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  • 'The Secret' Debate
    Here's a definite sign that something has made it into the collective consciousness:
  • A Return to Bondage (No! Not that kind of bondage)
    "The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependency back again into bondage." --Sir Alex Fraser Tyler (1742-1813) Scottish jurist and historian
  • Allowing and Embracing the Flow
    "The real 'haves' are they who can acquire freedom, self-confidence, and even riches without depriving others of them. They acquire all of these by developing and applying their potentialities. On the other hand, the real 'have nots' are they who cannot have aught except by depriving others of it. They can feel free only by diminishing the freedom of others, self-confident by spreading fear and dependence among others, and rich by making others poor." - Eric Hoffer
  • An Exercise In Rapport: Trying On Someone Else's Skin
    You've heard the saying; you can't know someone until you've walked a mile in their shoes. This is a technique on how to gain rapport by jumping into another person, stepping in, sliding in, moving in, being in that person, figuratively walking a mile in their shoes. Harper Lee wrote in To Kill a Mockingbird, "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view...until you climb into his skin and walk around in it."
  • Appealing Emotionally In Business
    Here's a wild suggestion: I think rationality is overrated. Yup. It's true. I realize it's important to have a good foundation with your feet planted solidly on the ground, but rationality has taken over the realm of business (though it has not yet taken over the world of romantic relationships. . .) and we've lost an integral part of ourselves that makes us appealing: emotionality. We have moved from mom and pop businesses into the age of faceless corporations and in doing so, things have become so sterile.
  • Are Presuppositions Sneaky?
    Recently a student of mine posted a comment about my use of the relationship between teacher and student in an example of presupposition. They suggested, with a wink and a smiley face, that maybe I was being a little sneaky in using the example in a persuasive way.
  • Are You Full Of It?
    Confidence . . . when we interact with our affluent clients and prospects, we need to exude confidence. We need to show them what we are made of. There's a point where confidence becomes over confident and self assuredness becomes arrogance. These are not good things to be full of. Being competent, self assured and having a solid sense of self are excellent things to be full of.
  • Attack of the Friendlies
    I like the way Abraham Lincoln said it best, "Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?"
  • Attaining Persuasive Productivity
    A huge bonus of learning persuasion is that we gain the ability to persuade ourselves. This enables us to easily accomplish whatever we attempt.
  • Attitude is Everything
    I AM YOUR ATTITUDE! I AM YOUR MASTER. I can make you rise or fall. I can make you a success or failure. I can work for or against you. I control your feelings and actions. I can make your heart sing with happiness. I can make you wretched, dejected, or morbid. I can make you angry and resentful. I can make you lonely, discouraged or depressed. I can make you sick, listless. I can be a shackle, heavy and burdensome. I can be a prism's hue, dancing bright and colorful. I can be nurtured and grown to be beautiful. I can never be removed, only replaced. I AM YOUR ATTITUDE! (author unknown)
  • auditory adventures
    As you listen to what I'm going to tell you, you'll begin to hear the way in which you can use these words to describe most anything. You can orient your phrases and the way in which you talk such that people will resonate with what you're saying very well. If you make your voice calm and smooth you'll probably have an even greater appeal as you verbalize the message you want to get across. You can tune in to what people are telling you as well, becoming more empathic with them and helping them to understand exactly your meaning to all the words that you have.
  • Avoiding Distracting Chit Chat
    Americans love to talk. Americans also love to be talked to -- listening to the TV or the stereo or talk radio -- anything so that there's no silence. Silence we seem to delegate to those few days a year when we get back to nature. In conversations, especially, there's a real fear of silence, an awkwardness that sort of permeates the in between spaces where there is no one talking and most people will do anything possible to fill up that silence with noise regardless of whether or not it's going to damage their chances of selling their product or service.
  • Avoiding Persuasion Pitfalls (Part 1)
    "Linguistics is arguably the most hotly contested property in the academic realm. It is soaked with the blood of poets, theologians, philosophers, philologists, psychologists, biologists, anthropologists, and neurologists, along with whatever blood can be got out of grammarians." - Russ Rymer
  • Base Desires And Persuasion
    Persuasion has always been my passion. Self persuasion and self mastery have become extraordinarily important to me over the last year and a half. I have had some tremendous changes in my life as a result.
  • Be Like A Magnet
    A very spiritual woman I know shared the following with me: she said, 'I used to have unfortunate beliefs about myself and I received back from external influences unfortunate results. When I decided to take control and raise my resonance, to be the change I wanted to become, to allow abundance and love come flow through me, absolutely everything fell into place. I am now living a life of leisure with a beautiful husband and I can draw what I want into my universe at will.'
  • Beginning Persuasion: Starting With the Basics
    "Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler."-Henry David Thoreau
  • Beyond Boxes
    If you're in the world of sales, it's likely you've gone through traditional sales training and learned that there is 'a way' to sell. Maybe it was the Carnegie method. Maybe you learned 'features and benefits'. Maybe you learned some other easily definable, package-able way to sell to clients or prospects which sort of hammers away at their defenses and attempts to corner them into buying. These techniques are responsible for boxing in many excellent sales professionals. I admit to having been hindered once by these techniques but I had an awakening.
