Without question, Sleight of Mouth Language Patterns are the easiest way to covertly sneak your ideas inside somebody else’s head without any detection whatsoever. When used correctly, they will take your ideas and suggestions as their own, thereby offering no resistance at all. These patterns have been used for everything from sales and seduction to therapeutic belief change and drastically increasing personal resources.

Today’s pattern is a fun one to play with, and is called the “What If Frame.” In this particular reframe, you accept your listeners’s beliefs, and then ask them to imagine what would happen if things were different. Simply by imagining an alternative reality (or what we think of as reality) we can discover untold resources that we didn’t even know existed before.

Before getting into this reframe, a little bit about conditional grammatical structures. (huh?)

Basically there are two types. The first type (first conditionals for all you grammar nerds) is when speaking about an event that is likely to happen, or has a decent chance of happening. This pattern uses “if,” present tense verbs, and the auxiliary verb “will.”

If it rains tonight, I will wear my raincoat.

If I run out of money, I will go to the ATM.

If I eat too much past, I will get gas.

The second type (second conditional for the aforementioned grammar fans) is when something has very little chance of actually happening, or is impossible. This uses “if,” past tense verbs, and the auxiliary verb “would.”

If I saw a UFO, I would grab my camera.

If I ate one million hamburgers, I would be very sick.

If I could slam dunk, I would be very famous.

The reason for bringing this up, is that sometimes using the second conditional is better. Even though few people will consciously discriminate between the first and second conditionals in casual conversation, we pick up on it subconsciously.

When speaking in a “What If” frame mind, using the second conditional can help your listener to fantasize about how things would be if they were different. They will subconsciously pick up that you’re speaking in terms of things that can’t really happen anyway, and they’ll be much more likely go to along with it.

And when they start imagining a different reality, one with much more possibility and resources, their mind will automatically start thinking of ways to get there.

To construct this pattern, simply accept their belief (stated as X causes Y, or X means Y), without arguing, and then playfully talk about how things would be if they were different.

If what things were different? Anything you want. If they didn’t believe that X causes Y, if X caused something else, If X only caused Y in certain circumstances, anything and everything is fine for this. So long as they go along with you in their imagination, this will work like a charm.

Make sure when doing this, not to take on the tone “Yea, if things were different, but they’re not, so we’re stuck.” Try and take on the tone of a little kid who can pretend that some box is a space ship fighting against aliens.

Some examples.

I can’t get a good job because I don’t have a college degree.

Yea, I can see how that’s one way to look at things. But what if you could? What if there were some way that you could start at a job without a college degree, and then work your way up through the system? What if there really were companies that based their promotions and management positions on the actual work that you did? If those companies did exist, how would you find them?

I can’t get a date because I’m overweight.

Yea, lots of people would reject you for that, that’s for sure. But what if there were some people out there who were more concerned with your personality and your ability to communicate and really connect with people? (Notice the presuppositions?) If there were people like that out there, how would you find them, and start a conversation with them? How would you know them if you met them?

I can’t make money because I don’t have very good skills.

Yea, I’m sure it seems that way. But what if you could? What if you already had the skills to make money in some market? If that were true, how would you go about finding them?

I can’t buy your product because it is too expensive.

Yea, a lot of people say that, and I can’t disagree. But what if there were something about this particular product that made you want to buy it regardless of the cost? What if you were to realize that this product/service could help you out so much, it would be worth twice what we’re asking for it? How would you know if that were true?

I can’t learn these patterns because they are too complicated.

Yea, there certainly are a lot of them. But what if there was a way to learn them that made them fun and interesting, some way to imagine how your future would be if you mastered these patterns? How would that make you feel?

I could never use these patterns in real conversation. They’d feel too strange and awkward.

Yea, some of these patterns do sound pretty off the wall. But what if you could use these in a conversation, and nobody would know? What if these were so powerful, that they would send people on an internal search for various new meanings, and they wouldn’t even notice that you said anything strange or different? How cool would that be? How much extra money could you make?

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With the powerful Sleight of Mouth Language Patterns you can easily get inside somebody’s head (without them realizing it) and covertly twist their ideas around to give them a much more resourceful outlook on life. These can be used for destroying limiting beliefs, to drastically improve your sales, and to seduce whomever you please.

Today’s pattern is called the “Both Frame.” The basic idea is that when people express a belief or an objection, it’s set up as either a complex equivalent (X means Y) or a cause and effect (X causes Y). Although often times only one side will be stated, and you’ll have to extract the other side with your intuition based on the context of the conversation.

When people express these statements or ideas, they are usually in an “all or nothing” frame. There is no halfway point. When somebody says that they can’t get a good job because they don’t have a college degree, in their mind they mean that every single job they will get with their education will be a bad one.

If somebody says that being upset makes them eat ice cream, in their mind, anxiety creates one and only one response: Get the bucket of ice cream and the spoon. (Actually that doesn’t sound too bad right now, but I digress).

The idea then is to carefully introduce some kind of “halfway point” so that they have some more responses. When people express an objection or a limiting belief, they are expressing how they are stuck. They have built a rut in their minds, and they can’t think any other way. By introducing more choice, they can experience a new perspective. They can get that, “wow, I never thought of that before” feeling.

To use this conversationally, take the belief or objection at face value, and then wonder out loud about any other possibilities.

Some examples:

I can’t make the basketball team because I’m too short. (ALL assumption = height is the ONLY consideration by the coach).

Is that the first thing the coach checks, is how tall you are? Does he have any other criteria besides height, like teamwork, leadership, hustle, free throw shooting ability, inside shot, outside shot, anything like that?

I can’t get a date because I’m overweight. (All or nothing assumption: Other people only care about weight and physical appearance)

Is that the only consideration people have regarding a potential relationship partner? I read this interesting article in Cosmo that said most people have about three or four different things that are important to them, and being in good physical shape is not the most important.

or

(All or nothing assumption: I can’t talk to anybody because it won’t turn into a relationship)

So you don’t want to talk to anybody and maybe be friends unless you are sure from the first minute that you are after them for a lifelong relationship?

I can’t buy your product, because it’s too expensive.

Do you always only look at the price when considering buying something? Have you ever bought something only because of price and later were disappointed? Does value, desire and expected pleasure from owning this product ever come into consideration?

I can’t learn all these language patterns because they are too difficult.

Do you have to learn all of them in one session? Is it possible to learn one this week, and another one next week? Imagine how powerful and persuasive you’d be six months from now!

I could never use these in a conversation, they would sound too awkward and uncomfortable.

(note: In this situation, the person is likely imagining using them for the first time in a high pressure sales situation, or an important point with an important person, like a boss or significant other, where losing an argument would mean a big deal.)

What would happen if you just playfully used these on Skype with somebody that you didn’t really know that well, when talking about something that didn’t really matter?

or

How does it feel to imagine using these with a practice partner, until you feel confident to start using them with others about inconsequential things, so you can better appreciate how powerful they really are?

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Sleight of Mouth Language Patterns are powerful linguistic phrases and arguments that can easily obliterate any objection and turn a limiting belief on it’s head. They can be used to improve any persuasive conversation from selling cars to seducing the lover of your dreams.

Today’s pattern is called “Metaphor Framing.” This is not a pattern per se, but it can be used to deliver any other pattern in manner that is conversational, non confrontational, and deeply effective on a subconscious level.

There are plenty of different definitions for metaphor. He is a brick house, is a metaphor describing some guy, who happens to be very large, in terms of a house.

The movie, “The Day The Earth Stood Still,” (the original version, at least) was a metaphor for the dangers of the cold war.

If you are a fan of Freud, sometimes a cigar is not just a cigar, if you catch my drift. (Just ask Monica Lewinski).

A metaphor, then, is any kind of language, story, or description, that is used to describe something else, without referring to it directly. It allows us to think about one thing in terms of another.

With these patterns, it allows your listener to try on some different ideas regarding their objection of belief, without really having to confront their objection or belief on a conscious level. Often times the belief merely vanishes.

This is how Milton Erickson did most of his amazing work. He would tell story after story about seemingly meaningless things, but when he was done, is clients problems were solved.

My favorite was a boy that came in because he wet the bed. Erickson told him stories about baseball, where it’s important to squeeze the glove just at the right time in order to catch the ball, as well as release just at the right time when you are throwing to home plate all the way from the outfield.

He also told him stories of big factories and valves and shut off switches.

So how do you use a metaphor with these patterns?

Use any of the other patterns, but talk about something completely different, but within the framework of the particular pattern you’d like to deliver.

For example, somebody says, “I can’t get a date because I’m too fat.”

One possible reframe could be that plenty of other overweight people are in happy relationships.

To put it into a metaphor, or a story, you could remind them of the story of Beauty and the Beast, and the moral that the person inside is more important in the relationship. Or tell some story of an old friend you haven’t seen in a while that was really big, but was always surrounded by attractive members of the opposite sex because he or she had such an outgoing and charming personality.

The important thing is to think of a story, and use a character in your story that is representative of the person you are speaking of. You can either have them take on the same objection, with disastrous results, or explain how they found a way around their obstacle and everybody lived happily ever after.

I can’t get a good job because I don’t have a college degree.

That reminds me of this neighbor I used to have. He was always grumpy and unhappy. Never got married, never had any kids. Said he couldn’t afford them. He said he never was able to make much money because he barely finished high school. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that our other neighbor, who was the same age as him, was a high school drop out and was making six figures in some company where he started in the mail room and worked his way up.

I can’t learn these patterns because they are too difficult.

I’m glad Moses didn’t have that attitude when God charged him with leading the people out of the desert and into the promised land. The world would have been a much different place than it is today. It’s amazing that they were out there for forty years, living on who knows what, and they still made it to their destination.

I can’t use these patterns with others because it would be too awkward.

I wonder what the world would be like today if St. Paul felt that going into the various cities and preaching the Gospel felt too awkward?

or

I remember reading this poem by Rumi, this ancient Sufi poet. I don’t remember the words exactly, but it described the difference between fire and water. Fire seems to harsh and dangerous, but as soon as you step into it, you are in cool, relaxing water. But water, on the other hand, seems to inviting and peaceful on the outside, but once you step into it you are bathed in anguishing fire. I guess his point was that things that seem difficult on the outside are actually pretty useful and easy once you get past them, while things that seem easy and comfortable can keep you stuck in a living hell without hope for escape.

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Sleight of Mouth Language patterns are little known about but incredibly powerful linguistic tools that you can easily use during normal, everyday conversations with powerful effects. Easily dismantling beliefs and quickly and effectively overcoming objections, these patterns have been used for powerful therapeutic change and incredibly profitable sales techniques.

The focus this article is the “Identity Frame” pattern.

First, a bit about the concept of “identity.”

Many times, most times, we think of ourselves in various tenses of the “be” verb. Functionally, this verb is a linguistic equals sign, equating everything on one side of the equation, with everything on the other.

The simple sentence, “I am happy,” is equating the speaker with the feeling of happiness. Sounds simple and a bit pedantic, but it bears some consideration. Not so bad, but what happens when you don’t do something as well as you’d like, and you say, “I am a failure”? Now it gets a bit trickier. The moment you say that, your subconscious searches our memories and judgments for every other instance that you labeled somebody or something a “failure,” and puts you in that category as well.

Technically speaking, you are nothing. You do things, you think things, you remember things, you feel things, but what you really are is always changing. Even the atoms, molecules and cells that make up your physical body (including the brain you are using to read this and hopefully store some of this information for later use) are always being recycled.

You are a process, a process that is always changing. You can’t be anything.

So how do you use this idea in a conversational reframe?

You could take the two sides of the statement, and equate them as being one in the same. This is similar to the “Allness” frame.

