Secrets of Hypnotic Influence and Persuasion Virtual Classroom Series

Today I want to talk about the role that our brain plays in sales. Actually in this classroom I am going to focus less on our brain as opposed to the brain of our clients and prospects.

In our last class we talked about two areas of the brain that are actually involved in their decision-making process. That’s the BAS (Behavioral activation system) and the BIS (Behavioral Inhibition System). And these are two very ancient part of our brain, that working in concert with one another to help make a decision and to verify the decision is a good decision for us to be making right now. So you can imagine somebody who is really, really hungry and they going to be break room in the office and there is a box of doughnuts that are sitting there.

Now the activation system is immediately going to tell the brain to go for it. “I am hungry! There is food! One of my favorite foods!” And it is going to start sending messages to get you walking over and picking it up and jamming it into your mouth. But the inhibition system is going to start doing this little ecology checks to make sure that this is something that you could be doing. It might up and say, “Wait a second! You are on a diet, you promised yourself that you won’t eat any junk food, this does not fit into your diet!” It might also be throwing up, ” you know what? These aren’t yours, they looked like they may be left over’s but you better check because somebody may be saving them for a little bit later. It is not yours just to grab!” and these two parts of brains like I said work in concert with one another, so if you think about the analogy of your car, the activation system is the accelerator, the inhibition system is the brakes. And in persuasion and we need to be talking to both.

The conscious and unconscious mind

Now in hypnosis two phrases that we use very frequently, one is our conscious mind and another is our unconscious mind. What is the difference there? Well our conscious mind is what we are focusing on consciously. So hopefully right now one of the things that you are focusing on consciously is the sound of my voice, coming over your computer, may be you are reading along the script that goes along with it but unconsciously your brain is digesting food, its helping you brief, it is pushing blood through your system, it is doing a lot of seemingly automated processes that are happening outside of your conscious awareness. It is a very, very good part of the brain to be able to communicate a persuasive message to as well.

The fifth one we want to think of is a part of our brain called our critical mind. Our critical mind is at the part of our brain to go back to an analogy that we have talked about a couple of times earlier with the car salesman who said, “hey what do we got to do to put you in this car today?” That is when the critical mind steps up and says, “Wait a second! This guy is trying to sell you something let go a little bit slow here. Let’s, careful how you answer that question!” Almost like that mental lawyer that is leaning over and whispering legal advice into our ear about what to be careful of. So we have talked about five different parts of the brain or the minds, two terms I will use a little bit interchangeably. Here are some thoughts on three of them that I want you to think about

1. It is the behavioral activation system. How can we tap into our client’s emotions? Specifically those emotions that are going to drive them into action going forward?
2. Their unconscious mind. Experts say that we have only got the ability to focus on 5, 6, 7, some people with a well trained mind can go up to 9 different things that they can be processing in their conscious mind at a time. The rest of it is flowing over to the unconscious mind. We are going to talk about some ways to communicate more directly with the unconscious mind. There is a lot of that in the Jump Start Program, so if you want to dive into that a little bit more rapidly, rather than take a piece meal here we talk about an enormous amount on the 5 ½ hours on that series.
3. The critical mind. That is the mental skeptic that says, “what a second, what are we doing here?”

We are going to look at each of those individually going forward on how we can work with each of those in a future virtual classroom. But for now what I would like you to do is pay attention to the interactions you are having and notice what you are doing to call each of those minds into play as you are interacting with your clients and prospects.

So for now we will end this virtual classroom I will look forward to talking to you again tomorrow and we will talk a little bit about that critical mind and how we can use that in our sales going forward.