  • Binds in Buying
    Binds are a fascinating strategy in persuasion which should be used sparingly, a little 'persuasion seasoning' so to speak.
  • Breath: Self Fulfilling Prophesy for Persuasion
    "Simply breathe - deeply and often, and whatever you do, don't stop breathing!" --Cheryl Lynne Rubbo In this exercise, you're going to learn to lead your wealthy clients and prospects with a simple word: breathe. It's something they do to stay alive, and yet, you're going to take credit for this biological function for persuasion purposes.
  • Building Your Persuasion Muscle
    If you don't know it by now, I'm a changed man. My life and health have become drastically improved in the last few years by way of shedding 140+ pounds of fat, adopting a healthy relationship to food and learning to love the gym and exercise.
  • Calibration Effect
    When I was a young man my first job in sales was selling gym memberships. One of the trainers that worked at this gym was a great guy, funny, sociable, and well liked, but he had tremendous difficulty communicating with certain types of people. My favorite thing about him was that he was always himself. This character trait had the downside of putting him against a wall where he became ineffective in his job.
  • Choose Your Frames
    "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances - to choose one's own way." - Victor Frankl
  • Clean Out Your Trash
    There's a common saying, 'taking three steps forward and two steps back'. We've all felt this sort of frustration at some point in our life. Luckily you're reading this article and I have an exercise to show you how to eliminate the 'two steps back'.
  • Cleaning Up Your Language: Persuasive Oration
    Language, like persuasion, is an art. It's an art that can be mangled, yes. And as with any art, unless you're a prodigy, as Mozart was with music, as H.P. Lovecraft was with poetry, as Pablo Picasso was with painting, then most likely you will have to practice to be good at the art of language.
  • Cultivate Your Curiosity
    I recently came across the following list written/compiled by David Heenan: Ten Keys to Life Fulfillment: 1. Listen to your heart 2. Take one step at a time 3. Deliver daily 4. Maintain a maverick mind-set 5. Focus, focus, focus 6. Never stop learning 7. Build a brain trust (network of knowledgeable people) 8. Reinvent Yourself 9. Sell Yourself 10. Start now!
  • Determine The Sum of Your Values
    "Our value is the sum of our values." --Joe Batten
  • Do You Need A Swift Kick In The Butt?
    Ever since I can remember, starting from when I was a young boy, I've struggled with my weight. I was stuck in a body that didn't represent my mind's view of myself, but did represent a weakness I had in relation to food. It always brought to mind the Andrew Carnegie quote, "People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents." I knew that this struggle was holding me back from total mastery and it frustrated me to no end.
  • Don't Shove Your Prospects Down a Rabbit Hole
    Former students of mine, without naming names, have gone on to attempt to teach criteria elicitation. For what it's worth, this synthesis of a very complex body of knowledge down to one question, is absolutely fine if you're not interested in working with high end and affluent clientle.
  • Drinking from a Fire Hose
    Every year around this time, I start a new cycle of classes and as usual, I've got some eager, excited, anticipating students, many of whom will (I can already tell) work themselves into a bit of a frenzy wanting to soak up as much persuasion as possible in a short period of time. As one client put it, "I kind of feel like I'm drinking water out of a fire hose."
  • Eliciting Definitions
    There's an English idiom that goes, "The devil is in the details." I'm sure you've all heard it. It implies that the small things in plans or schemes are often the things that take the most time in the long term. Well, in criteria elicitation, we need to dig a little deeper than just the surface act and get a little dirty with the details.
  • Eliciting Peak Emotional States for Persuasive Power
    Have you ever had this experience? You're driving down the road and a song comes on the radio and suddenly you're transported to a time and place. . .maybe ten, twenty years ago, when you were having the time of your life, or falling in love for the first time, or struggling through a broken heart.
  • Eliminating Procrastination
    "We shall never have more time. We have, and always had, all the time there is. No object is served in waiting until next week or even until tomorrow. Keep going... Concentrate on something useful." --Arnold Bennett
  • Emotional Persuasion Through Storytelling
    I cry during movies. I'll admit it. I'm absolutely comfortable with it and not ashamed in the slightest. Stories have been used to elicit emotional responses, whether by design or by accident, since the beginning of man and some of the best stories are extraordinarily moving. That emotion may manifest as heartbreaking or uplifting or revolutionary or life changing-but the important thing to remember is that it is an unbelievably powerful opening-a hole, so to speak-that can be filled up with a message.
  • Enough Blame To Go Around
    "All blame is a waste of time. No matter how much fault you find with another, and regardless of how much you blame him, it will not change you. The only thing blame does is to keep the focus off you when you are looking for external reasons to explain your unhappiness or frustration. You may succeed in making another feel guilty about something by blaming him, but you won't succeed in changing whatever it is about you that is making you unhappy." -Wayne Dyer
  • Exploring Curiosity: Hunger for the Unknown
    When we are born, we are open and curious and fascinated at the new world around us. We are sponges. And as we develop, and if, and only if, our basic needs are satisfied, we grow to the point of requiring self-actualization.