Or you could take whatever belief or objection they are saying, and identify them with that particular belief. It’s a way of showing the person that they really are a lot more resourceful than letting their mind be held captive by some imaginary belief or objection.

For example, somebody says to you “I can’t get a good job because I don’t have a college degree.”

What could you identify about that belief, that the listener wouldn’t particularly like to be identified with?

How about:

• Somebody that lets others determine their potential
• Somebody who allows their future to be determined by a set of exams
• Somebody who only follows what the crowd does without much thought
• Somebody who quietly takes their spot in society and hopes for some table scraps from the big kids

To phrase this, it sometimes helps to assume they are the opposite of that identity, and let them prove it by living up to it. It’s tempting to cop an attitude (Oh, you’re on of those people!) but that only puts them on the defensive, which will strengthen their belief, and destroy your rapport.

What? I didn’t think you were the type that allowed some arbitrary rules set up by society to determine their life. I thought you were the kind of guy who made their own luck and did whatever you wanted despite what the so called “experts” said was best. Since when are you letting a bunch of goofball academics who don’t even know you set some imaginary limit on your career and earning potential?

Some others examples.

I can’t play basketball because I’m too short.

You mean there is some kind of height limit on playing basketball? Do the laws of physics change, making it impossible to make a basket if the ball is shot below a certain elevation?

I can’t get a date because I’m overweight.

So everybody who doesn’t date is fat? And everybody who is fat can’t get a date? That can’t be true, because I see overweight people in relationships all the time. What would happen if you were skinny in a relationship and then got fat? Would it automatically stop? How does that work? Do you each get some kind of post card in the mail telling you it’s over? Who’s in charge of this system, anyway?

I can’t learn these patterns because they are too hard.

I thought you were the kind of person who likes a challenge, especially when learning something can make you a lot of money, and make it easy to have wonderful relationships. You didn’t give up when you started walking, did you? Unless you parents had to hire some kind of personal walking trainer for you when you were a year old…

I could never use these in a real conversation, it would feel too awkward.

Do you really identify yourself as somebody who never tries anything unless it feels totally comfortable the first time? You’re not one of those people that are afraid to leave the house, and have to wash your hands every fifteen seconds are you? (said in an obvious joking manner, after building a lot of rapport).

I can’t buy your product because it costs too much.

I read this article once about an old lady who hated to spend money. She would even sell the daily newspaper after she read it. She died a rich woman, but she wore the same ugly dress every day, and her kids hated her. You’re not like her, are you? (said in joking manner, after building a lot rapport).

(end examples)

Some of these are bit tough to stand by themselves, so in this case it’s a good idea to throw these reframes out jokingly, and then change the subject, and then come back with another pattern or two.

Even when you change the subject, your listener will have at least in part considered the idea of what it’s like to identify themselves with the belief in such a way. When you come back later with a couple more patterns, it will be much more easier to dismantle their belief or objection.

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Sleight of Mouth Language patterns are incredibly useful for not only covertly dismantling limiting beliefs and objections, but also for drastically increasing the resourcefulness of both yourself and whoever you happen to be using them with.

Today’s pattern is called “Have To Framing.” This particular pattern applies some Cartesian logic and invites the holder of the belief or objection to consider other alternatives.

Cartesian logic was created (or so people say) by some super smart French guy named Rene Descartes a few hundred years ago. You might have heard of him. It basically takes a cause/effect statement, or relationship, and expands on it, like so:

Statement: Doing X causes Y

Applying Cartesian mumbo jumbo gets you these questions:

• What else does X cause?
• What else causes Y?
• What doesn’t cause Y?
• Does X ever not cause Y?
• Does X ever cause the opposite of Y?
• Does Y ever happen without X?
• What would happen if you did X?
• What wouldn’t happen if you did X?
• What would happen if you didn’t do X?
• What wouldn’t happen if you didn’t do X?

When you conversationally bring up these questions about a belief or an objection, it’s almost impossible for your listener to maintain that the belief is some set in concrete law of reality from Heaven.

A great way to introduce these questions is by way of presuppositions. You can presuppose that there are other alternatives by asking what evidence they would see if one of the other Cartesian mumbo jumbo logic phrases were correct.

For example, somebody says “Being stressed makes me angry.”

So you have Stress causes anger.

Some Cartesian statements could be:

What else causes you to get angry?
What doesn’t cause you to get angry?
What else does stress cause you to do?
Does stress ever not make you not angry?

And then you could stick them in some presuppositions by asking something like follows:

How do you know when stress doesn’t make you angry?

Even if they look at you with a completely blank or confused look, in order to make sense of that sentence, they’ve got to search through their history and see if there actually are any memories of stress not causing anger. Just by searching, they will subconsciously realize that

stress causes anger

is only true sometimes, not all of the time. When they come to that realization, the belief loosens up a bit, and they’ll realize that there are other things to consider.

To generate this pattern, mull over some questions like:

• Do you have to feel that way?
• What would happen if you didn’t believe that?
• How would you know if that wasn’t true?
• What’s it like when that isn’t true?
• What stops you from believing otherwise?
• What would it look like, sound like, feel like, if the opposite were true?

Merely by asking some well phrased questions will send them into a quick trance as they search their memory. They will likely come up with some contradictory evidence of the belief or objection. This would be a great time to hit them with some other patterns to really fry their circuits, er I mean, share with them some other language patterns to help them become more resourceful.

(And naturally, once their previously held beliefs are swirling around their mind like wisps of imaginary smoke, you can lay on some heavy Milton Model patterns and really have some fun.)

Some more examples you say? Sure. I thought you’d never ask.

I can’t get a good job without a college degree.

How would you know if you really didn’t need a college degree to get a good job?

I can’t find somebody special because I’m overweight.

What’s stopping you from finding somebody special despite your concern with your weight?
What would you feel like if you really could find somebody that would accept you just the way you are?
How would you know if you could find somebody that would accept you just the way you are?

I can’t buy your product because it’s too expensive.

What would have to happen in order for you to be convinced that it really was worth the price?
How would you know once you decided that the high price meant it had exceptional value?
Have you ever bought something specifically because it had a high price?

I can’t learn these language patterns because they are too difficult.

How do you know that you don’t already know most of them?
What will feel like if you did master them?
What’s stopping you from thinking they are easy and fun to learn?

I could never use these patterns in a normal conversation.

What would it feel like if you did, and they worked tremendously?
What’s stopping you?
How would you know if that was gone? (Whatever is stopping them)
How would you know if it was actually really easy to use these in a conversation?

(end examples)

The best way, in my experience, is to be as playful as possible when using these particular patterns. If you try and come across as some super smart person sage your wisdom of enlightenment, it usually doesn’t work. If you come across like some amateur psychotherapist trying to help them discover their hidden power, that usually doesn’t work either.

But if you act like a little kid who just discovered that by twisting the handle on the drugstore gumball machine just right gets you a free gumball, and you’re anxious to try and find other ways to get free gumballs, people will usually play along.

Remember, your job, when people whine, ”But what if doesn’t work,” is to say,

“yea, but what if it does work???”

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When you use Sleight of Mouth Language Patterns, those powerful set of linguistic judo that come from NLP, you avail yourself to an incredibly powerful set of skills with which you can quickly and easily overcome any objection, obliterate any limiting belief, and drastically increase the resourcefulness of both yourself and your listener.

The pattern for today is called “Allness Framing,” and is very useful to quickly kill the idea that the belief or objection is “out there,” like some unbreakable law of reality delivered from heaven. In a round about way, it forces the listener to consider that their belief is completely subjective, and therefore malleable.

Basically, you take their belief, apply it to everybody and everything that ever lived, is living, and will live, and ask them if it really makes sense. They will naturally find that others in their same situation or circumstances have a different take on the same events. Since others have come to the same conclusion they have, perhaps their own belief isn’t as true as they once thought it was.

For example, somebody says they can’t get a date because they are overweight. They likely have an idea in their head that overweight people can’t be found attractive by others. You then casually ask them if all the other overweight people share that same belief. Since they obviously don’t, they are forced to reconsider their reason for not finding a date.

Since losing weight is pretty difficult, it can be a huge barrier to success if you feel that your weight is holding you back. Once you realize it’s not your weight, but something else, then that “whatever else” can be a much easier obstacle to overcome.

In some cases, shifting this one belief can be enough.

For example, if they walked into a social gathering, and had the belief “people don’t find overweight people attractive,” they wouldn’t likely be very sociable, and would have difficulty starting conversations.

But if they walked into a social gathering without that belief, or even the opposite, “plenty of people find overweight people attractive,” it could be much easier for them to start a conversation.

You can also apply the Allness Frame to your listener, but throughout their own lives.

For example, somebody says, “I can’t buy this product, it’s too expensive.”

You can ask them if they’d ever bought something before that was “too expensive,” but as it turned out, that particular thing, whatever it was, was well worth the money.

It may not get you the sale right away, but it will likely bring out what may be the “real objection,” such as product features or something else that you can more easily work with.

Some more examples.

I can’t get a college degree because I didn’t get a scholarship.

You mean nobody who gets a scholarship ever gets a scholarship? Wow, that’s pretty rough. I didn’t know that. Wait a minute, I didn’t get a scholarship and I’m getting a college degree. What exactly are you talking about?

Being stressed forces me to eat a pint of ice cream every night.

Ever since you were a kid you’ve been eating ice cream every single time you get stressed? You mean you have a portable freezer in your car, and every time there’s too much traffic, and you may be late to wherever you are going, you pull out the ice cream and start munching away? That’s pretty ingenious of you! But what happens when you are stressed because there is no more ice cream? What do you do then?

It’s too difficult to lose weight.

Really? Nobody who ever lived has ever lost weight? I wasn’t aware of that. I guess I’d better be careful.

I can’t learn these language patterns, they are too difficult.

If they are too difficult to learn, how did so many books get written about them? Surely those people had to learn them enough to write the books? Maybe they were born knowing all these patterns?

I’ll never be able to use these patterns in a normal conversation, it would seem to weird and unnatural.

So nobody has ever learned a new way to talk? Nobody has ever taken a risk in public or in a social situation? The words that you know now, you knew them right when you were born, and you never went through the natural language learning curve, where you used words incorrectly or strangely? You are a fascinating person. What other talents were you born with?

(end examples)

Be a bit careful with these, as often times when you take away the “out there” hallucination that people hold with their beliefs, they are sometimes forced to confront their own shortcomings.  It can be difficult to accept that other people can do certain things, but you can’t. So people tend to fight tooth and nail to hold on to their “out there” hallucinations about their beliefs.

As with all the other patterns, introduce these conversationally, spaced out enough over time, and allow them to slowly come to their own conclusion about their beliefs.

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Conversational reframes are great way to covertly invite your listener to “think outside the box” when facing an objection or limiting belief.

The Sleight of Mouth Language Patterns are specific verbal strategies to use conversational reframes skillfully so any objection, obstacle, or limiting belief you come across doesn’t stand a chance.

The pattern for today is “Model Of The World Framing.” This is based on the idea that “The Map Is Not The Territory.” This truism from NLP holds a lot of weight, and deserves some attention.

We humans move through the world, and collect information through our five senses. Every idea, every thought, every fear about the future or feelings of the past are created with memories involving these five senses.

However, something happens in between the world “outside” and our representation of that world that is constructed in our brains from that sense information.

The data is distorted, deleted, and generalized. This is necessary, since our conscious minds can only handle a few bytes of information a second, but the amount of information constantly being presented to our fives senses runs in the millions or even billions of bytes per second. Our brain has to make some hard choices, and make them in real time.

So what happens?

