Reality Reconstruction

Your Reading This Headline Leads To Incredible Curiosity

The Milton Model set of language patterns and communication strategies is a wonderful set of tools that you can use in virtually any situation where normal conversation is appropriate.

Today’s pattern, “Utilization,” is particularly powerful for many reasons. The basic structure of the utilization pattern, or strategy, is to take whatever information you can get from your listeners or readers, and simply agree with it, validate it, and use it in your conversation in such a way that it supports your idea or suggested course of action.

One of the reasons it’s so powerful it is completely opposite of what traditional persuasion and sales teaches. Old school persuasion and rhetoric teaches to build a strong case on logic, and hammer your listener with so many facts and figures that they have no choice but to agree with you.

Or worse yet is the “hard sell,” where you hammer your poor client with so much enthusiasm and veiled threats and insults (are you smart enough to buy this product? Are you rich enough to buy this product? Do you have the courage to buy this product?) that leave you with an “icky” feeling even if you do buy the product.

When you use utilization, you take whatever your listener or potential client is doing or saying, and agree with it completely, and let them know you totally understand and respect where they’re coming from, and then fold their statements or actions into your “story” and use it to support your case.

A couple of examples.

You are talking to somebody at a party for the first time, and they are showing all the classic signs of disinterest (turning their body away from you, giving you short answers to your questions, making brief but fleeing eye contact with you).

Most people would get discouraged, but since you are learning the secrets of conversational hypnosis and covert persuasion, you may say something like this:

Yea, I know. You’re not that interested in talking to me. That is totally cool. I hate it when you’re at parties and some goof comes up and starts talking to you, and you’re just have to be polite until they leave. It’s like some people just can’t take a hint. (You can point at yourself when you say this.) They just can’t tell that you’re not really interested. It’s like when my sister met her husband. He just kept talking to her, and wouldn’t leave her alone. At first she didn’t really acknowledge him standing there, and finally she figured if she talked to him a little bit he’d go away (you can point to yourself again at this point.) But then when they started talking, she started getting more and more interested in this guy (point to yourself again here), and they started dating, and that was pretty much that. This was about ten years ago, and now they have three kids. Which I have to baby-sit. Little savages. Do you like kids?

(end example)

Or if you are giving a sales presentation, and you can tell you client is not quite ready to by. You ask what they think of you’re product, and they say it’s too expensive, (which usually means they can’t appreciate the value).

Yea, I agree this product is really expensive. It’s definitely more expensive than our competitor’s product. I’ve heard lots of people tell me that, and to tell you the truth, if I were in there shoes, I don’t know if I’d buy this product either, if I only knew what I’d told you so far. But some of our other clients, when they find out about some more benefits that you really don’t notice until you imagine using this product for a year or so, and then they start to really see how this product can really help you. And most of them when they combine that information with all of our extremely flexible payment plans slowly realize that this is valuable far beyond what price you’ll pay for it. And several of our customers from years ago who initially thought it was too expensive are some of our biggest fans now, and consistently give us referrals.

(end example)

You can also use this pattern, or strategy in sales copy. You’ll need to figure out what some common objections there are for your particular product or industry, and then pace them, agree with them, and then turn them around so that they support the idea of purchasing your product.

This can be particularly powerful, and significantly increase your sales, if you place these “utilizations” within your sales copy right about where the objections start to crop up.

One way to do this is through customer testimonies. Simply do a poll of satisfied customers, and ask for specific feedback regarding certain objections. How they think of the product now vs. how they thought of it before they bought it. How the product is performing compared to what their expectations are, etc.

If your readers can see real testimony from real customers that show they had the same concerns before buying, yet are now happy and satisfied customers, that can go a long way toward increasing your sales.

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