YOU SHIFT.
A fundamental part of covert hypnosis and persuasion is the used of embedded commands. These are indirect commands that you can hide in your language that people will pick up on subliminally.
The I You Shift is what will give you the opportunity to use embedded commands with people easily. While I haven’t talked about embedded commands much yet with you on this blog I soon, and I’ll recommend some places where you can learn more about embedded commands.
The I You Shift is little covert hypnosis trick that is sneaky as hell, sounds totally normal in the English language, and is so simple you can begin using it today.
It works by talking about an experience and elaborating it but then speaking about your self in the second person- YOU.
Here are Some Examples of the I You Shift :
photo credit: Conceptual art for Disney’s Alice in Wonderland
The other day I went to the beach, it was so relaxing, it’s like YOU just step into this place of total ease and comfort
I was talking to my friend about this product and he said, it’s just like YOU can relax so easily knowing it’s the best on the market.
Notice where the I becomes a YOU but technically I am still talking about myself, so it’s conversationally okay.
Here is an example of a combination of embedded stories, the I You Shift, and embedded commands.
The Other day I was speaking to a client, and what she said was, isn’t it interesting how a part of you can begin to feel incredibly good about this product, while another part of you can begin to imagine all the wonderful and exciting ways you will take advantage of a product like this, to the point where you wake up in the morning and just feel really good about making the decision to buy. Now with me, and my perspective, I thought was surprised that she could feel all that so naturally and easily, but when I thought about it, it made sense because this product has a proven track record of getting or clients results.
Notice how I start by telling a story about speaking with a client, and the story my client told me, and then notice the way I am able to easily embed direct commands and suggestions indirectly.
The embedded commands are: begin to feel really good, begin to imagine, feel really good, and the sneakiest one is the last one “..making the decision to buy. Now, with me and my perspective…” the embedded command is BUY NOW WITH ME.
I didn’t realize it until years later, but as I was reading the book Shawn had given me I was reading a book that changed the course of my life forever; leading me eventually to being one of the top sales people in a large company, financial comfort, , and becoming a master hypnotist.
More About Persuasion and Stories from The Blogosphere:
Emotional Persuasion through Storytelling- By Kenrick Cleveland
Create Simple Personal Stories to Influence Others – By Allen Parks
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Thursday, April 24th, 2008
“This is a game of show and tell, you’re telling me nothing, but you’re showing me everything!” – Christopher Walken, True Romance
FACT: Only 7% of communication is verbal communication.
Just stumbled upon a very interesting article in human psychology I wanted to share. Titled How to Detect Lies, Become a Lie Detector. You have heard me talk about calibration, sensory acuity, being one of the key skills of a persuasion artist, because so much of persuasion is collecting data about an individual so you know how to persuade an individual.
Signs of deception in this article include:
What type of facial expressions, and gestures people make when they are lying? Timing of speech that indicates lying. Different types of emotional reactions that let you know when someone is lying. Also, how someone who is telling the truth changes the subject and how a liar changes the subject.
If you read further you’ll also see some related links on how to tell if someone is lying based on the movement of their eyes, as well as body language and flirting.
This type of knowledge is gold in a persuasion artists tool box, enjoy.
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Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008
IMPORTANT NOTE: The following is not a sales page, I am in no way affiliated with the following program and you will not see an affiliate link from me in this post. I do not care if you buy this guys stuff or not. This is important news in this persuasion industry that I wanted to share.
Even though I keep hearing the name Marc Hogan name all over the persuasion forums and persuasion blogs, I have never purchased any of his products, so I cannot personally testify to the quality of material.
But apparently Marc comes highly recommended as a teacher who is highly skilled and has quality material by a few of my fellow persuasion bloggers.
If your goals are directed more towards persuasion and daily social interactions I highly recommend Marc Hogan and his S.T.E.A.L.T.H.™ Influence & Sales Mastery 8 DVD Set. He is in the UK, but ships just about anywhere. This is some of the best hands-on instruction I’ve seen anywhere. The DVDs may seem expensive ($394), but they’re worth it. There isn’t any filler and they cover just about all you’ll ever need. It’s hard to really use this stuff until you actually see and hear it, then go out and try to apply it.
Marc Hogan’s site is http://www.persuasion-skills.co.uk. I am not affiliated with Marc Hogan in any way, but I have no problem recommending this product. If he had an affiliate program, I’d be the first to join. -Allen Parks Covert Metaphor
According to Marc in a statement to his list, he was made an offer he couldn’t refuse and is contractually obligated to stop selling his products to the general public by the 23rd.
He swears this isn’t marketing bullshit. Word out on the street is he’s not one to pull marketing stunts of this type.