Our brains are filled up with interpretations of what we really think is “out there.” And these interpretations are often generated by the meaning we give to events. However, most of us don’t see things that way. We don’t feel as if we give meaning to events, we feel as if we discover meaning in events.

By using this particular pattern, the Model of The World Pattern, we invite the listener to question their interpretation of certain events.

Simply by labeling their belief, which they likely assume is absolute set in stone truth, as merely a “model of the world,” it gives them some mental wiggle room to come up with some different interpretations of the same events.

Some ways to help them along these lines is to give some examples of others who see the same events, but don’t draw the same conclusions. Another way is to carefully find out how long they’ve held that particular model. Yet another way is to ask who they learned that particular model from. Speaking in these terms, it makes their belief or objection seem much more pliable and easy to shift around until they find something more resourceful.

Other ways are to use words like “seem, appear, feels like, etc.” to give the belief or objection a subjective frame, rather than a frame of absolute truth.

Some examples.

I can’t get a good job because I don’t have a college degree.

That’s an interesting way of looking at things. I’m sure it seems like that right now. Do other people believe the same thing? Do most people that don’t have good jobs that have college degrees believe that? How about people that have good jobs, but don’t have a college degree, what about them? What do you suppose they believe?

I’ll never fall in love because I’m too fat.

You feel like you won’t ever meet somebody if you are overweight? Have you always believed that? Can you remember a time when you didn’t believe that? Do you remember who you learned that from? There are plenty people that are overweight, and happily married. What do you think they feel about finding a partner while being overweight?

My friend is angry at me because she didn’t return my phone call.

Yea, it sucks when somebody doesn’t call you right back. Has that always meant that she was angry with you? Can you remember a time when you knew she wasn’t angry and she still didn’t call you back? What about others? Do other people’s friends not calling them back mean they are angry with them, or could it mean something else? What if you called somebody you didn’t know, and they didn’t call you back, would that mean they were angry with you?

Learning these patterns is difficult. I’ll never be able to use these conversationally.

I met this guy who happens to be a sales rep other night at my Toastmasters club. He said he learned these patterns several years ago, and he’s been easily making six figures ever since. He said this was the best time investment he’d ever made, even more so that his formal college degree. I wonder if he thinks these patterns are difficult and too complicated to use conversationally.

An easy way to practice this pattern is to simply look at things, and practice giving them different meanings. Or find something you think is absolutely true (like ‘math is hard,’ or ‘it’s tough to make money in a down economy’), and find three or four different people (as different from you as possible) and try and guess what they believe regarding this.

Another way is to practice is on Internet forums, where the topics of discussion are easily flammable, like politics, religion, etc. Find some beliefs that people state relatively clearly, and practice using this pattern, either on paper, or actually posting to that particular forum.

Practicing this pattern on your own beliefs will give you an incredible amount of mental flexibility that can serve you very well throughout your entire life, so take some time to get familiar with this.

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With Sleight of Mouth Language patterns you can easily overcome objections and dismantle limiting beliefs with a few carefully crafted phrases.

Today’s pattern is called “First Outcome Framing,” and invites your listener or conversation partner to think of the results, or eventual outcome, of their particular belief or objection.

Just speaking about it in these terms is sometimes enough to shake it loose. When people express a belief or an objection, they are usually “set in stone,” at least in their mind.

But when we speak in terms of consequences, it somehow allows them to think of their belief or objection that they have a measure of control over.

The structure is fairly simple. You accept their belief at face value, and merely extrapolate out into the future, and get a less than desirable outcome of this particular belief. One that they would likely not want to experience.

This causes them to do a quick, mental double take on their original belief, oftentimes rethinking it. This works great when you follow it up with a couple of other patterns. You can either do this right away, or depending on the conversation and the relationship with the person, you can steer the conversation somewhere else, and then occasionally come back to the belief or objection, and throw another pattern at them.

They’ll have no idea why their objection or limiting belief went up in smoke. They’ll likely feel like they had some kind of divine inspiration or remembered something incredibly important that they didn’t know before.

To make this pattern, just take the belief, and casually wonder out loud what it will lead to, and let them come to their own conclusions. Just make sure that when you are wondering out loud, that the outcome it leads to isn’t all that great. You don’t want to support any objections or limiting beliefs.

A couple examples.

I can’t get a date because I’m no good at talking to boys/girls.

Wow, that’s pretty tough. I suppose just thinking that will keep you from going and talking to somebody that is really cool, and maybe starting a good friendship. I would kind of suck if somebody was waiting for you to go and talk to them, but you decided not to because you think you’re no good at talking to people.

My friend didn’t respond when I said “hi,” so she must be mad at me.

Wow. That’s pretty rough.So how do you treat people that are made at you? I usually get mad right back at them. So are you going to yell at your friend the next time you see her? That wouldn’t be very nice if she just had lots of things on her mind.

I can’t get a good job because I don’t have a college degree.

Maybe. But I’m sure that you won’t apply to many place if you believe that. And I’m pretty sure you can’t get a good job if you don’t apply anywhere. So I guess you’re right on track. That cool with you?

I can’t learn all these patterns, they’re too many, and they are too difficult.

Wow, that sounds pretty bad. Whenever I think something is too hard, I usually quit to. Do you know how many people are using these patterns to make tons of money in sales? I guess you don’t want that, right?

(end examples)

These particular patterns can sound a bit harsh if said without any judgment whatsoever. It’s important to remember that when you use these, you aren’t looking for an ego boost, or the person to say something like:

“Wow! I never thought of that! You’re so smart! Thanks for convincing me!’

Rather, you are simply throwing some ideas out there, and making it sound as if you are wondering about them yourself. Then leave it up to the listener to come to their own conclusion. (Which happens to be the exact conclusion you want them to.)

So long as you have no problems with your listener keeping their belief or objection, and you are throwing these out in a “Hey, cool if it works for you…” frame, then you should be OK.

Just make sure when they do decide to buy into your idea, you stick around to reap the benefits.

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Sleight of Mouth language patterns are incredibly effective in overcoming objections, turning big issues into non issues, and covertly removing limiting beliefs in yourself or others.

Today’s pattern is called “Reflexively Apply to Self.” Since that definition is about as clear as mud, let’s take a closer look.

In this, the “Self” is the person saying or expressing the objection, belief, or argument that you’d like to easily demolish with your linguistic Jedi skills.

And the thing you apply, is their own stated belief. This creates a kind of infinite feedback loop,and sometimes is enough to break the pattern.

When I was a kid, my Dad bought this video camera. You could plug it into the TV, so you could see on TV what you were filming. If you pointed the camera at the TV, you saw an endless stream of smaller and smaller TVs going off into infinity. This is what this pattern will do to the mind of your listener.

So basically, the idea is to take whatever belief they say, and apply that same thinking right back at the belief itself.

For example, if the person says something like:

I don’t have a college degree, so I can never get a good job.

The belief is not having some kind of certificate or training, and that being a limitation of obtaining something deemed worthy and valuable (e.g. a job).

So to throw it back at the belief, you might say something like:

Did you need any special training or courses to come up with that belief? Or did you decide that without any professional assistance?

Or even more abstract:

Did that belief need a college degree to be true and shape the way you look at things, or did it just decide to do that without any “official” approval from some accredited belief creation review board?

Or if somebody says:

I can’t afford your product, it’s too expensive. (Expensive product means I can’t buy it.)

How expensive do you think it is to limit yourself to products based on a cursory review of their immediate benefits without taking a look at the long term value?

Was it affordable to buy that belief that seems to be controlling what you can or can’t do?

Or if somebody says:

I’ll never find true love, I’m just not an interesting person. (Me not being interesting means nobody will ever truly love me.)

Did that belief need to be interesting in order for it to convince you of it’s truth?

Do you truly love that belief enough to let it go, so you can share your uninterestingness with others?

That belief sure isn’t interesting, yet look how much you are attached to it!

Or if somebody says:

My parents were always poor, so I’ll be poor myself.

That belief doesn’t sound like it’s worth very much.

Is being poor very valuable to you?

Did that belief’s parents share similar outlooks as it, or were they completely different?

Keep in mind these particular reframes aren’t particularly logical, and sometimes don’t make a lot of sense. The way they work is by getting the listener to take something that perceived as solid, and written everlastingly in stone to pause and say, “Huh, wait, wha?”

This is often enough to show that their belief isn’t as rock solid as they thought it was. This can either be enough to let the belief or objection die a natural death, or to leave the door wide open for you to throw in some other patterns that can continue to weaken and eventually destroy this old belief or objection.

Usually, it’s best to just keep on talking while you get them in the “wait, huh?” state of mind. Otherwise they might circle their wagons around their belief and dig in for a protracted siege. This will have the opposite effect, as people’s beliefs are strengthened whenever they defend them.

Also, keep in mind to be very careful to not make your listener feel as though you are putting them on the spot, or using their own words or beliefs to insult them. There’s a fine line between coming from a point of curiosity, where you show your listeners beliefs to them in a new and interesting way, and taking them and throwing them back in their faces.

The first way works well, the second only works to make enemies, so be careful.

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This article is one in a series of training modules on Sleight of Mouth, an extraordinarily powerful set of linguistic tools that you can easily use to quickly defeat any argument, destroy any limiting belief in yourself or others, and overcome any imagined obstacle or objection that you come across.

In short, these language pattern will give you a tenth degree black belt in verbal Judo.

There are 24 patterns in all, and today’s pattern is called “Specificity,” or “Chunking Down.” This pattern won’t usually work on its own (although it does on occasion), but it is very powerful in ‘loosening up’ the mind of your listener, and give you some mental wiggle room to get in their and move ideas and beliefs around.

The basic structure is to ask questions in order to elicit more specific elements of the belief. Recall that these need to be in the form of “X causes Y,” or “X means Y” in order for these patterns to be most effective. It can sometimes be tricky to tease these out of your listener, especially if you are covertly or conversationally changing their beliefs.

Let’s look at some examples. Say a friend of yours says something like, “I don’t have a college degree. I’ll never get good job.” Or more likely, you will on the subject of high paying jobs, and they’ll simply say “Yea, but I don’t have a college degree.”

The implied complex equivalent, (X means Y) is:

Not having a college degree means ( = ) getting a decent job is impossible.

First of all, notice that the statement is framed as an established truth , and not only for the individual(e.g. getting a job is impossible, vs. I can’t get a job). This takes the pressure of him or her, and makes it a little bit easier to look at this belief more objectively.

In order to get more specific, (or to “chunk down” to use NLP lingo) simply ask questions for more details. Questions like:

• What degrees do you need?
• What jobs require what degrees?
• What kind of degrees? (Bachelors, Masters, PhD)
• What exactly is a decent job?
• How exactly do you know this?
• What information did you use to come to this conclusion?
• If I had to come up with the same belief, what would I have to imagine? What part of my past would I have to remember?
• Did somebody tell you this?
• Did you read about this somewhere?
• How exactly did you come to believe this?
• What age group does this hold true for?
• How do you know this is true? What pictures, sounds, feelings do you generate?
• Could you teach me how to reproduce those same exact sounds, feelings, etc?

This sounds like you’d be giving the person the third degree, so it’s best to ask these from a frame of genuine curiosity. As if you find the idea intriguing, but you haven’t made up your mind yet.

If you sound at all confrontational, or as if you’ve already made up your mind, the other person will shut down and go into defensive mode fairly quickly. To see this in action, go to any online forum, and hunt around until you find somebody expressing a limiting belief like this.

If you show up unannounced, and start firing off questions like the above, you’ll make an enemy real quick.

The trick is to ask the questions, and show no indication that you think the answers are right or wrong, or silly. Remain neutral, and curious. The idea is to expand the other persons idea of their own belief while feeling safe enough to talk about it.

