This article is in a series of articles on linguistic presuppositions. These are simple yet powerful language patterns that when used effectively, can be very useful to covertly and conversationally persuade and influence others.

The pattern for today is “Repetitive Cue Words.” These are words like “too,” “again,” “back,” “also,” and “either.” As they are single words, and not a grammatical pattern like many of the other presuppositions, they are highly flexible and can be used a number of ways.

In general, when you use these words, you are “revisiting” an idea in a sentence, either an idea you’ve explicitly stated, or one that has been implicitly thought of by either you or another person, and you are simply referring to it again.

For example, for the idea of “exercise is the best way to lose weight”:

I heard that exercise is the best way to lose weight, and no matter how many diets and methods I’ve tried, I keep coming back to that simple truth.

In this case, the idea has been expressed once, and then come “back” to by the speaker, effectively repeating it as a “rediscovered truth,” something that would be difficult to disagree with.

Another example, using the same idea:

Most leading dieticians, while agreeing that what you eat is important, always come back to the basic principle that daily exercise is the best way to lose weight.

In this case the first instance of the idea is only implied, and is only actually mentioned when it is “come back” to. This implies that these dieticians (whoever they are) knew this at the beginning, and keep coming “back” to it.

For the idea of “dollar cost averaging is the best way to make money in the stock market,” consider the word “again.”

Again and again, people consistently realize that dollar cost averaging is the best way to make money in the stock market.

In this case, combining “again and again” with “people” implies that many people, over the course of some vague period of time, are independently realizing the power of dollar cost averaging. As stated above, it is hard to argue with.

How about this one:

Investment bankers also realize the wealth building of power of dollar cost averaging.

Here a group of people is implied. Investment bankers realize the power of dollar cost averaging, in addition to some other unnamed group. The reader or listener will generally assume this “group” to be of the same expertise, from a financial perspective, as investment bankers. This is very powerful, as it implies social proof from whatever group of people the listener or reader cares to imagine.

How about the power of presuppositions?

Sales people that consistently outperform their peers again and again understand the power of simple linguistic presuppositions to give them an incredible edge.

Top closers in any company also understand the subtle power of presuppositions to give them incredibly lucrative skills in sales.

Despite the many years of training and seminars, top sales people come back again and again to the simple power of presuppositions, which can be learned in their entirety by reading this blog on a daily basis.

You can either continue to try method after method, or you too, like many others, can come back to the simple strategy of combining subtly powerful presuppositions which will lead you again and again to increasing sales and personal income.

This is another article on linguistic presuppositions, the powerful language patterns that you can use to covertly persuade others to happily give you exactly what you want.

Today’s pattern is the comparative structure. This is a powerful pattern that you can use in many different ways. I will cover two of the basic ways.

First, a little bit about comparatives. These are simply adjectives with the –er suffix attached to them. Higher, taller, fatter, bigger, longer, etc. Or with irregular adjectives (e.g. adjectives with more than two syllables) you simple put “more” in front of them. More beautiful, more expensive, more exciting, etc.

You can also join two actions using “the more…the more…” or “the more…the (comparative),” as follows:

The more I eat, the fatter I get.
The more I study, the smarter I get.
The more I type, the more tired my fingers become.

A good way to use the first comparative is to think of something you want to persuade your listener of, and then ask a question of they know anything that is (better, easier, faster) than your idea.

Examples.

Idea = exercise is the best way to lose weight.

Sentence:

Do you know of any way that is more effective than consistent daily exercise to lose weight?

If they answer no, (either out loud or in their head) then they admit that exercise is the best way to lose weight. If you are a personal trainer, then you’re in a great position to sell them some of your services.

Even if they answer yes, (either out loud or in their head) they must accept that exercise is a great way to lose weight, otherwise the sentence wouldn’t make any sense, as they would have anything to compare their “other” method to.

Idea = dollar cost averaging is a great way to make money in the stock market.

Do you know of anything simpler than dollar cost averaging to consistently make money in the stock market over the long term?

Again, no matter if they say yes or no, they will implicitly accept the idea that dollar cost averaging is a great way to make money in the stock market.

