Secrets of Hypnotic Influence and Persuasion Virtual Classroom Series

Today I want to introduce you to a new subject that once you master will have an absolutely powerful effect on the results that you are able to achieve through your persuasion processes.

And this concept is the concept of the compelling emotional outcome, or as we like to refer to it their CEO. Lets talk a little bit about what that is, first of all the last word in there, outcome! Everybody who goes into any purchasing situation is looking for a specific outcome; they are looking to get more of something they would like to have in their life. They are looking for insulate something themselves for something they would like to have a lot less on in their lives. But they have got an outcome that they go into the transaction looking to achieve. Now generally most people have lots of outcomes that they are looking to achieve but they have got one or maybe two that are their compelling emotional outcomes.

So lets look at those other two words.

Emotional Outcomes, we talked about that, all purchasing decisions are emotional. So when we elicit their CEO we are getting down to the emotional level of what it is they are looking to achieve. That first word is maybe the most important, Compelling. Because it is going to compel them into action. It is going to get them to move, it’s going to overcome their sense of urgency and get them taking action in their own best interest.

Now this is a subject that we will stay on for actually the next couple of classrooms and we will talk about some different ways you can elicit peoples compelling emotional outcome. But one of the things I want to have you set as an outcome for your meetings, for your prospects is that you will set it as a goal to tap into and understand the things that you clients really want to achieve most out of this particular interaction. And I am going to even suggest before we dive too deeply into this subject, you should go out and do a little research. And here is the easiest way to do a little research, talk to your friends, your neighbors, your work associates, and your prospects, people that you are standing behind at the bank and talk to them about their cars.

Particularly if you are listening to this in the US, US citizens are very, very passionate about their cars. But as you start delving in with people and finding out what it is about their particular car that really compelled them to take action and move forward you will begin to see just how different everybody’s compelling emotional outcomes actually are. How unique they are to us! Almost like fingerprints! So if you have got somebody who is in a car search right now, or has just recently purchased a new car you have got an absolutely ideal prospect because things are fresh. If it is somebody who has owned a car a couple of year you have got to be able to take them back a little bit and revivify their experience that they had for shopping for that car. And I want you to go through an exercise of getting the answers behind the answers. And I want you to take that exercise at least 4 levels deep.

So you could just start off by saying, “how long have you had that car that you drive?” And the person will say, whatever the answer was. And you will say, “do you remember when you were shopping for that car, can you remember what was going through your mind and what was important to you about the different cars that you were looking at back then?” And normally it’s not too hard to get them to recall the things that were important to them at that time. So just ask them, “At the moment that you made that purchase what was it about that car that made it so special?” Now at some point they may bring up that they just got a really good deal on that car, a good monetary price.

And if and when they bring that up, I want you to reframe that and go look for other things they were looking for. And here is how you can reframe it, if they tell you “I just got a really good deal. It was an executive demo and they knocked $5,000.00 off.” Or whatever they happen to say you can say, “I know it wasn’t price alone because I actually just heard a story the consumer reports did some research and they figured out the very best value for your car dollar is a mid 80′s Volvo, which you can typically purchase for under $1,500.00. And find a car that is between 80 and 120,000 miles that normally will go to 250,000 miles. So according to consumer reports at least, if you are just looking for the best value for your car buying dollar it’s that mid 80′s Volvo. Obviously the car you bought was scientifically more expensive than $1,500.00 so what else was it about that car that made it the right decision for you?”

From here they can obviously go off on a lot of different directions. Could be comfort, could be safety, could be fuel economy, could be inexpensiveness to operate, could be sportiness, could be a chick magnet, there is a lot of different ways that it could go and we want to go at least 2 more levels deep from there.

So whatever the answer they give you, validate it.

They say, “I wanted something that was really safe and this is a very, very safe car.” And you could say, “yeah safety, I can see why that would be important for you. But I am curious, what is it about safety that was really the most important thing to you?” And they are going to go one of two ways, they are either going to give you another label or they will start to give you a story. And what we are looking for is a story, and in that story they will probably use two or three little personal buzzwords.

So somebody who might give us safety as an outcome might be somebody with little kids, so say, “yeah safety I can see why safety might be important to you. Why was safety so important to you?” And their answer might be in a story form, “well I have got my two little twins and when I am out driving them around in the road I get so nervous and driving this particular car I felt like I was wrapping them in this steel security blanket and that we were impervious to all of the crazy drivers that are out there. And I felt like when we were in this thing, we were invincible.” So now we want to go even one more level deep. We are going to take those buzz words that they gave us in the story which was, the steel security blanket, impervious of the bad drivers of other and invincible. Now my last thing I want to do is throw them back to when they actually just made this decision. Normally in a sales context we are going to be throwing them into the future, in this case we want to take them and throw them back.

So we will say to them “let me ask you a question. When you are driving this car and for the first time that sense comes over you that this is the steel security blanket that is going to make you absolutely impervious to those other drivers and will give you that feeling of invincibly. As you think back at the moment that you first realized that, what feeling do you that?” Now our goal here is to actually get them bathing in this emotional soup. And the fact of the matter is, if get them totally present, if we move them back in time or in the case of a future sale, move them forward in time. When they are thinking about those emotions, those compelling emotional outcomes that they really desire most to be able to achieve, its going to be difficult maybe even impossible for them to describe that to you completely. So what they are going to end up giving you is another descriptive phrase or another personal buzzword that we want to make sure that we use.

But the goal of this exercise is to get them bathing in that emotional soup and really experiencing the emotions that they had then, in real time, right now. And then ask them to describe that for us.

I will tell you other ways we can use this in future virtual lessons but my guess is just having gone through this exercise or as you go through it a dozen or so times with some friends or associates. You will very quickly begin to realize that this skill alone of being able to elicit these compelling emotional outcomes is going to take your persuasion skills and amp those up in ways that you may not even have begun to fully recognize yet.

So your homework assignment for this one is go out and do a dozen of these elicitations with friends, family, work associates or people that you are just standing in line with at the bank or happen have a casual conversation with. Have this be the neat subject that you bring up.