Sometimes, if you can develop enough rapport, and refrain from ‘proving the person wrong,’ this can go to great lengths to weaken the belief so that it dies a natural death later on.

The most fundamental thing to keep in mind when using these patterns is to let go of any need to “take credit” for changing the persons belief. Your goal should be to covertly convince them to change their belief on their own, and honestly believe it was due to their own skills of introspection.

Your mission, then, if you choose to accept it, is to find some heavily trafficked forums regarding touchy issues (loveshack is a great one) and get some practice getting people to get more specific about their beliefs.

Just realize that more often than not, you’ll get a “Who the HELL are YOU?!” response. That’s OK. In this stage of your learning, it’s sufficient to just get a handle on the operational use of these patterns. Once you are more fluent with them, you can go back and practice using them with more elegance and finesse.

Have fun.

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You’re about to learn a set of skills that can instantaneously and obliterate any argument that comes your way, any objection that gets thrown up during a conversation, and any verbal obstacle you find in your path.

These verbal skills are so powerful that you will never lose an argument again, and if you happen to be in sales, you can easily double your closing percentages. They are a small subsection of NLP Language skills, skills that have been developed over the past several years for therapy, sales, and persuasion.

Namely, these are the Sleight Of Mouth NLP Language Patterns. When combined with Linguistic Presuppositions, and the Milton Model, they will give you irresistible powers of persuasion in any situation.

The basic premise behind the power of these skills is that any argument is in the from of either a “Complex Equivalent,” or a “Cause Effect” statement. If you haven’t watched the learning modules on the Milton Model, it would be a good idea to do so before you dive into these.

If you’re chomping at the bit to get to some powerfully persuasive language patterns that can easily destroy any argument, here’s a brief summary.

A complex equivalent is any statement that can be expressed as “X means Y,” or “X is Y.” Think of them as a linguistic equation, with one idea on one side of the equation, another idea on the other side, with the “is,” “means,” “implies,” etc. as the equals sign.

Anytime somebody expresses a limitation in that format, it is ripe for verbal destruction. If you are in sales, that means more money. If you are in a relationship, that means closer and more intimate communication, as you will drastically reduce the self imposed limitations in your partner. (And yourself,for that matter.)

A cause/effect statement is anything stated in the from “X causes Y,” or “X leads to Y,” or “X makes Y happen,” or any variation.

Being able to understand these in everyday speech is critical, and not as easy as it sounds. Most people will only express one half the equation, and you’ve go to be able to extract the other half from the context of the conversation.

You’ve also got to be very careful how you deliver these, as most people will become very defensive of their beliefs, and that’s what you’ll be destroying in many cases. When somebody feels their beliefs are under attack, they can take very personally. If you’re not careful, you can ruin any rapport you’ve developed and quickly find the opposite of your outcome coming true.

There are a total of 22 patterns, and in each subsequent post you’ll learn a new one. Take your time, and soak these up one by one. Once you start to learn these patterns, you ears will hear a whole new level of verbal communication, and you will begin to feel incredibly powerful with your language.

Most people, when they speak, simply blurt out a bunch of words, and hope they make sense. By combining presuppositions, the Milton Model, and now these virtually indestructible sleight of mouth patterns, you will be a force to be reckoned with. A Jedi Knight of Communication.

You’ll be amazed how horrible politicians are at getting their point across once you learn just a few of these patterns. While politicians have been known to use a few sleight of mouth patterns (whether they know it or not) they usually only use one or two familiar ones, and they quickly become ineffective, since they use them over and over again.

Your first assignment, should you choose to accept it, is tune your ears to pick up both complex equivalent statements, and cause/effect statements. TV programs, casual conversations with your friends, YouTube videos, or even politician speeches and TV news discussion shows.

Once you get the hang of picking them, up, take your time going through the following posts so you can learn how to dismantle any limiting belief or objection that comes your way.

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Who would you trust with a diet recommendation, your best friend? Or some fast talking guy on TV with a cheap suit and a big belly? Who would you prefer to buy an expensive item from, somebody roughly the same age and gender as you, a well being an alumni of the same school, or somebody that is as different from you as Lady Gaga is from Pavarotti?

In this final installation of the seven magical laws of influence, beautifully described by Cialdini in is oft referenced work, “Influence, Science and Practice,” we’ll take a look at something called “Liking.”

We tend to be much more open to ideas from people that we like, rather than people we don’t like.

Duh.

But what surprised some is not only that some aspects of ‘liking’ are a bit on the politically incorrect side, but also that some are rather easy to fake if you know what you’re doing.

First, as you are reading this, think of one of your good friends. One you’ve had for a while. There was a time when you didn’t know this person. Then you met them. Something clicked, and you decided to hang out together, as friends usually do. Maybe you shared the same experiences, lived in the same neighborhood, liked the same obscure micro brew, or shared a prison cell together.

The first aspect of liking, then, similarity. We like people that are like us. The more you spend time with somebody, the more shared experiences you have, and the more you grow similar by those shared experiences.

This might seem hard to fake, but it’s actually pretty easy. In NLP they teach something called “mirroring and matching.” When you are in a conversation with somebody, matching their body language, tone of voice and speed of speech will do a great deal to persuade them, on an unconscious level, that you are similar to them.

This goes way beyond the transparent, “No Way! You Like cheeseburgers? Me too!”

When you mirror and match the way somebody is sitting, talking, and gesturing, this will quickly create a very strong and unconscious bond. Unless they are specifically on guard against this, they will start to get a strong “feeling” that they really like you for some reason. Top salespeople are keenly aware of this.

Another aspect of liking is physical appearance. Unfortunate, but true. Better looking salespeople make more sales. Taller presidential candidates have a slightly better chance of being elected. Attractive people make for more trusting news anchors. This can enhanced of course, with various clothing and accessories. If you are in sales, or need to persuade somebody, make sure to wear some nice threads, and give yourself a clean shave, or dress attractively with appropriate make up. Leave it to your true friends to deal with the “real you.”

Another aspect of physical appearance is how you carry yourself. In an interesting study on posture, John Molloy did some research that indicates better posture can increase you attractiveness by a full two points. He arranged a double blind study where college students would enter and mingle in bar for a few hours, and purposely hold their posture a certain way. Those that stood up straight with their shoulders back got, on average, two more points (on a scale from 1 to 10) than when they had their shoulders slumped and their heads down.

Even you weren’t born a beauty queen or fit to be on the cover of Men’s Health, there’s plenty you an do to boost your attractiveness.

Another factor in “liking” is association. If people associate good things with you, they will like you. In the presidential debate between Clinton and Dole, whenever Clinton would say words or phrases that had a good chance of evoking good feelings, (like “strong economy,” “security,” “safety,” etc.) he would point to himself. (There’s a reason he got the nickname “Slick Willy”) This is another trick from NLP. By pointing or gesturing toward yourself while saying positive emotion inducing words and phrases, people will start to associate those good feelings with you.

One final aspect of liking is probably the oldest in the book. A genuine, honest compliment. People love hearing compliments, despite how embarrassed they may feel. Compliments on behavior or choices are much more powerful than telling them what lovely eye they have. Just don’t over do it.

How do defend against these?

As always, your conscious, rational mind is your best means of defense. Would you buy the same product or sign up for the same service if the guy selling it was twenty years older than you and smelled like he hadn’t showered in a week? Focus on the product or the idea, rather than the person selling it or delivering the message. This can be incredibly difficult if they are attractive, have done a good job matching your body language, and given you a few genuine, honest compliments.

The best way to make sure you don’t get carried away by these unconscious triggers is to simply have an intention to either buy a certain product at a certain price, or to only shop and not buy anything until you’ve thought it over in the safety of your own home.

And any time you start to feel compelled to do or believe something, when you hadn’t made any plans on doing it, check your instincts for warning signs. If it’s worth doing right this minute, it’ll still be worth doing a week from now.

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If you want to quit smoking, the best way is to tell everybody you know that you will quit this Friday. If you want to lose weight, the best way is to promise your close friends and relatives that you’ll be down to a certain weight by a certain time. If your boss wants to guarantee you’ll finish that report by next Wednesday, he’ll make you commit to it at the weekly meeting, so that everybody can hear.

The persuasive power of Commitment and Consistency is just as powerful as the other laws, but a bit more subtle. This law requires the persuader to elicit some kind of behavior or action from the person they are trying to persuade. It isn’t as passive as the other laws, yet it is just as powerful.

In his book “Influence, Science and Practice,” Dr. Cialdini demonstrated this beautifully. Several researchers canvassed few blocks in a residential neighborhood. They asked if they could place a small, non-controversial, discreet sign in one of their windows facing the street. They sign said something obvious like “be careful in the street” or something.

Then they canvassed the same neighborhood a few weeks later, only this time they asked people to put up a rather large, ugly sign in their front yard.

The people that had previously allowed a small sign in their windows were overwhelmingly accepting of a much larger, uglier sign. Those had rejected the small sign also rejected the big sign.

To demonstrate that they weren’t simply sorting the neighborhoods for people that liked signs, they first went through a neighborhood, and only asked to put up the big, ugly sign. Virtually everyone soundly rejected the idea.

In order to put up big signs, it helped significantly to find people willing to put up small signs. Once the small signs were up, and there proverbial foot was in the door, the larger signs were much more acceptable.

Some psychologists believe that this stems from the idea of cognitive dissonance. We don’t like truths that contradict what we believe about ourselves, so we tend to ignore them.

In the case of the small sign acceptors, they created an image of themselves as somebody who accepts a sign on their property.

Later, when the big sign request came in, in order to maintain their identity, they had to accept it.

Whenever we say or proclaim something in public, we are effectively making a statement about who we are and what we intend to do. When something happens in the future, we will tend to act in a way that is congruent with our previous statements.

Another powerful example.

Studies have been done on jury trials. When the defense and prosecutors have finished,the trial goes to jury. They retire to the jury room to work amongst themselves whether the defendant is guilty or innocent.

Frequently, they will take a “straw vote,” meaning they will get everybody’s gut instincts before they start to argue the particulars.

Cases where people state their belief in the defendant’s guilt or innocence out loud tend to last three times longer than when they write “guilty” or “not guilty” anonymously on a slip of paper.

When they commit their opinions for the other jurors to hear, they are much less likely to later change their opinion.

In “High Probability Selling,” by Jacques Werth, he demonstrates a particularly powerful sales method. The sales person is consistently asking the client “If this happens, what are you going to do?” Along the sales presentation.

For example, if the client says he wants to pay over sixty months, with no down payment, the sales person would say, “If I could get you a deal for nothing down and payable over sixty months, what would you do?”

Once the client says what he or she would do, they are effectively applying the law of Commitment and Consistency on themselves, and literally convincing themselves to buy the product.

This can be very powerful if you are a manager and would like to motivate your employees. Give them a positive label, and get their buy in. Once they publicly agree with that label,they will do everything they can to maintain it. Labels such as being creative, working together well as a team, or pushing to meet a deadline will be greatly enhanced by the application of this law of influence.

A powerful story (albeit it a bit old fashioned and having a slightly religious angle) illustrating this is the tale of Johnny Lingo. A wealthy, local trader in the Polynesian islands comes in one day to buy a wife. They are all shocked to find that not only has he chosen who is considered the ugliest girl on the island, he pays many many more cows that they think she’s worth. (While he is negotiating with her father, the other island women are bragging how many cows their husbands paid for them).

Fast forward a couple of years, and Mrs. Johnny Lingo is the most beautiful, gracious and noble women on the entire set of islands.