To use “the more… the more…” pattern, you set it up so that the idea you are trying to convince them of naturally leads to a desirable outcome. Or you can use “the more…the less” to set it up so that when they accept your idea, something that is undesirable will decrease.

Idea = exercise is a great way to lose weight

The more my clients realize that exercise is the best way to lose weight, the less they have to worry about fad diets, or how many calories they eat with every meal.

Or you can even use this to set up increasing social proof for your message:

More and more people are starting to discover that exercise is the best way to lose weight.

Idea = dollar cost averaging is a great way to make money in the stock market.

The more our clients understand the power of dollar cost averaging, the more they are starting to really look forward to their retirement.

The more our customers start to see the wealth generating capacity of simple dollar cost averaging, the less they are worried about their future.

More and more of our clients are using simple dollar cost averaging to make their financial future brighter and brighter.

Now I’m sure you’re starting to realize that there aren’t many methods out there that are more powerful and elegant than linguistic presuppositions to covertly persuade somebody to your way of thinking.

More and more salespeople are starting to realize that the more they study these simple patterns on a daily basis, the brighter their future becomes, as more and more opportunities seem to start showing up out of nowhere.

And I can’t think of anything more exciting than gaining such incredible persuasive power, both socially and professionally, through studying some simple language patterns.

And the more you start to realize that, the more you’ll understand how much potential is all around you, just waiting for you to leverage it to your benefit.

This is another article in a series on linguistic presuppositions, those powerful language patterns that can easily give you the persuasive power of a Jedi Knight.

Today’s pattern is stressed sentences, or stressed words within a sentence. Although they can be used in written form, with boldface type, they are much more powerful in person.

Here’s how they work. You take your idea that you’d like to persuade the other person, and place a commentary adjective in front of it, and simply say the sentence. When you combine a commentary adjective, (amazing, wonderful, fantastic) with some voice stress, and some obviously happy facial expressions, the rest of the sentence has a much better chance of being wholly accepted as true.

Idea = exercise is the best way to lose weight.

Sentence:

I think it’s AMAZING that exercise is the best way to lose weight because all you really need is a few minutes every morning.

The results you get from just a little bit of exercise are truly AMAZING.

You can get some really AMAZING weight loss results form just a few minutes of exercise every day.

Idea = dollar cost averaging is a simple way to consistently grow wealth in the stock market.

Sentence:

I just read this AMAZING article that showed how much money you can make by this AWESOME technique called dollar cost averaging.

My friend showed me ASTOUNDING proof of how he made tons of money through dollar cost averaging.

Idea = presuppositions will skyrocket your persuasion skills

Sentence:

The AMAZING thing about presuppositions is not how powerful they are, but how simple they are to learn.

I’ve gotten such FANTASTIC sales results once I started using these simple things called linguistic presuppositions.

Now, I don’t know how many AMAZING discoveries you’ll find regarding these POWERFUL patterns, perhaps you’ll drop in a comment to let us know of the FANTASTIC things you can imagine doing with them in the future.

This is an article in a series on linguistic presuppositions. These powerful patterns can dramatically increase your capacity for covert, conversational persuasion, as they are structured to deliver ideas to your listener or reader that will bypass their conscious “critic” and go straight into the unconscious.

Today’s pattern is cleft sentences. Cleft sentences are sentences that start with either “It is…, ” or “it was…,” that can be used in various ways; here I will go over two powerful methods.

The first is to insert a commentary adjective (interesting, wonderful, fantastic, surprising, etc) after the “It is..” and then insert the idea you want to persuade your listener or reader.

Some examples:

Idea = Exercise is best for weight loss
Adjective = interesting

It’s (it is) interesting that exercise is one of the best ways to lose weight.

Idea = dollar cost investing is the best way to make money
Adjective = surprising

It’s surprising that dollar cost averaging is such a great way to make money. I had always thought that you needed to have inside information, or be an expert.

Idea = presuppositions are powerful persuasive tools
Adjective = amazing

It’s amazing how much you can increase your persuasive ability by studying presuppositions.