His sites are already linked to another site that he will be 100% involved with after the 23rd and fully out of offering trainings or products to the public.
I guess everyone does have a price.
Marc’s flagship product, S.T.E.A.L.T.H. Persuasion is being sold only until the
23rd at a deep discount or until they’re gone.
S.T.E.A.L.T.H. stands for: Signal Tracking Elicitation Anchoring Language Trance Heuristics.
To check out the copy page Here
The discount code is: THE_END
With the code, instead of paying $374.00, you’ll pay $191 if you want it through
the 23rd. Two quality bonuses are offered also. Especially if you are
interviewing for work right now. One of the bonus items will be better for you
than the S.T.E.A.L.T.H. offer.
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Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008
I have been getting some interesting emails from my readers about the robber in Italythat supposedly hypnotized the cashier into giving him money from the register.
Some of you want to know if this is really possible.
In case you missed my article Covert Persuasion and Conversational Hypnosis Genesis
I mentioned how Italian police are looking for a man, who robbed supermarkets by hypnotizing the checkout staff into giving him money. See the video for yourself.
He waited until he got to a female bank clerk and, according to the video footage, appears to hypnotize her into handing over more than £600.
He then calmly walked out.
The cashier who was shown the video footage reportedly has no memory of the incident. She only realized what had happened when she saw the money missing.
The question of the week is is this type of hypnosis possible?
there is another video on youtube you can watch called The Heist where Derren Brown used hypnotic technique to influence three people to rob an armed guard, only using covert hypnosis strategies.
The catch is that was after selecting the four most suggestible people out of twenty participants, and many days of covery conditioning and programming.
Then out of those four three of them actually went through with it.
So yes, it is “possible” to manipulate people to do dangerous or devious things with hypnosis.
At the same time, I question if this is what happened in this news story with the robber and the cashier in Italy, because it would be EXTREAMLY difficult to hypnotize someone like this.
Something similar was reported a while back with a bank robber hypnotizing a bank staff into giving over money. Turns out that the “staff” that was allegedly “hypnotized” was in on it from the beginning and were prosecuted.
Whether the Italian Job is b.s. or genuine hypnotic phenomena it is despicable and this type of propaganda gives legitimate hypnotists a bad name.
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Saturday, April 19th, 2008
This is a long one guys, but if you are new to the realm of covert hypnosis and persuasion this will give you a good foundation to start from. We will talk about the differences between therapeutic hypnosis, and conversational hypnosis. What is trance? How hypnotists uses trance. Why covert and conversational hypnosis works? Where did conversational hypnosis come from? Plus a little about the ethics of conversational hypnosis.
In order to understand covert hypnosis, we must understand hypnosis, and to understand hypnosis, we must understand trance.
What is trance?
Trance is simply a narrowing of focus on one thing, such that the world around you begins to fade away, and you become entranced in the message or image you are focusing on.
You go into and out of trance every day.
Remember in school when the teacher would be talking in front of the class and while a part of you knows you are in a classroom sitting at a desk and you know the teacher is talking, mean while another part of you might be deeply daydreaming.
And of course there are different ways to daydream. There is the quick thought of maybe a conversation you had earlier where you just aren’t paying attention to the teacher, but then there are those daydreams where you go off for minutes into a your own little world. And the more you imagine those images inside yourself the more the rest of your environment begins to fade away and disappear to the point where the teacher could even say your name to make sure you are paying attention and you don’t even hear her.
We all do things like this when we are driving, when someone is talking but or mind is preoccupied, when someone attractive walks by, when watching a movie. You also narrow your focus and go into a trance when you are having sex, or a roller coaster rides, or when you get very scared. These are trance states, these in a sense are all forms of hypnosis. Thinking of examples like this, where we zone out, or zone inward rather, causes you to understand hypnosis and trance even more.
A Hypnotists Trance:
Now, naturally when most people think of hypnosis they think of the guy with a watch swinging it back and fourth in front of someone face or those hilarious spinning spirals we have all seen in the movies.
A hypnotist job is to create or induce a trance in you. Most hypnotists use language in a way that helps someone enter a trance state. A hypnotist gets someone to relax using suggestions and commands to relax, followed by language that allows you to focus on imaginary things that allow you to go deeper into trance.
Why does hypnosis work?
Why are hypnotists able to help people to change bad habits like smoking, help people overcome phobias, and make people dance like Brittany Spears in front of an audience of strangers?
Research has show that people are highly suggestible when in a trance state. Meaning a hypnotist can get people to do things they might not normally do, here’s how that worls.
You have two main components of your mind, the conscious and the unconscious.