The moral of the story is to give people a positive imagine, and they will live up to it. If you give anybody a positive imagine, they will almost certainly agree with it, especially if there is physical proof (like eight cows in the transaction) and a public ceremony.

The take away from this to twofold.

If you want to improve yourself, or do something particular beneficial for yourself, tell as many people as you can. Tell them in positive terms what you will be doing, whether it be losing weight, getting a degree, passing a test or asking out a girl. This will have a powerful effect on your motivation. Be as specific as possible.

If you want to avoid committing to something you may later regret, be very careful about stating your intentions of the future. Reserve the right to withhold any commitments until you’ve given your conscious mind adequate time to think it over.

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You can dramatically increase your powers of persuasion with the simple application of some incredibly effective but not widely well known laws of persuasion and influence. These are not esoteric theories thought up by ivory tower professors, these are hard and fast rules proven time and time again by social experiments on the street.

The law of persuasion you’ll be learning today is Comparison and Contrast. This is a simple rule that has been applied to
salespeople, real estate agents, and government ministers of propaganda for incredibly massive results of compliance and dramatic increases in income.

This law affects how you view one item, or idea when compared to another. When viewed against something similar, the idea or thing in question is viewed much differently than when viewed alone. There’s the old joke (that pre-dates email circulated jokes) about the kid who wrote a letter home from school. He’d gotten a girl pregnant, wrecked his car, accidentally set fire to his dormitory, and accidentally killed the school mascot. He ended the letter by saying, “just kidding, but I really did fail maths.” The idea being that failing maths was much less horrible when compared to all those other things.

This has been proven in studies with university students. They held their hands in a bucket of water, and then guessed the temperature. They took data from several students, got an average, and then repeated the experiment. Only this time they had them hold their other hand in a bucket of cold water. Again they took several data points from several students. Next they repeated the experiment, only the other hand was now placed in a bucket of warm, almost hot water (they didn’t want them to hurt themselves.)

The results were as you would expect, in light of the compare and contrast law of influence. With their other hands in hot water, they underestimated the temperature in the test bucket. With their other hand in cold water, they overestimated the temperature in the test bucket.

More proof.

A restaurant served several bottles of wine. The most expensive bottle was $80. They sold very few. Then a marketing expert suggested they add another bottle at significantly higher price. Over $200. That’s all they did. They didn’t increase advertising, the wait staff didn’t suggest buying wine any more than they did before. The mere presence of a much higher priced bottle of wine made the 80 dollar bottle seem like a bargain in comparison. Sales went through the roof.

Countless retailers have noticed this phenomenon. They have an old product, that sells at a certain rate. They introduce a new product, which is new and improved, and costs more. They naturally expect people to buy the new product, which a few do. But they old product suddenly jumps in sales.

Why?

Two reasons. One is that it looks a lot cheaper now, that there is a more expensive product sitting next to it. Secondly, the law of scarcity is now in play, as a new product presupposes that the old product is being phased out, and won’t be around much longer.

Combining any two of these laws together can give you an incredible persuasive edge.

Real estate agents have been known to use this law in a way that borders on the unethical. The real estate company maintains a house that is in not such good shape, and in not such a good part of town. The new clients come in, and ask to see houses within certain budget.

Guess which house they see first?

The broken down house in a not so good neighborhood. And it happens to be right at their price range. Of course, the next house they see is only a little higher than what they wanted to pay, but it’s so much nicer! It’s a bargain!

Just like any particular art of persuasion and method of influencing people, there are ethical ways, and unethical ways to apply them.

If you happen to be selling things, then it may be a good idea to keep around a much more expensive product, or display one on your web site in order to boost sales of the more inexpensive one.

If you are persuading someone of an idea, give them two choices. The one you’d really like them to choose, or one that sounds absolutely horrible, expensive, painful, and complicated.

If you are on the receiving end of a persuasion, this one can be hard to dodge, as it usually comes in unexpected. The best defense would be to take as much time to weigh the pros and cons of your decision, to give your conscious mind a fighting chance against these ancient human hot buttons. In the case of the wine, it may be a good idea to decide how much you want to drink wine, and how much you’re willing to pay before you take a gander at the wine list.

If you’ve been reading this articles, then you might be starting to see these laws in effect everywhere you look, which they are. Once you get a handle on all seven of them, you’ll open up a hold new world of persuasion, both on the persuading side, and on the defensive side.

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There are few things that work more to create a unconscious desire to buy or acquire something that scarcity. Even though
scarcity is the oldest trick in the book when it comes to sales, it still works. Any time something is in limited supply, or the time is
scarce, in the form of an impending end to a sale, buying desire can quickly reach feverish pitches.

Why is this? Is this some ancient form of mind control or conversational hypnosis? Is this massive brainwashing on a collective
scale? Some believe that we are trained by governments and industry to become attached to things that we can’t have, so that
we’ll continually be in a buying state of mind.

It’s actually the other way around. For hundreds of thousands of years, Mother Nature, or God, has been programming humans
through evolution to react strongly whenever scarcity rears its head.

Imagine this situation. You have a group of a hundred or so primitive humans. They are largely nomadic, and agriculture is a
thing in the distant future. They have to hunt for every meal. When somebody comes back with a particularly large catch, say a
giraffe, its time to eat, as they don’t know how long it will be until they catch another giraffe.

Now imagine two different genetic makeups. One is a person who takes his time eating, doesn’t push to the front of the line, and
passively waits his turn. The other is a person that when valuable resources show up, he steps on toes, pushes others out of the
way, and gets what he wants.

Which one of these pair do you think will be more likely to pass on his genes? Remember, to mind of a primitive human, an
attractive member of the opposite sex is also a resource. Men fight between each other for the best women, and women fight
between each other for the best men.

So here we are hundreds of thousands of years later. We’ve build cathedrals, sent men to the moon, and create beautiful works of
art that have lasted millennia. Yet deep within us all is that drive to “get it before somebody else does.”

There are plenty of ways that savvy markets use this aspect of the human condition. There are plenty of ways to imply scarcity
about any given situation. Time running out is a scarcity of time. If you receive special information, that is not given to the
general public, that information is trusted much more, as it triggers the scarcity response.

Even waiters, when they use the law of reciprocity when they casually mention to a customer that the fresh fish isn’t all that
fresh, can greatly leverage the effect simply by prefacing their statement with, “I don’t tell this to everybody…” This powerfully
combines the power of scarcity (scarce information) with the power of reciprocity (free, useful information).

When something is on sale, and there are only a few of them left, there is a powerful combination of scarcity and social proof.
Scarcity because the item is limited, and social proof because everybody else wants it. Is it any wonder that every year on Black
Friday (the Friday after Thanksgiving when all the sales start in the U.S.) there are many injuries, and sometimes even deaths due
to stampeding crowds after a discounted X Box?

It is all to easy to succumb to these ancient evolutionary hot buttons. One way to defend against the law of scarcity is to ask
yourself a few questions:

Did I plan to purchase this, or is this an impulse buy?
Could I get a better one someplace else?
Would I be better of waiting for the next model? (As many people should have asked with the recent iPhones).
Would I be so incredibly determined to buy this if there were an unlimited supply and nobody else wanted one?

Sure, it’s tough to think rationally when evolutionary programming kicks it, but if you want to avoid mindlessly following the
crowd, your rational mind is all you’ve got.

If you in sales, you should be applying scarcity every chance you get. Scarcity of time. Scarcity of product. Scarcity of
information. All of these will increase buying temperature of your potential clients, and can make you a lot more money.

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There is a proven law in the world of persuasion that is so effective, it allowed a cultish religious group to go from barely scraping by to raking in millions of dollars a year in donations. So much so that this particular organization was later busted for tax evasion.

This simple law has also been shown by waiters and waitresses in the know to drastically increase the amount of their tips, merely adding a few extra words during the time in which they take their customers order.

Even cultures are based around this law. Ridley, in his book “The Origins of Virtue,” described this as “gift giving as a weapon.”

What is this powerful tool? This irresistible law of influence that it has been used, even by you?

Reciprocity.

The aforementioned religious group was the Hare Krishnas. Before they discovered this law, they would simply ask people for donations in the airports. Most people wouldn’t give them the time of day.

But then they switched their tactics. They gave a small flower to their “mark,” and then asked them for a small donation. It’s important to understand they way they gave it to them.

Giving a flower, and asking for a donation sounds similar to a “you scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours kind of arrangement,” but the way the exchange happened, it was anything but.

The flower was first given, as a gift. No strings, no expressions of future expectation. Simply, “Here, this flower is for you.” Then they would ask if they could possible get a small donation.

They made no statement about the flower, or even motioned towards the flower. The two incidents, the giving of the flower, and the asking for the donation, were treated completely separately.

Once they Krishnas started handing out flowers, they money started coming in.

In a famous experiment described in Cialdini’s “Influence, Science and Practice,” this was shown experimentally several times.

It was set up with two people, A and B. Then a third person came in, C. B and C were in a room, looking at pictures, and writing down their impressions. C thought that A was doing an experiment, and B and C were participating in the experiment.

However, C was the only test subject, with A and B in on the game.

Half the time, B would disappear momentarily. He came back with two cokes, and gave one to C.

But all of the time, B would ask C if he would buy some raffle tickets for his kids baseball club (or some other club.)

The times that B gave C a coke a few minutes before asking, C bought a raffle ticket over 70% of the time.

The times that B didn’t give C a coke, he bought one less than 30% of the time.

A great way to use this law of influence if you are a waiter or waitress, is to give your customers some “inside information.” The apple pie isn’t so fresh, or the fish is actually frozen. They’ll appreciate the advice, and when it comes time to tip, they’ll be more generous. Reciprocity in action.

One thing to keep in mind, is that the feeling of reciprocity does have a shelf life. It generally dies very quickly, so if you are going to apply this law, keep in mind a couple things.

Don’t ask for the favor too soon after you did something nice. Then it will appear to obvious and underhanded. But if you wait too long, the effect will die out.

If you are on the receiving end, there’s not much you can do. Simply refusing a request, after you’ve accepted a gift is a hard thing to do. The best bet is to simply beware of Greeks bearing gifts.

Studies have shown that the more personalized, and unique a gift or favor is, the more effect it will have.

Buying a beautiful woman a drink at a bar may be a step in the right direction, but it won’t likely have any strong effect of reciprocity. Unless of course you do it in a personal and unique way. I suppose you could spy on her and watch what she’s drinking, and eavesdrop so you can learn her name, and then show up, call her by name, and give her her favorite drink, but that would probably be too creepy.

This works best in established relationships. If you get to know a person, and really get to know their likes and dislikes, then giving a personalized, unique gift can have tremendous effects.

The best salespeople are the ones that develop genuine relationships with their clients, and really pay attention to what they have to say.

Getting an automated email on your birthday is one thing, but sending a hand written note on a card, that speaks to who you really are will put you ahead of the pack.

This is one automatic hot button that you should be aware of in today’s world where we are seemingly surrounded by marketers. Pay attention to the giver, not the gift. What do they want? Do you know they well? Would you feel comfortable granting them a favor in the future?

As the saying goes, nothing is more expensive than a free gift.

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We humans fancy ourselves as highly evolved animals that have rational minds, advanced language, arts, society, culture and a host of other advanced technologies. We don’t like to think of ourselves as irrational creatures that are at the mercy of ancient evolutionary hot buttons.

The truth about us, however, is that we are far more susceptible to seemingly innocuous external factors than we’d care to admit.

There have been seven demonstrated elements, or influence hot buttons, that we, unfortunately, have a hard time resisting. When they are effectively combined, either by design or by accident, they can cause us to buy useless gadgets like pet rocks, or go bezerk and follow a dictator and stand by while millions of innocents are put to death.