Another way to use this pattern is to use a reference, and then put them in the past tense. Then phrase the sentence as if the outcome has already been accomplished. Just find somebody who has already exhibited the idea you want to persuade your audience.

Some examples:

Idea: dollar cost averaging is a great way to make money
Reference: friend (or somebody you read about) who already made money through dollar cost averaging.

I was talking to (reading about, etc) this rich guy the other day. It was his consistent application of dollar cost averaging that allowed him to amass so much wealth in the stock market.

Idea = exercise is the best way to lose weight.
Reference = friend of yours who lost a lot of weight

I have this friend who looks great. I asked her how she did it, and she said she tried all kinds of different weight loss methods, but in the end, it was consistent daily exercise that made it easy to lose the weight.

Idea = presuppositions can skyrocket your persuasion skills
Reference = a friend (or somebody you read about) that is the top salesperson in their company

I was reading this article about this guy who always comes in first in his company’s annual sales competition. He said that it was his relentless study of presuppositions that gave him such powerful sales and persuasion skills.

One thing that never ceases to amaze me is how wonderful it is that there are these language patterns that can give you incredible power in your social life as well as your business, whatever it may be.

Indeed, most of the most successful people you’ll meet will tell you that it was their continued desire to learn more information and techniques that gave them their edge.

I don’t know if it’s your desire to increase your success that makes you optimistic about the future, or your capacity for continued improvement in all areas of life that drives you to continue to learn and improve yourself, but one thing is for certain: It is presuppositions that can give you a powerful edge that most people aren’t even aware of.

This is an article in the series on linguistic presuppositions. Linguistic presuppositions are powerful language patterns that can dramatically increase your ability to persuade others.

Today’s lesson is on the subordinate clause of time pattern.

A subordinate clause is when one idea in a sentence is linked to, or dependent on another idea in the same sentence. A subordinate clause of time links when temporally, or according to time. When one thing happens, another thing will automatically happen. Commonly used time words are, when, after, as soon as, once, before, prior, while, yet, etc.

Consider the difference between the following two sentences:

If I go to the store tonight, I’ll buy some apples.

And

When I go to the store tonight, I’ll buy some apples

In the first sentence, the “buying apples” part is dependent upon “going to the store,” but the “going to the store” part is not a done deal. Maybe I’ll go, maybe I won’t. Maybe it’s dependent upon something else that I haven’t mentioned.

On the other hand, the second sentence, going to the store is assumed to happen, no mater what. It has already been decided. And buying apples, which is dependent on going to the store, is already decided as well.

The best way to use this pattern is to use the thing, or idea, you are intending to persuade your audience to think or do, in the place of “going to the store,” in the above example, and then put something that most people would generally desire, in the place of “buying apples” in the above example.

Let’s look at a couple of examples:

Persuasive idea = dollar cost averaging is a good investment strategy

Generally desired outcome = make money

Linking words = (as soon as, after, once, since)

As soon as you realize that dollar cost averaging is really the best investment strategy out there, you’ll understand how easy it is to consistently make money.

Persuasive Idea = presuppositions are powerful

Desired outcome = able to easily persuade others conversationally

Linking words = after, as soon as, once

After you really appreciate how powerful presuppositions are, you’ll find that persuading people through regular conversation can become second nature.

Persuasive Idea = exercise is the best way to lose weight

Desired outcome = increased attention from the opposite sex

Linking words = as soon as, once, after

Once you understand that the easiest way to consistently lose weight is with a few minutes of exercise everyday, you’ll be surprised to notice all the additional attention you’ll be getting from (men/women/boys/girls).

You can also flip it around, and use before, prior and other words, and simply reverse the sentence.

(Before/Prior) + (desired outcome) + (intended persuasive message)

Before he started getting all kinds of massive attention from girls at school, he understood that exercise is the best way to lose weight.

Prior to making so much money in the stock market on a regular basis, he read a book explaining why dollar cost averaging is the best investment method there is.

Before he became the best salesperson at his company, he really took the time to master linguistic presuppositions, so that he could easily skyrocket his sales.

