"People are strategies waiting to be discovered."
Definition: Strategies are the particular sequence of internal and external representations that lead to a specific outcome. Human experience is an endless series of representations. To deal with this endless sequence it is useful to punctuate it in terms of outcomes.
Some major categories of strategies are excellence, decision, learning, motivation, buying and convincer.
The key to all successful persuasion is being able to "aim" or "sequence" your message at the person you are persuading in such a way that they can not say no because it is what they are already doing all of the time.
People have a naturally developed "sales/persuasion" resistance. So, your job is to elegantly present whatever you say in a way that blows right by any resistance.
In fact, it makes the person salivate to hear more and take action on what you say because it is how they normally do it all the time.
After all who normally likes to say no to themselves?
You must learn to think, talk and write in terms of process not content, to immediately become successful in persuasion.
Think of it this way, process is the direction and content is the method of travel. Obviously, if you spend all of your time concentrating on your method of travel, you will not get very far.
Questions like, "What caused..." and "How did you decide to..." will get you process information. The best ways to uncover process oriented information is to listen for it with your ears and look for it with your eyes as the person you are persuading talks. They give it to you left and right.
In fact, they cannot not give you their strategies because it is what they are doing all of the time. With practice, persons strategies will be as obvious to you as their name, clothes they are wearing etc.
General strategy elicitation and employment:
1.Determine outcome
2.See, hear, feel, make sense a movie doing it perfectly and step into it.
3.Put yourself in the optimum physiology, attitude and intention for excellence.
4.Establish rapport.
5.Check wiring.
6.Ask basic questions: "How do you decide, know etc. What happens first?"
7. Use all accessing cues: Look with your eyes and listen with your ears.
8. Calibrate.
9. Backtrack to get the next step.
10. Make sure you get a logical sequence.
11. Make sure you have all the key functional pieces.
12. Beware of your own bias toward your own strategies.
13. Elicit major representational modalities until complete.
14. Unpack criteria lists
15. Elicit and do not install: More than one option, use contrast, counter example.
16. Feedback the sequence wrong and calibrate. Take a picture.
17. Feedback the sequence right and calibrate. Take a picture.
18. Cycle for intensity and keep going for the right picture until you readily truly achieve your outcome.
Convincer strategy elicitation and employment- It is the process one goes through in their mind in order to become convinced. Once I know it and use the process and fill it in with my product or service they will buy.
Here is how it works
a) Ask "How do you know when X? i.e. How do you know when an investment is one that you will buy (sell)? What is the procedure you (or the investment committee) goes through from start to finish?
You will get one of five answers
i) see
ii) hear
iii) read about
iv) Do or feel
v) Criteria lists
Then ask
b) How many times do you need to X to convince yourself?
You will get one of four answers
i) Number of times
ii) Length of time
iii) Automatic response- right away.
iv) Consistent response- each time.
Now you- Cycle through and do it wrong, calibrate. Take a picture. Cycle through and do it right, calibrate. Take a picture. Let the correct cycle be your first PPP and keep cycling for intensity until you achieve your outcome.
Personal training tip
Instant decision to agree (buy):
Ask "When have you looked at something and knew it was absolutely right for you, it was the perfect thing for you and you have been right through the years?"
Watch where they focus their eyes and present your product at that good
convincer spot.
Hint- you might need to ask
"What was it?"
Criteria List
Without unpacking and using a persons criteria, you will never succeed in your persuasion efforts. You will discover the persons criteria in the "criteria list" step of their strategy.
Using this information will allow you to "customize" everything you say so that it has the maximal effect on that person-right then.
The reason is that the criteria list is what we use to "test" if something is a good decision or not.
Here is how to do it now:
The question to ask to elicit criteria list is:
"What is important about (here fill in the context) for you?"
EXAMPLE:
1. What is important about investments to you?
2. What is important about improving your influence skills?
3. What is important about a X you will buy?
Criteria-It is what a person uses to decide if something is good/bad etc. As he cycles through his decision process, his criteria must be met for him to make a yes decision. It is what drives a person to take action or to avoid it.
The more closely your product or service matches the person criteria that you are persuading, the more impact you will have.
For influencing purposes, the more you refer to their criteria list and link it to your product, service or proposal, the more impact you will immediately have.
Criteria, properly used, can eliminate any objection.
However, you do not stop there. Once you get the answer to the question, above, you then ask it repeatedly until you get a "hierarchy" or Criteria List of value information that will absolutely stun you as to its effectiveness.
Then, cycle through once and do it wrong, calibrate. Take a picture. Cycle through once and do it right, calibrate. Take a picture. Let the correct cycle be your first PPP keep cycling for intensity until you achieve your outcome.
Fill in the blanks with your criteria for learning this information.
The function of criteria- All criteria serves to move a person towards an objective or away from a problem. This is called, for simplicity the Towards/Away pattern. This is the basis for all motivation.
Toward- Words like: Attain, Achieve, Goals, Include; Accomplish, Solutions are what you will hear when a persons criteria is moving them toward.
Away from- Words like: Avoid, Get Away From, Evade, Exclude, are what you will hear when a persons criteria is moving them away from.
The question to ask to determine move toward/away is:
"What will having (name their criteria) do for you?"
Examples of move toward answers:
1. Q. What will having a passive income do for you?
A. It will enable me to buy more of what I want.
2. Q. What will having high quality do for you?
A. It makes me feel good knowing that I can afford the best.
3. Q. What will having superior influence skills do for you?
A. It makes accomplishing all my goals easier and faster.
Examples of move away answers:
1. Q. What will having a passive income do for you?
A. It makes sure I won't have to work when I get older.
2. Q. What will having high quality do for you?
A. It guarantees me that what I buy won't break down.
3. Q. What will having superior influence skills do for you?
A. If I have superior influence skills, I won't get told no as often.
Now, cycle through one time to calibrate that you have it. Take a picture. Let the cycle be your first PPP to link the criteria to your product and keep cycling for intensity until you achieve your outcomes.
Alvin Donovan, founder of the investment bank www.KiwiGrowthPartners.com, is the co author of Make More Money NOW and has also been a consultant/faculty member for several of the world's largest management institutes.
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