It also caused our ancestors to live long enough to reproduce, and pass on their genes that made them susceptible to this kind of influence to us.

This can be good news if you are a salesperson, or in need of some skills of influence. It helps to know what these are so you can both use them to persuade others, and to defend against them when you find yourself doing or buying something that you wouldn’t normally do.

This article will be a brief overview of these six elements, and each one in particular will receive further examination in a further post.

All six of these are described by Dr. Robert Cialdini, PhD, in his book “Influence, Science and Practice.” It is a must read no matter your profession or position in life.

These are not theories, based on some esoteric branch of psychology. These are laws of influence that have been ascertained by careful, scientifically designed social experimentation.

These Laws of Influence are as follows:

Reciprocity

When somebody does something for you, you will feel an unconscious desire to repay the favor. This can be exploited when somebody gives you something that you don’t really want, or need, and then later asks you for a favor. When this happens, it is almost impossible to reject the request.

Authority

The more authority somebody has, the more persuasive their message will be. If some homeless guy on the street tells you to buy gold, you’ll likely ignore him. However, if Warren Buffet buys a 15 second TV commercial, and tells you to buy gold, there will be a lot of people buying gold. Same message, different source.

Social Proof

Safety in numbers. When in doubt, look to the crowd for guidance. Humans are highly social animals, and depend largely on the group in order to make our decisions. Much more than we’d like to admit. If you see one guy standing on the corner staring up at the sky, you’ll look at the guy and wonder what’s wrong with him. If you see ten guys standing there looking up in the sky, you’ll stare up into the sky.

Scarcity

The scarcer something is, the more valuable it is. If you go to the DVD store, and there are fifty copies of the latest movie, it may seem interesting, it may not. But if all fifty copies save one have been rented out, you’ll be much more inclined to rent the one that’s left before you miss your chance.

Comparison and Contrast

Our judgments on the value or other attribute of something is largely influenced if it is compared to something similar. That fifty-dollar bottle of wine may seem too expensive, but not when the only other bottle of wine on the menu is $350.

Commitment and Consistency

We are much more likely to follow through with an action, or hold to an opinion, when we make a public statement to that effect. Jury trials where each juror actually verbally states his or her vote last much longer than jury trials that use the secret ballot system. Once people make a public statement of opinion, they are generally resistant to change it.

Liking

We are much more prone to believe an idea or suggestion when it comes from somebody we identify with, or like on a personal level. Waiters who discreetly tell the customers which menu items are overpriced receive much higher tips. The customers feel they are getting special, personal treatment.

Stay tuned for an in depth look at each influence factor. You’ll learn how to use them in sales and persuasion, and defend against them in life.

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Here we are with another article on the amazing linguistic presuppositions, those incredibly powerful language patterns that you can use to covertly and conversationally persuade others for fun and profit.

Today’s pattern is the “Negative Question,” and is very similar to simple questions. For simple questions, remember, when you phrase the question so simply by answering “yes,” or “no,” your listener or reader will have to accept the underlying idea.

When you make a negative question, it works basically the same way. A negative question is simply phrasing the question with a negative contraction at the beginning.

Don’t you want to go to the beach?
Aren’t you hungry?
Haven’t you had dinner yet?
Don’t you want to see that movie one more time?

When used incorrectly, these can sound a bit confrontational, as it is obvious the speaker is “forcing” the listener to acquiesce.

If you’re boss walks up to you at the end of the day and says (with a disapproving look):

Don’t you want to work overtime tonight?

You know you’re in trouble.

It sounds a lot less confrontational if she said,

Do you want to work over time tonight?

When using these conversationally for persuasion, make sure you aren’t “forcing” your listener or reader to feel any sort of pressure. That never works well in the long run.

Idea = exercise is the best way to lose weight

Aren’t you aware that in order to lose weight, all you really need to do is exercise, and that you don’t need to spend any money on diet pills or mail order diet plans?

Keep in mind that if you say this before your listener has expressed an interest in losing weight, or if you aren’t already talking about ways to lose weight, it will sound terribly rude.

Don’t you realize that all you need to do is simple exercise, only five minutes day, in order to lose weight?

Make sure when you say this, to genuinely believe that you are helping your listener to achieve his or her goals, and not tricking them into losing weight for your sake.

Idea = dollar cost averaging is the best way to make money in the stock market

Aren’t you aware of all the people that have generated huge nest eggs through simple dollar cost averaging?

Aren’t you ready to start an investment plan based on dollar cost averaging that will surely grow your nest egg and provide you with an easy and relaxing retirement?

Aren’t you aware of the power of presuppositions to help you to easily persuade others, and to help you protect yourself against manipulation?

Haven’t you discovered yet just how you can use these patterns in your daily conversations to covertly convince others of their great potential?

Aren’t you aware that the great persuaders and orators of all time have been using these very patterns for centuries?

Isn’t it time you started to really practice them yourself so that you can powerfully enrich the lives of all those around you?

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Here we are with another lesson in linguistic presuppositions, those powerful language patterns you can use to covertly and conversationally persuade and influence others to your way of thinking.

Today’s pattern is the Selection Restriction pattern. This particular pattern has a wide variety of applications, both good and bad. Anytime you take a group of things (ideas, time periods, people, etc) and categorize them into sub groups, and assign one “sub group” a characteristic, you are implying that the other subgroups do not have this characteristic.

Lawyers make excellent politicians.

Although according to the rules of logic, this statement says nothing about people who aren’t lawyers and their ability to be politicians, the listener will assume that is the meaning of the statement, that lawyers are the best politicians.

Women have excellent communication skills and can talk about many subjects at once.

While not stated explicitly, this implies that men don’t have excellent communication skills, and can’t talk about more than one subject. (I’ll leave the actual truth of that for you to decide.)

He’s the guy I see walking every morning.

While “that guy” you see walking every morning may do a variety of things during the day, he is only “the walking guy” in your mind, as described in that statement above.

Anytime you give somebody, something, some event any sort of “label” you are effectively defining it only in those terms, and are using this pattern, for better or for worse.

So how to use this persuasively, in a positive way?

Simple

Separate out groups of “pretend” people into two groups. Attribute some genuinely desirable characteristic to one group, and phrase it so they achieved that “desirable” trait by doing whatever it is you are persuading your listener to do. Be careful not to put the “other” group into any sort of “bad” light, as that will diminish your persuasive power, according to the laws of Karma.

Some examples:

Idea = exercise is the best way to lose weight.

Plenty of people have tried plenty different weight loss techniques, and those that have had the most success have discovered that the best way to lose weight is through simple daily exercise.

So here you have a group within a group. The first group is people in general. The second, sub group, is people who have tried to lose weight. The group within that group are the ones that have successfully lost weight. And they lost weight because they exercised.

Idea = dollar cost averaging is a great way to make money.

Many people have tried many different investment strategies over time, but the people that are now happily retired will tell you that the easiest way to get there is through simple, dollar cost averaging.

The selected group is happily retired people (which presumes a group of unhappily retired people), and they got there through dollar cost averaging.

Now, I don’t know exactly where you are in your sales career, or your particular skill level when it comes to persuasion. Some people like to study persuasion and persuasion techniques as a hobby, while others use it on daily basis to make a significant amount of income.

Those that do are either naturals, meaning they were born to sell, and have been persuading people as long as they could walk, or those that learned the techniques consciously, and perfected the art of persuasion over a period of time.

Those that have learned to become masters of persuasion through the study of specific techniques and language patterns will tell you, hands down, that presuppositions are likely the most powerful, most effective, and most useful set of language patterns to use conversationally that exist.

No other set of patterns will allow you to carefully lead the mind and emotions of your listener to better and more empowering places, so that everybody benefits.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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Success with NLP

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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.

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I was waiting in line down at this new electronics shop last weekend. They had this massive grand opening, and they were going to give away this really cool flat screen TV along with a home theater system. They said they’d give out free raffle tickets to the first five hundred people that showed up, and then they’d draw later on in the afternoon to see who won. The catch, of course, was you had to be there to claim your prize. And since they gave out the free raffle tickets at eight o clock in the morning, they were assured that five hundred people would not only likely buy something that morning, but make plans to come back later. Marketing plans like this are fairly obvious. Give somebody a gimmick to get them in the door, and then do your best to up sell them while they are there.

Car dealerships are notorious for doing this. They’ll run an add in the paper for a certain make and model for a ridiculously low price. Of course they’ll say in the small print that there is only one particular car at that price, you can tell as they list the VIN, or Vehicle Identification Number of the car in question. Sometimes they’ll have three or four at that price. People see the ad, and mistakenly believe (to the hopes of the dealer) that all of the cars are at that price.
Then when they show up, they’re told they all sold out. When that happens, the dealership has two powerful tools of influence naturally working in their favor.

The first is something called “Commitment and Consistency,” as pointed out in the often referenced “Influence, Science and Practice,” by Robert Cialdini. When people make a public commitment, they are much easier to be persuaded to do something that is along the lines of that commitment. Political campaigners know this. When they phone people the week before an election and ask them if they are going go out and vote, most people naturally say yes. Since they’ve made a public commitment, even to a complete stranger over the phone, they are much more likely to vote than the average citizen who hasn’t made such a commitment.

By going to the car dealership in search of a good deal on a car, you make a certain commitment. It’s not like the car salesman pulled you in cold off the street.

Another powerful factor they have working for them in this case is social proof. As much as we’d like to think otherwise, we humans are pack animals and are extremely susceptible to crowd behavior. We love to follow fashions, stick to the status quo (unless you are a singing basketball player), and follow the crowd. So when you show up, and the car you wanted is “all sold out (all one of them),” it gives the impression that many people are after the same car, which makes it more desirable.

So by putting those cheesy ads in the paper, and getting you to make a trip to the dealership, just by showing up you have two powerful forces of social influence guiding you to buy a new car.

It’s no wonder that stores use the same tactics. They work, and they work beautifully. Stores use them so much because they work so well. All those incredibly insane “door busters” that you see the day after Thanksgiving, or black Friday, are carefully designed instruments of social manipulation. In case you are unaware, the reason it’s called “Black Friday” is in reference to the black ink bookkeepers use when they are making a profit. In this case black is very good.

To make matters worse, sometime they’ll have free giveaways, but the “winner” is actually a ringer. A plant that works for the store. Even though this is clearly immoral and unethical, it’s pretty hard to uncover and prosecute. The only danger lies in a store being found out, and it’s business getting a bad reputation. Even when people have a suspicion that the winner may indeed be a “ringer,” they still line up, “just in case.” We humans can be terribly easy to manipulate sometimes.

If you can figure out a way to get the free stuff, without giving in to the temptation to buy whatever they convincing you to buy through their masterful social engineering, so much the better.

One thing I usually do in a case like the free TV giveaway is only take five dollars with me, and leave all my credit cards at home. That way even I’m persuaded by the slickest of salesman, I won’t be able to buy anything. Hopefully by the time I race home to get my credit card, I’ll stop and wonder if I really do need that beef jerky machine. It’s not like I eat beef jerky every day, or even once a week. Why in the world do I need to cook the stuff?

So as I was standing there in line, looking at all the awesome electronic gadgets that I would surely buy if I were rich enough, I started talking to the guy behind me. He was involved in several MLMs and told me places like this were a great opportunity spread his business. People were surrounded by all this stuff that they wished they had enough money to buy, so naturally they would be open to opportunities to make more money, at least in principle. This guy said that he had great success recruiting people for his “downline,” at these “free” offerings. He scans the paper every week, and goes to as many as these as possible. He said the best time is right before the actual drawing, when people’s interests are the highest.