Now, I don’t know what it is you’d like persuade others to do, maybe you’re in sales, maybe you’d like to increase your social skills, or maybe you’d just like to feel more powerful and in control of the conversations you find yourself in. Whatever the reasons are, once you really take the time to learn and practice these presuppositions on a regular basis, you’ll really see an improvement not only in that particular area of your life you’d like to improve, but in many other areas as well.

The human brain is a wonderful computational machine that will likely not be understood for many years to come. Only now are scientists starting to scratch the surface of how the brain operates, and how the microscopic circuitry can give rise to complex emotional and psychological behavior.

One thing that mystifies many is how exactly language works. Until only recently, it was thought by many that the mind was a “blank slate,” and how we are raised, our culture, our religious, and even our language is determined by what we are taught.

While that may be true in some cases, in the case of language, there is more and more evidence that our brains are pre-wired to soak up language, and use a specific grammatical structure to translate our thoughts into sounds that others can easily understand.

At first glance, it may seem that different languages have nothing in common. If you’ve ever studied a language that differs from English in its SVO (subject verb object) structure, it can be easy to fall into the trap of thinking that the languages of the world are vastly different, so different that we can’t share a common grammar “organ” somewhere in our brain.

Yet experimental researchers in recent years are discovering that indeed, we seem to have a grammatical structure, and it is only a matter of flipping a few internal switches in the first few weeks of our life to figure out what the particular grammatical flavor of our culture of birth is. After that, it’s simply a matter of filling in the blanks.

This leads to some interesting phenomenon. One that is particularly useful, and particularly sneaky, it to leverage the pre existing structure of our language to carefully construct our speech to make it much easier to persuade somebody that by suing old fashioned logic.

There is a special class of language patterns called “Linguistic Presuppositions” that when used correctly, can have a powerful and dramatic effect on your ability to persuade unconsciously. And that means you can get other people to do what you want, and think what you want, all the while thinking that it was there idea.

There are 28 identified patterns of linguistic presuppositions, all of which will be described here in detail over the next few weeks.

Once you get skilled in using them, you will literally see the world in a whole new light. You will also be able look underneath the speech of others with laser like precision, to see precisely what they are thinking, and what is on their mind.

This can have profound effects on your ability to persuade, as well as dramatically increase the quality of the communication within your relationships.

Linguistic presuppositions are at once the least understood, yet one of the most powerful language patterns you can use for easy and natural persuasion.

Stay tuned for more information.

Due to the overwhelming response to something that happened before I even knew that I wasn’t aware of it, I’ve decided to do what most everyboyd already figured out. Which is precisely what you’ve probably been thinking.

Exactly.

My tale starts out with a vague feeling of déjà vu, although not quite. I had walked into this shop, and I’m positive I’d never been in there before, but for some reason I knew where everything was. Not that that is such a big deal, because most shops are pretty much laid out with the customer in mind, and to make it as easy as possible for them to make a purchased and get on out without excessive lingering.

But something about this store seemed odd, but at the same time, strangely familiar. The shopkeeper even looked at me with a sort of expectation, like I was in there a week before and I’d just come back to finalize my purchase or something. But then again, it may have all been my imagination. That has been happening a lot to me lately.

Déjà vu is an interesting, widely experienced, but often misunderstood brain phenomenon. It seems to happen at random, so they can’t really do any experiments to reproduce the effect. And they can’t very well hook electrodes into people’s brains, and have them sit around in a laboratory waiting to get hit with passing cloud of déjà vu.

According to various esoteric theories of probability and philosophy, combined with a few cold and hard facts about the known universe, there may very well be an infinite number of worlds just like this one, but only with sleight differences. The theory goes that since the universe is infinite, there are an infinite number of particles that can combine in an infinite number of combinations, making every possible combination a highly probable event. So somewhere in some corner of the universe is somebody just like you, reading a post just like this, sitting in a chair just like that, only something is slightly different. Like instead of that thought that just entered into our head, your counterpart in the parallel universe is thinking the thought that you are about to think, or perhaps the same thought that you thought the same time yesterday.