The conscious mind
The conscious mind is the part that is awake and aware. It’s the rational, problem side of your mind. It is the part that controls your speech center and gives you things to talk about and communicate with others.
The Unconscious mind
The other is of your mind is the unconscious mind. Some people call this the subconscious or your other than conscious mind. The unconscious mind controls all your sensory perceptions, as well as other bodily function like breathing, heart rate, etc. You unconscious mind also controls long term memory, and the heart of your emotions.
While we would like to think that we are in conscious control, most of what we do is by habit or unconscious responses. The unconscious mind is the part that is really in control, it dictates most all of what we do. There is a lot of science to back this up. I just found an article on wired titled Brain Scanners Can See Your Decision Before You Make Them where scientists are now saying that every decision you make has already been made by your unconscious mind long before you even realize it is what you want to do.
Think of the unconscious mind as the cruise control in a very powerful that most people can’t turn off. I don’t like that metaphor because it sounds like we have very little power over our mind. But in reality most people, who procrastinate, who fail at diets, who cant stop smoking is how we see evidence of this in all of our lives.
Now along the same lines of the metaphor, what a hypnotist does is he is able to take control of the car and drive you to where you wan to go. Perhaps to the place of freedom from addiction or a phobia.
Covert and Conversational Hypnosis
A scum sucking bastard would use these same skills to selfishly take you where HE wants to go, despite your best interests. Yes these people are out there. See my warning and disclaimer for more on this. Police in Italy are currently looking for a thief who allegedly hypnotized a cashier into giving him money from her register.
An ethical persuasion artist, like myself and hopefully all of my readers, takes control of the car and takes you to a place that you BOTH want to go. Perhaps a business transaction that is a win win for all involved. I have learned with Kenrick Cleveland and he has my highest recommendation on how to use these powerful skills with integrity
Covert and conversational hypnosis is using your verbal and non-verbal language in every day casual conversations to lead the unconscious mind into making a new decision or coming to a new conclusion. So artfully that only an expert would know you are doing something, underneath your words.
Covert and conversational hypnosis is based much on the work of Dr. Milton Erickson. Dr. Erickson has been dubbed the grandfather of modern hypnosis and some say the greatest hypnotist there ever was.
As the ledged has goes, Dr Erickson was a psychiatrist who wanted to use hypnosis on his in his psychiatry practice; the only problem was it was illegal for Doctors to use hypnosis with patients.
Knowing the immense power hypnosis bad beyond psychiatric treatments, good Doctor then went on to develop a system to hypnotize patients just by talking to them!
Covert Hypnosis Was Born
This method he created paved the way for modern hypnotherapy and was later modeled by Richard Bandler and John Grinder to help build the fundamentals of Neuro Linguistic Programming or NLP.
Bandler and Grinder were some of the first trainers in this new form of powerful communication, going on to training top sales people, managers, and politicians. Today there are NLP, covert hypnosis, and persuasion through conversational hypnosis trainings around the world.
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Wednesday, April 16th, 2008
When you want to persuade someone, you can use quotes from an authority figure to override a person’s point of view. The fact that someone outside of the conversation that they admire and respect will act as fuel for your argument. If I say you should buy this book, it’s not so persuasive, but if I say Tony Robbins highly recommends this book influence magic can happen. Another example, “I know how much you like Ron Paul. Well, he said…”
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Posted in persuasion | 4 Comments »
Wednesday, April 16th, 2008
I see so many fundamentals of martial arts parallel the persuasion and influence arts. One of the basic fundamentals of aikido is using the opponent’s momentum and energy against them to throw them.
It is a violent metaphor; but hopefully you do not read this and start throwing your clients around. But one of the keys of persuasion is to be able to use the words, actions, and energy that your client gives you as a tool to persuade them.
One way to use your clients energy against them is to always be affirming their resistance.
One thing I see poor salespeople do all the time, is that they can tell when a prospect is resisting their message, they just continue with that message in hopes that their message will overcome the client or customers objection.
This strategy is as practical as giving your car a new paint job every time it gets dirty instead of getting a car wash.
The covert persuasion strategy is instead of ignoring the objection, affirm their resistance. In NLP this is called pacing. Before you overcome the objection you can say things like “that is a valid concern,” “I used to feel the same way, but because of-,” or “that is a really good question, lets address that-“
When you show that you understand them which gains rapport and you look like a professional. When you ignore the objection it looks like you are hiding something
Bonus tip: If you have an objection that you hear all the time, this is something you want to address early on in the presentation. A lot of my customer ask me if this car gets poor gas mileage because of it’s size, and that’s a valid concern in today’s economy, but because of XYZ feature that is a concern that you can let go of”
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