He said he was kind of “piggybacking” on the social manipulation of the business. He would show up in the morning, talk to a few people in line, and not mention anything about his business. Then he would come back that afternoon, strike up a conversation again with the people he already met, like he was an old friend. Then while the excitement and expectation was high, he would slowly ease the conversation into his well-crafted sales pitch.

He said that if he only gets one person per “giveaway,” then it is well worth his while, because in the long run, each person that joins his “downline” is worth potentially thousands of dollars, if not more.

And, of course, I didn’t win the TV, and I bought this cool little vacuum cleaner for my keyboard, that plugs into my USB port. And a new computer mouse, because my old one, was, kind of, you know, needed replacing. Or something.

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There are two laws of influence that can be used in a particularly powerful combination. These two laws have been identified by Robert Cialdini in his bestselling book, “Influence, Science And Practice.” If you are interested in influence at all, and would like to either become better at it, or just to understand how pretty much everybody around you is using these techniques, you should read this book.

There is a vague belief that persuasion is kind of an “art,” and that people that are good at it are like musicians or painters who are born with some natural talent. But Dr. Cialdini has shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that persuasion is indeed a science, rather than an art. A science that can be learned and applied either to benefit an individual, a company, or the leader of a nation.

There are several examples of how these principles of influence have been used without much concern for ethical considerations, but they still work nevertheless.

There is one fantastic example that comes to mind, which I’d like to share with you today. This was illustrated in “Influence.”

The first principle this involves is one of “commitment and consistency.” This is the idea that people are much more willing to do something if they have already publicly stated they will something, or have done something before that is similar.

A great Internet example is “click through.” If you visit a website of somebody trying to sell you something, you’ll likely have to click through several different pages to actually get to the point where you type in your credit card number. The reasoning behind this is people are much more likely to take the next step if they’ve already taken several previous steps.

If you land on some web page, and read some advertising text, and there is a button at the bottom that says “Buy Now!” The percentage of people that click on it is fairly low. But instead, if you shorten your sales page, and on the bottom is a button that says, “Click to Read More!” You’ll get much more people clicking through. Once you get visitors to click through three or four pages, they’ll be much more likely to click on a “Buy Now” button.

Another example is in jury trials. When they finish a trial, and the jury convenes they will often conduct a “straw vote” meaning that just give their first impression, guilty or not guilty, before the jury starts to discuss the case. Here’s the interesting part.

In jury deliberations where each juror publicly states, out loud, whether they feel the defendant is guilty or not guilty, the deliberations last more than twice as long as those where they jurors submit their initial guilty or innocent vote via anonymous slips of paper.

When people state their opinions out loud, they are much less likely to later change them. But when they submit their opinions in private, on an anonymous slip of paper, they later change their minds rather easily.

Another principle is one called scarcity. I’m sure you are well aware of this. Limited supply. Sale only lasts for two days. Only the first one hundred customers.

Study after study shows that people will give something a much higher value when they think it is scarce. A group of researchers did an experiment where they had people sample a cookie. In one case, they convinced the samplers that there were plenty of cookies, and the test would be going for quite a while, etc etc.

Then they told a different group of testers that the cookies were a limited batch, and it was a recipe that was only being tried out for a short period of time, and the testers were lucky to be in on the experiment. Keep in mind the testers or samplers were never sold anything, so there was no buying pressure.

The results? The samplers who were told there were many more cookies of the same kind gave it an average rating. The testers who were told that it was a small group of cookies, and they were a select group of testers gave it an excellent rating.

But they were the same exact cookie. Simply by telling people it was scarce, it made the cookie taste better.

Now for the powerful, Christmas time combination. I have no idea if this still happens today, but this story was illustrated in “Influence,” the book I mentioned previous.

There was a toy manufacturer. They made a toy, and put all kinds of TV commercials on, directed at little kids. They used all kinds of marketing tricks, mainly scarcity. Only a limited number of dolls made. Get yours today. Everybody wants this doll for Christmas.

Only when the parents went to the store to get the doll, they were all sold out. So they had to get a substitute gift for their kid. Then, a couple months after Christmas, they somehow found a hidden warehouse filled with these dolls. Of course, the kids saw this, told their parents, and their parents were pretty much obligated to buy the toy, as they had promised to buy it at Christmas but couldn’t find it.

Here’s how it works. Kid sees toy, bugs parent. Parents promises kid to buy them that particular toy. When buying time comes, toy isn’t available. Parent buys replacement gift. Two months later, toy reappears. Kid says, “But Daddy, you promised!” Daddy now has to go and buy gift.

Simply by manipulating the supply of the toys (scarcity) to increase demand, and depending on commitment and consistency (Daddy, you promised!) the toy company was able to double it’s Christmas sales. They sold a slew of replacement gifts (jacked up in price because of daddy’s guilt for not finding the promised toy) and then again a couple months later, when the original gift magically appeared, they had an increase in sales when all their competitor were suffering from a post Christmas slump

The beauty (or evilness, depending on how you look at it) of a plan like this is that this is almost impossible to defend against. What parent is going to tell their child they can’t have what the TV has said every other kid is getting? What parent is going to break a promise to their kid?

Everywhere you look, there are advertisements developed by companies who know and apply these principles on a daily basis. It helps to understand these principles so that you can use them yourself (in an ethical, win win scenario, of course) and to defend against them when they are used against you.

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Which would you rather have, a big juicy hamburger, or a cracker with some peanut butter slapped on top? How about a nice two-week relaxing vacation on the beaches of Hawaii versus a free coupon worth on rental from your local video store? Or how about a date with Megan Fox compared to that homeless woman you saw the other day?

These may seem like obviously easy choices. But what about these:

You are standing next to the train tracks. There is a split right where you are standing. There is a train coming. As it stands, the strain is going to veer left. You have access to a switch that can make the train veer right if you flip the switch.
You notice there is a stranded bus filled with school kids on the tracks to the left. If the train continues on its course, it will hit the bus and kill the kids. But to the right, there is one fat guy working on the tracks. If you throw the switch to change tracks, the train will avoid the kids, but it will kill he fat guy.

What do you do?

If you do nothing, a busload of kids will die. If you throw the switch, you will save the kids, but you will be directly responsible for killing some fat guy.

Or how about this:

There is a boatload of kids drifting down a river, about to plunge off a waterfall. You are standing on a bridge. There is the same fat guy walking across the bridge. If you run up and push the fat guy off the bridge, he will hit the boat and diverge it from the waterfall, and save the kids.

What do you do?

Many people polled in various studies would pull the switch in the first scenario, as they see it as an act of saving the kids. But few people would actually run up and push the fat guy off the bridge.

Why?

They (those they people again) did a study where they took some students and had them stick their hands in a bucket of water, and then guess the temperature. Then they had the same students stick their same hands in the same water, but at the same time, they had them stick their other hands in another bucket of water, that was either really hot or really cold. When the other bucket was really hot, they underestimated the temperature of the test bucket. When the water was really cold, they overestimated the temperature of the test bucket.

Or how about this. It is not uncommon for real estate agents to show a potential client a really crappy house in a really crappy neighborhood that is within their stated price range. Then they show them another much better house, in a much better neighborhood that is priced slightly higher than their stated price range.

They’ve found that this works really well to convince them to increase their price limits. By showing them the first house (which is owned and maintained by the real estate company) they effectively make the second house look like a bargain.

Restaurants have also found this trick works really well when selling wine. If they have a bottle (or several bottles) they are trying to unload at, say, fifty dollars a bottle, the wine won’t sell very well if it is the most expensive bottle they have. But they’ve found by adding another bottle, priced at seventy five to a hundred dollars, they increase sales of the fifty dollar bottle significantly. It looks better in comparison.

Our brains don’t’ like to choose in a vacuum. We need to have something to compare our choices to. If the choice is only to buy a bottle of wine or not, we usually will choose not. But if it’s an expensive bottle or a cheaper bottle, we’ll choose the cheaper bottle.

This is a known psychological trick that has been used in sales for many years. We like to feel like we have a choice, like we are smart enough to evaluate those choices and make the best decision that we can. But our short hand thinking process can easily be hijacked by marketers who want to sell us something that we really don’t need.

There is one simple rule to avoid being duped. Simply know going in, before being presented with choices, what is important to you, what price you are willing to spend, and what options you want. And compare everything you see only to your list of options and your acceptable price.

Of course, if you are a marketer, and you are trying to sell something, say online, it would help dramatically to include something similar that is priced significantly higher. That way people will think the real item you have for sale is a bargain and they will be much more likely to buy it.

For example, if you run a product review page, and you are selling item “X” for fifty bucks, try and find a similar item, with only slightly better features, for two hundred bucks. Item “X” will seem like steal in comparison.

Another trick that has been proven very useful in this regard is to include only a little bit of information about the first, more expensive item, and then very detailed information about item “X.” That way, item “X” will not only seem cheaper by comparison, but your potential buyers will feel much more informed, and feel they are making a wise buying decision.

Happy marketing, and don’t push any fat guys off any bridges.

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Several people have emailed me asking to write more about creating rapport. So today I’ll delve a little bit deeper into exactly how to create rapport, and exactly what to do with it. Many people have a misconception about rapport. The word seems to be thrown around in certain circles, mostly sales and seduction.

You can usually tell by the way it’s being used that most people aren’t really sure exactly what it is, how to get it, and how to test to make sure you have it. Another cool thing, (at least for guys) is that once you learn how to see it in other people, you can pretty much read a room fairly quickly, just by scanning everybody’s body language. You can tell who is into whom, who is fighting, who is wishing whom would leave them alone, etc. Most women, of course, are naturals at this. With practice, men can get just as good.

Let’s first talk about what rapport is. Rapport is a deep, usually unconscious feeling that you feel connected to somebody. You feel safe and comfortable. You don’t have your defenses up. For example, if you went to a Mets game, and you were the only one in the stands with a Yankees jacket on. You would likely feel very left out. But if while waiting in the hot dog line, you saw another person wearing a Yankee’s jacket, you would suddenly feel connected to them. You share something with them that you don’t share with all the other people around. And this would be regardless if they were a different gender, age bracket or ethnicity.

Another example. Lets say you are on a flight from Chicago to Nigeria. And you are sitting on a plane full of Nigerians. You start talking to the person next to you, and after a few minutes of conversation you realize that not only does she collect stamps, but also she collects stamps that were produced by previous Soviet Bloc countries (if they indeed exist.) You both know all the ins and outs of that particular niche hobby, and you have a long and wonderful conversation regarding methods and your respective collections, etc.

Both of the examples above are deep and powerful rapport. If either of people asked to borrow five dollars to buy a drink, you’d be much more willing if they were a total stranger you only exchanged a couple words with. There is one problem with both of the above. One, it was completely random, and happened by chance. Two, it is purely contextual. Meaning that so long as you are talking about stamps, or the Yankees, you’re allright. As soon as you deviate from those two topics, you’ll likely lose rapport rather quickly.

That is how most sales people, and most people trying to create “rapport” with would be boyfriends/girfriends go about doing it. They start a conversation, and hope to find similar interests, backgrounds, hobbies, etc. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. This is what people usually mean when they say they are “trying to build rapport.” They are talking to the person and hopefully creating that feeling of trust and connection.

But there is a much more easier way. A much more powerful way, that cuts through any surface small talk filled conversation you might be having. And because it is not dependent on the conversation, you can still create strong rapport even if you are talking about something you both vehemently disagree on.

How do you do this? You simply match everything you can about the other person. No, I don’t mean go out and buy an outfit just like theirs. That would take too long, and they might suspect you are up to something.