They theorize that déjà vu is some kind of vague and brief connection between you and one of your other universe counterparts. Some kind of a long distance resonance between bodies of particles that happen coincidently share congruence before phase shifting into randomness.

Our eyes only connected for about a second, before I realized my feeling of connection wasn’t backed by any game plan, so I just broke off eye contact, like you do when you are too embarrassed to say anything, and you’d like to just pretend your eyes never met. But our eyes did meet, and I could still feel them following them throughout the store.

“Did you forget something?” She asked.

Wait, what?

“Huh?” I turned, surprised.

She looked around helpfully, and then looked at me with her head cocked.
“You weren’t carrying any bags, did you put something down that was in your pockets?” She asked with genuine concern.

My pockets. I stuck my hands in both of them. Nothing there but my keys, and my wallet. Which is what I always carry when I leave the house. No bag.

I shook my head, and stood hoping for some more unsolicited information that might help me out.

“Did you change your mind? About the machine?”

Machine?

“Um..” I started. Not sure. Starting to feel a real desire to get the hell out of there.

“I can’t really go any lower. It does sound it could be very useful to you. It does come with a three month guarantee.”

I had an idea.

“Um, could you show it to me, once more?” I asked. Staring directly her, so I wouldn’t look in the opposite direction by accident, and look like an idiot. (Who am I kidding here?)

“Sure.” She said, smiling and pulled out a catalogue. It was big, and thick. About half as thick as a phone book. It looked very expensive; all the pages were glossy and full color. She was slowly thumbing through the pages; I couldn’t quite glimpse what sort of things was in there. I stepped closer to get a better look.

“Aha, here it is.” She announced, turning the book around so I could see.

I was looking at that? What in the world. I checked the price. Sixteen thousand dollars. She must have noticed my eyes.

“As I said before, I can go as low as twelve thousand. We’ll scarcely make any money on this.”

I have to admit, even though I wasn’t quite sure what you would use a contraption like that for, it sure looked nice. Twelve thousand really wasn’t that much, considering. What the hell.

“Uh..” I started. How to start.

“Payment is, uh…” I hoped she’d finish for me. She did.

“Don’t worry sir, we won’t need to check your credit again.”

Again? Wait, if they ran my credit, that would mean…

“Ten percent down, and then the balance is up to you. Most of our customers secure financing on their own, but with your unique circumstances, that won’t be necessary. As I said before, you can just pay us twelve monthly payments on the balance. No interest.”

That did sound like a pretty good deal. What the hell.

“Ok,” I heard myself say.
“I’ll take it.”

That was just when I’d noticed the wedding band on my finger. When did I get married? I just hoped that my wife, whoever she was, wasn’t going to be angry at this purchase.

To be continued…

(And now for something completely different)

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So the other day I was having an argument with a friend of mine. Not really an argument, although it could have easily turned into one if either one of us had a hugely vested interested in our opinions, which we both agreed were merely opinions. We’d argued/discusses several issues at length enough times to know that pretty much either issue we choose, it’s fairly easy to shoot holes in each others arguments, and we almost always end up agreeing to disagree.

One of the things we do sometimes is to play devils advocate one each other, if that’s even the right term. We pick an issue, an issue that we disagree on, and which is highly controversial, such as gun control, or abortion, or animal rights, and argue the opposite that we normally would.

I actually met this guy several years ago in a sales seminar, and that was one of the ways they taught us to overcome objections, was to put yourself in the customers shoes, and come up with as many objections as possible. The seminar itself was based on the overcoming objections part of the sales process. One of the things we learned was that the best way to overcome an objection is to not only defeat it, but to bring it up before the other person even thinks about it. In technical terms this is called “pre framing” as opposed to “re framing.” When you reframe something, you take an already stated objection, and try to twist it around so it’s not such a big objection. The problem with this is that many times, by the time the person has formulated the though well enough to present a coherent objection, they’ve usually been thinking about it for a while, and it’s pretty well entrenched in their mind.

So a great way to get rid of objections is to simply reframe them before they come up, or preframe them. That way when the client starts to formulate the thought that would have otherwise turned into an objection, instead they’ll think what you want them to think.

Here’s a great example that I witnessed in real time, several years ago. While you may object to the content of my example, the structure of how the particular objection in question was handled before it came up was particularly elegant. I was eating dinner at a restaurant with a group of guys. One of the guys, who was around 40 years old at the time, liked the younger ladies. He wouldn’t date anyone older than mid twenties. (If you find this distasteful, please press on. The example lies in the structure, not the content.)

At the time of this incident, the TV show ER was really popular, and starred George Clooney, who was the latest heartthrob. I believe at the time Clooney was late thirties. So my friend was flirting with this young waitress. I don’t think he intended to actually follow throw, he was just practicing his “game,” so to speak.

They were flirting back and forth, with eye contact, and conversations that lasted jut a tad bit longer than your normal waitress/customer interaction. He asked what she did when she wasn’t waitressing. She mentioned that she was in nursing school. He smiled and said, “Oh, you want to be like on ER, right?” And she blushed, as it was obvious that she liked that show, and at least entertained the idea of being a glamorous nurse like on TV.

So my friend, noticed a golden opportunity to preframe the “how old are you” question, that younger girls sometimes ask seemingly older guys. While she was still smiling about the thought of being a nurse “like” on ER, my friend says:

“Me and George Clooney have the same birthday.”

Now if she fantasized at all about being a nurse on ER, she surely fantasized, at least a little bit, about George Clooney. And my friend put himself in that same category in her mind. If he decided to pursue this girl (he didn’t,) and the age question ever began to arise in her mind, she would remember him having the same age as George Clooney, and of course she wouldn’t have a problem with George Clooney, so the age question was deflected and dismantled before it ever came up.

When I asked him later on how he was able to think in the moment like that, and preframe a pretty powerful objection right there on the spot, in real time, he told me it was simply through practice. He had dated quite few younger girls, and they would inevitably come up with the same questions. So what he did was to write out all the questions he got over and over, on some business size cards. And everyday, while he was taking the train to work, he would flip through the cards, look at the questions, and think of the best way to answer them that would respect the questioner, and also put himself in the best possible light.

He said that after he did that for a while, he began to see the questions coming long before they were ever actually expressed verbally, and easily preframe them. After a while, they never, ever came up again, and he enjoyed much more success (take that however you will) with his pursuit of dating younger girls.

In that sales seminar I went to, they taught us the same thing. To make a list of all the objections you get on a regular basis, and figure out the best way to answer so that you’re not disregarding or disrespecting your client, but you’re also putting your product or your service in the best possible light.

If you take the time to actually write down the objections you get the most, and practice going over some possible answers, you’ll find that they begin to come up more and more, and you’ll even be preframing them conversationally without even realizing it. To the untrained eye, they will seem to have magically disappeared.

Another thing we learned at the seminar was a way to increase mental flexibility and open mindedness. And that was through purposely arguing a point that you don’t believe in, with a willing partner. Take an issue, like some of the ones I’ve listed above, find a willing partner, and choose opposite sides that you’d normally take, and let the battle begin.

Use all your skills of persuasion and sales to convince the other person, while resisting their argument (which is the way you really feel). Do this few times and you’ll never look at the same old issues again.

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Recently I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about colonizing other planets. Well, maybe not so much as hearing as I’ve been reading many articles on the Internet about the subject. You know how that goes, you find something online, you find this pretty interesting, and you read more and more about this, and click around on the links, and pretty soon you find that you suddenly have developed an interest in this topic that you only maybe were vaguely aware of before now.

When I think back, I think it was all started by something I saw on TV, some crime drama involving some guys that were on this privately owned space ship that offered millionaires the chance to go into orbit for a few days. One of the characters mentioned that this is the golden age when it comes to space entrepreneurial ship. Whether that’s actually true obviously remains to be seen. But it doesn’t take much imagination to see the correlation with Europeans setting out across vast unknown bodies of water search of new lands hundreds of years ago to setting out across space to set up colonies on other planets.