You match their body language, and other non-verbal behavior, and everything you can about their speech. If they speak slowly, you speak slowly. If they smile when they speak, you smile when you speak. If they cross their legs, you cross your legs.

Many people are afraid they are going to get caught doing this. But this hardly ever happens. If they scratch their nose, and you stare at their nose intently, and then stare at your hand, and then bring it slowly to your nose, they’ll know something is up. Usually, however, they will have no idea. They’ll only know that they feel a strange connection to you.

Try this with a friend. Sit facing each other. Try to be as open as possible (e.g. no crossed legs or arms). And match each other’s body language as much as possible. Then talk about something you disagree on. Focus on keeping the match between your body language.

Then switch. Mismatch body language as much as possible. Then talk about something you both agree on.

What you’ll discover is that when talking about something you disagree on, your matching language has more of an effect than the subject you’re talking about. And likewise when you are purposely mismatching. Even though you are talking about something you both like or agree with, you’ll have this funny feeling that something is amiss.

So how do you test to make sure you really have strong rapport? Simple. After you’ve spent five or ten minutes on normal, everyday conversation, and you’ve slowly matched their body language, start to lead a little bit. This means that you move first, and see if they follow. Like lean back in your chair, or cross and uncross your legs, any small movement. Most often they will follow, without even knowing.

Once you get to this stage, you can use a number of any other persuasive techniques to get their agreement. If you are talking to a girl in a bar, you can ask for her phone number. If you were a salesperson with a client, now would be a good time to suggest moving to the next stage in the sales process.

Knowing this gives you great insight whenever you see a room full of people. Next time you are at Starbucks or a similar public place where people are sitting around in groups, take a look around. Who is in rapport with whom? Who is out of rapport with whom?

If you want to use this to help meet somebody, here’s a neat trick. Get close to them, wherever you are. Party, bar, friends house, Starbucks, wherever. And just get into rapport with them before you go and introduce yourself.

People have much more powerful peripheral vision and brain computational capacity than most of us realize. At all times, people are scanning the area around us and checking every single person to determine if they are friend or foe. We may be advanced, but we still carry baggage from our evolutionary days.

If you are nervous, and scared, and you go and approach somebody, they will know it before you even open your mouth. However, if you take the time to develop rapport with them before you talk to them, they will feel this as well. Their guard will be down, and they’ll be more likely to engage in friendly conversation without getting nervous or anxious about being approached by a complete stranger.

Despite how powerful the above methods are, this is just scratching the surface o how to develop powerful, unconscious rapport with people. Try these, and see how they work out. Have fun.

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Every time you open your mouth, you have an intention. Whether this intention is conscious or not, planned or not, automatic or not, realized by you or not, this intention is there. Perhaps if somebody asks you the time, your intention is to behave in a socially appropriate manner without drawing undue attention to yourself.

If a homeless person walks up to you and asks for change, your intention is likely to end the uncomfortable conversation as quickly and painlessly as possible. For some this means to ignore him. For some it means giving him a dollar. For some it means an automatic physical altercation. As politically incorrect as it sounds, unless you set out specifically to volunteer in a soup kitchen or a homeless shelter, most people feel uncomfortable (for many, many different reasons) when approached by a homeless person asking for change.

If you are a guy, and you approach an attractive girl in a bar, your intention is likely to get her to like you, and perhaps more.

Most of these intentions are extremely vague, and largely unconscious. Very rarely do we stop and plan an outcome when somebody stops us on the street to ask us for directions or the time. Even though our response is automatic, we are trying to achieve an outcome of maintaining safety. Our automatic responses are largely based on protection, or defense.

Even the guy approaching the girl in the bar, although he has a somewhat conscious intention of getting her to like him, he is still likely operating from a frame of protection at the same time. He would love to be able to walk up to her, be as open and expressive as possible, make her laugh, show her his stunning personality and conversation skills. However, most of us guys are terrified of the public shame that the rejection of our advances would bring. So we hedge our bets, so to speak. We engage, but protect at the same time. This can prove extremely difficult.

The same goes with salespeople. Rejection can be awfully painful, even for the most seasoned veterans. Many times they approach the prospect with the same mindset of the guy approaching the girl in the bar. They’d love to proclaim how wonderful their product is, and clearly suggest that the prospect buy the product, but many are afraid to do so. One main weakness of almost anybody who has even been in sales is an inability to simply ask for the sale.

Most sales people beat around the bush, hoping the prospect will come to the conclusion on their own to buy the product. This rarely works. As most prospects usually need a nudge in the right direction.

However, there is another way. Actually a couple of other ways. Well, actually, lots of other ways, but I will only talk briefly about two of them. These were all “invented” by Milton Erickson, the father of conversational hypnosis. He came up with all kinds of powerfully persuasive conversation tools to help people overcome large life issues in a relatively short amount of time.

These two are very powerful ones that you can go out and use today, in a bar, with a girl, or with a prospect, or with your friends.

One is an indirect way of asking for the sale. This requires you be pretty good at reading body language, and facial expressions. The way you do this is to use what’s called an embedded question. Whenever you present a question to somebody, they will answer it, either verbally or not. But when you embed it in a sentence, then they don’t feel the pressure to answer it openly. But their body language and facial expression will give them away. Here’s how:

Say you are selling cars. You’ve been on the test drive, and your back in the office with the customer. They are still there, and they’ve been paying attention to you so far. You haven’t started talking about actual finances yet. You are still discussing whether or not they liked the car. You can say:

“Well, I don’t know whether or not you want to buy this car today, but before we talk about any kind of financial issues, let me talk to you about the extended warranty.”

Watch closely as you say the “buy the car today” part. If they seem like they are about to have a heart attack, you should probably hold off on asking them to sign a contract. If they seem to show any positive response at all, you’re in pretty good shape.

Same goes with the girl in the bar. You could say:

“I know we’ve been only talking for twenty minutes, and I don’t know if you feel comfortable giving your phone number to a guy you just met, but I think it’s important to be open when meeting new people. You never know when you are going to find somebody that could turn into a lifelong friend.”

Again, pay attention to how she responds when you say, “giving your phone number.” If she briefly lights up like a Christmas tree, she’s been dying for you to ask, and she’s into you. Proceed, and get her number. If she steps back and puts her hand protectively over her throat, you should politely excuse yourself.

That’s the “embedded question” method, and can be very powerful in testing how you are doing.

The other way is a bit more aggressive, and can be used by itself, or after you’ve successfully tested for a close. This trick is called the double bind. It involves giving them the illusion of a choice, when in actuality, both choices are the same thing.

For example, with the car example, you could say (as you pull out the contract):

“So were you going to use your current car as a trade in, or did you just want to make a down payment?” Either way they answer, it presupposes they are going to buy the car. This is, of course tough to do on a big-ticket item like a car. It can work better with smaller issues. You can use this for every part of the sales process, when you want to escalate to the next level.

“So did you want to test drive a blue one, or a red one?”
“So were you going to finance through us, or your own bank?”
“Would you rather test drive before or after we talk about financing?”

This works really well with phone sales when setting up appointments:

“I am going to be in your neighborhood next week, would Tuesday at 4:00 PM be OK, or is Thursday at 6:30 better?”

And you can also use it on the girl whose number you got:

“Say this is George from the other night, we talked at Flankies. I enjoyed our conversation, and I’d like to see you again, for a cup of coffee. Which is easier for you, Tuesday evening at 8:00, or Thursday at 9:30?”

You can use both of these together for a powerful increase in your closing percentage. Test their “buying temperature” with the embedded question, and then “close” them with the double bind. You’ll be amazed at your results.

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If you’ve ever bought something, or sold anything, or used anything that was either bought or sold, then you are aware of the incredibly massive flow of money that surrounds sales. Every single day millions upon millions of people buy stuff that they need, stuff they want, and stuff they may never even use.

And in many of those cases, there is a salesperson making a commission on the sale. It could be a face-to-face sale, it could be a sale made over the phone; it could be an affiliate sale over the Internet. No matter how you slice it, every day billions of dollars change hands.

Ever since Krosus of Persia came up with the idea of coins, the world has never been the same. You could earn this magical thing called money through your efforts, and with this called money, you could buy pretty much whatever you wanted.

Indeed, historians have noted that the first two industries that popped up soon after Krosus’ coins were casinos and houses of ill repute. The world’s oldest profession is twofold.

And in every transaction, everybody is making their cut. Here in Japan, if you want to go down to the Kimono shop and buy yourself a decent silk kimono, you’re gonna be set back at least ten thousand dollars. That is a prime example of everybody getting a piece of the pie.

Starting with the silk worm, the silk is somehow transformed into a piece of cloth, then dyed, then cut, then carefully stitched together into an exquisite pattern, then sold by a happy shopkeeper to a happy customer for ten thousand dollars, or more. And every step along the way, somebody is getting paid. A lot.

So how do you get your piece of the pie? How do you get in the game and get paid, just like everybody else? Learn to sell. And believe it or not, that is much easier than it sounds. People have been buying and selling for hundreds of thousands of years. Even other animals use a form of barter. The bee pollinates the flower in exchange for the raw material to make honey. The bee doesn’t give a whit about the survival of the particular species of flower, and the flower isn’t concerned with how the bee is going to use its nectar.

But nature has provided them the basis for a mutually agreeable business relationship. All that is required is that each participant holds up its end of the bargain.

And therein lies the biggest roadblock to selling. Whenever we humans we a salesperson, we are immediately on guard. We sometimes feel as if they are trying to con us out of our hard earned dollars. So we have this resistance. Once that resistance is overcome, our natural inclination of buying and selling can flourish.

How is that done? Through the art of rapport. When you build rapport with a client, they will trust you with their money. They will trust your opinion and recommendations, and they will likely buy from you.

How do you create rapport? Many sales techniques will teach you to make small talk, find areas of similarity, and compliment them on their shirt or their watch. Use their name several times in the conversation. While this may work it is not nearly as powerful (or as easy) as rapport building techniques taught in NLP.

How do you do this? By simply noticing their model of the world, and matching it as much as you possibly can. This starts with matching their body language. If they are crossing their legs, you cross yours. If they scratch their nose, you scratch your cheek. If they take a deep breath and lean back, you do the same.

If they speak slowly, so do you. If they put extra emphasis on certain words, you do the same. And never, ever paraphrase. Nothing kills rapport faster than paraphrasing. Especially if they are using words that are vague. For example, if they say they are interested in “safety,” don’t change their word to “protection.” These may be two completely different words with two completely different meanings in their mind.

If they say “I want a car that will provide safety to my family,” they key phrase is “..provide safety to my family.” The only change you should make is changing the “my” to “your” when you feed it back to them. So when you are describing your best model:” And another thing people really like about this car is that it provides safety to your family.”

It can take time to master this, because you have to let go of your fears and ego and get out of your head and actually pay attention to the person you are talking to. But just like with any other skill, the more you practice, the better you’ll get.

When you can sit down with a client, and match their world, they will feel at a deep level that you really understand them, and their needs. And you will able to sell them almost anything.

Of course it goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyways, that you should never ever sell something to somebody that they really don’t need or want, or isn’t in their best interests. This will create all kinds of bad karma that will come back to haunt you, in some way.

One way around this, and something salespeople don’t usually think about, is referrals. If you have a client in front of you that you have developed considerable rapport with, and you honestly don’t have a product that suits them, or your services just aren’t right for them, be the first to acknowledge that. Most people have a hard time saying no. When you, as a salesperson, tell your client that you really can’t help them, and even provide them with some alternatives, you will create a huge amount of trust, and respect. And that usually means a ton of referrals.

In sales, trust and respect will earn you more money than you can possibly imagine. If you focus on earning trust and respect through rapport, then the money (and the honey) will inevitably follow.

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