Of course, then there’s that recent movie that is a fairly thin metaphor of what to do when you meet up with people already living in the new area that you’d like to colonize. Human strategies have ranged from killing them, joining them, assimilating them, and pitting them against one another.

Probably the most useful strategy, and resulted in the spread of the most culture, at least according to some historians, is Alexander of Macedonia, or Alexander the Great as he is commonly referred to. He lead a coalition of Greek forces across Persia, and to this date is the second greatest conqueror of all time, if you measure how great a conqueror is by the amount of land they took over. In the number one position is Genghis Khan. An interesting side not is that Genghis Khan was a peasant who’s parents were murdered by a rival chieftain, and yet he rose to become the greatest conqueror in human history, while Alexander was born into a royal family, and inherited his kingdom, which already had quite a bit of support from the various Greek city states when his father was murdered. So you don’t need to be born with a silver spoon in your mouth if you want to conquer the world.

But while Genghis Khan swept through land with fury and terror, and slaughtered everything in his path, Alexander took a more diplomatic approach. Much of the land he conquered, he didn’t even have to fight for. The Persian Empire at that time had undergone quite a bit of upheaval, and they were spread far and thin. Many times Alexander and his troops would ride into a city, and the city government would simply switch their alliance from Persia to Alexander.

But one thing that Alexander did that helped spread Greek culture throughout the world was to encouraged his men, at least the single ones, to take brides from the new cultures. Often times he would pick up fresh soldiers from the cities, and many of his soldiers would stay and build new lives. Of course, this wasn’t always the case. When Babylon fell to Alexander’s troops, he gave them free reign over the city. They raped, plundered, murdered and burned the city to the ground, as was fairly common practice back in those days. (And unfortunately today as well in many places).

Another interesting strategy is the divide and conquer strategy. This was used particularly effectively by the Catholic Church during the colonization of South America and part of Asia in the 1500′s and 1600′s. First they would send the priests, who would convert as many people as possible, including the leaders. Of course, not everybody would convert, and would stick to the old “pagan” religion. Including in some that converted, and some that didn’t would of course be those involved in government. Once there was sufficient division in the ruling classes, then the solders would come, their jobs having been made much easier by the priests that preceded them.

This was attempted in Japan during the same time period, but all the Christians were expelled, or executed before they could finish their plan.

Anytime you want to expand influence into a new area, there is going to be resistance, and there are always several different strategies to take to best overcome the resistance. Brute force, cooperation, or subversion, it depends the desired outcome, and what an appropriate level of risk you’re willing to take, and what skills you possess and how they could best be used. I doubt Alexander or Genghis Khan could have gotten very far by sending in priests. I also doubt that the Spanish Conquistadors would have done well with Alexander’s or Genghis Khan’s fighting strategies, as they required open fields, and many men galloping furiously on thousands of horses. That strategy doesn’t work well in the jungle.

One interesting, and some say natural, application to all these battle, warfare, and conquering strategies is in business. Classic books on warfare, like Sun Tzu’s “The Art Of War,” And Miyomoto Musashi’s “The Book Of Five Rings” are usually found in the business section of the bookstore.

The huge success of the British Empire was largely do it’s effective application of these strategies of warfare to business. One could argue that English is the second most spoken language in the world today, behind only Mandarin, is due to the effective application of timeless warfare strategies to business purposes.

If you own a business today, whether it is a twenty-year-old brick and mortar shop, or an online start up that you are doing in your spare time, it might help to keep some of these ancient warfare strategies in mind.

Because I guarantee you, whatever it is you are trying to sell to your customers, there’s several other people fighting for their attention, and would be pleased as punch to get their business instead of you.

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Have you ever been window-shopping, and maybe decided to venture into a store to get a better look, and one thing led to another and you ended up buying something that you hadn’t set out to buy that day? Or maybe you were kind of in the market for something, like maybe a TV or something, and weren’t quite ready to make a purchase, but you came across a salesperson that somehow seemed to make buying a TV that day the most obvious choice in the world?

We’ve all had the experience of being hounded by a salesperson that just wouldn’t take no for an answer, and know what it feels like to be on the receiving end of hard sell after hard sell. You know a salesperson is desperate for a sale when they relentlessly follow you around despite your clear indications for them to take a hike.

So what’s the difference? Why does on salesperson seem to be helpful, and when you do make the decision to buy something, you feel grateful and want to tell your friends about him or her, while other sales people, they just emit an aura of desperation that triggers every single one of your warning signals?

Or more importantly, if you are trying to persuade somebody, whether it is in direct sales, marketing, or other form of persuasion, how do you be the first salesperson and not the second one?

Most people will tell you that being able to sell things is a natural gift that you either have it, or you don’t. Like a guy being a “natural” with women, wherever he goes, women follow. And no matter how hard you try to emulate him, you just can’t figure it out.

Part of the problem with so-called “naturals” is that they themselves have no idea how they do what they do. Unless they’ve gained their skills through long concentrated practice, they likely have no clue what makes them such a persuasive and charismatic salesperson. And unfortunately, many books on sales are written by these “naturals” and aren’t all that helpful, as they don’t really know how to describe what they are doing in a way that makes it easily repeatable by others.

They may say things like “respect the client,” “develop rapport,” “be sincere,” but these are particularly vague. How exactly do you “respect the client?” What is the best way to “develop rapport?” if you ask ten different successful salespeople these questions, you’ll likely get ten very different answers, which will likely be just as vague and unhelpful.

Enter NLP.

NLP, or neurolinguistic programming was developed as a powerful modeling tool to figure out exactly what these “naturals” were doing that made them “naturals.” It all started with therapists. Most people, when they think of therapy, they imagine going to a shrink every week for many years, and talking endlessly about childhood problems and parental issues (like Tony Soprano). But when NLP was first developed, they studied a few therapists that could “fix” people in just a few sessions.

Somebody would have this deep emotional problem, they’d go see one of these “naturals” and in a couple of weeks, through three or four sessions, their problem would be completely obliterated. And these weren’t your basic problems like not being able to smile at a pretty girl, or ask your boss for a raise. These were deep emotional problems that had to do with sexual abuse, alcoholism, and other serious relationship issues.

So how did they do it? The interesting thing is when one of the co-founders of NLP, Richard Bandler, showed one of these therapists her specific language patterns, she was surprised. She herself didn’t even know that was how she was doing it. Bandler basically showed her that she was using the same language structure over and over again with her clients, and it was creating magical results. Much better than that stereotypical image of a useless psychiatrist who just sits there and says, “how do you feel about that? What do you think that means?” over and over again.

Through the creation of NLP, people were suddenly able to model excellence in human behavior and human communication. By asking the right questions, and paying attention to the specifics of the communication structure, they were able to figure out exactly how those “naturals” were doing what they were doing.

And a major part of their “natural” abilities was a strong belief about their capabilities. This went far beyond affirmations in the mirror every morning. This was a deep, powerful subconscious belief that they totally capable of doing what they were setting out to do, whether it be curing a child of his bedwetting, or selling a fifty thousand dollar car to somebody who was merely “looking around.”

There were subsequently several method and procedures developed in NLP to install these beliefs in people, or for people to install them in themselves. It became possible to become a natural without experiencing the random childhood that produced a natural salesperson or therapist. As Richard Bandler put it, with NLP, it’s never too late to have a happy childhood.

There is a huge amount of free NLP information available on the web, and there are several great sources of self study NLP courses, as well as NLP based self development products. With NLP, there really isn’t any reason why you can’t be a natural in your chosen field.

One powerful program that many people have been having massive results with is success with NLP. If you check out this website, you’ll find that this is just one of the many programs that uses NLP to help you become successful in any field you choose.

Success with NLP

One thing about studying NLP is that it is by no means a “quick fix.” Many of our beliefs that we’ve been carrying around for a while can take some effort to re engineer, but once you do, you’ll be amazed at how much you can accomplish in life. Take a look at success with NLP and see for yourself.

Many people discover that once they start down the path of self-development with NLP, they realize that the sky really is the limit, and studying and mastering NLP becomes an obviously essential skill of life.