  • Exposing the Core
    "It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction." -- Pablo Picasso
  • First Step: Create Your Universes
    "Civilization advances as more and more of life's essentials are absorbed by the unconscious." -Diane Ackerman, "An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain"
  • Forgiveness: Clearing Out Your Attic Can Lead to Happiness
    "Forgiveness means that you do not hold others responsible for your experiences." ~Gary Zukav
  • Framing History
    "If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail." --Abraham H. Maslow
  • Framing Taboos
    To further illustrate the persuasive power of framing, I've chosen a few pretty hot topics. I'm hoping to stir us all up a little.
  • Framing The Big Picture
    Framing is the most powerful concept in persuasion. When we look at the big picture we see that everything can be thought of as a frame. By using political or religious examples (and any other taboo/controversial thing I can come up with), I am in no way endorsing one side or the other-though of course I do have personal opinions-rather, I'm showing that we all have blind spots. Find a belief that you believe fervently, feverishly, fanatically, even, and I'm going to suggest that you may be blind to the opposite side of the issue.
  • Framing the Question
    Try this: I'm sure you'll get it real quick but because you're all such good folks out there, I want you to spell the word 'folk' three times. Do it right now in your mind. Spell the word 'folk' three times as fast as you can.
  • Future Hope
    "If you want to build a ship, don't herd people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
  • Gaslighting: Stirring Up Doubt
    Here's a great example of a powerful strategy called gaslighting and how to use it in your persuasive situations with the affluent...
  • Genie In A Bottle: Your Universe In Pictures
    We've all had the experience of wanting something that has eluded us. Maybe it's wealth, possessions, maybe it's a relationship, maybe it's optimum health or other physical attributes which for some reason or another we have not been able to conjure up.
  • going above and beyond for an affluent clientle
    I recently read a story about the Ritz Carlton Hotel that got me to thinking about how to really cater to and take care of a wealthy client, thereby keeping them interested and connected to you and your product or service.
  • Good Habits Out of Bad
    Habits, by definition, are habitual things we do. Whether it be a habit of needing that after dinner cigarette or biting your fingernails during a stressful period, we all are creatures of habit no matter how spontaneous we like to think we are.
  • Gratitude and Persuasion
    "It is necessary, then, to cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude." -Wallace D. Wattles, The Science of Getting Rich or Financial Success Through Creative Thought
  • Group Rapport: Shovel It Up and Filter It Out
    When I was first starting out in the business of persuasion, I had some difficulty with anxiety surrounding live events and seminars. Prior to a seminar for about a week, I'd become unbearable to be around. The wife and kids avoided me, even the dog steered clear. I didn't like it, but thought it was just the cost of doing business. And as if that weren't bad enough, after the event, I'd have an equally difficult "crash" or let down, not because the event wasn't successful, but because a huge amount of energy was expended and released and left me feeling as if I needed some recovery time.
  • Hammers and Nails: Framing Challenges
    "When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds: Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great, and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and your discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be." -Patanjali (author and yogi)
  • Hocus Pocus: Reframing Sugar
    I recently came across a banner ad on the internet that read: "Skip artificals. Go natural. Sugar: sweet by nature. Only 15 calories per teaspoon."
  • How To Adjust Your Lens
    I've written about framing basics in previous articles. Framing is a vast subject and couldn't possibly be summed up in just a few articles, but it's a foundation.
  • How To Maintain Good Boundaries In Rapport
    "It is the business of thought to define things, to find the boundaries; thought, indeed, is a ceaseless process of definition. It is the business of art to give things shape." -Vance Palmer
  • How To Not Become Rich
    1. Wait for approval or permission from society.
  • How to Persuade From Inside A Pink Bubble
    "It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, Of all things physical and metaphysical, Of all things human and all things super-human, Of all true manifestations of the head, Of the heart, of the soul, That the life is recognizable in its expression, That form ever follows function. This is the law." ~Louis Sullivan
  • How to Use Social Positioning to Persuade Affluent Prospects
    "Do not worry about holding high position; worry rather about playing your proper role." ~Confucius
  • I Am An Onion: Layers of Complexity in Persuasion and Life
    I love a good metaphor. An especially powerful metaphor for me lately has been that of an onion. The Cleveland Method deals with a deep understanding of our core drives and unconscious motivations. When we focus inward, only then can we genuinely understand others.
  • I Presuppose So
    At the core of presupposition is the idea that we can assume a mental position or thought which our prospects or clients must take for granted in order for everything else that we say to make sense without us actually having to name the core concept.
  • Inoculating Yourself Against Rejection
    We all had them as children -- those painful shots that prevented all sorts of nasty diseases. Now that we're grown ups, we know why we needed them, but when we were little kids, it didn't make any difference because the only thing we understood was that they hurt and left us sort.
  • Is it true? Does Everything Happen for a Reason?
    Last week I got a call from an acquaintance of mine. He said, 'Remember that conversation we had about Africa a few weeks ago? Well, I just checked my e-mail and you won't believe it. I won an international lottery originating in Africa. You know, I'm just convinced everything happens for a reason, don't you think?'
  • Is it true? Does Everything Happen for a Reason?
    I got a call from an acquaintance a while back. He said, 'Do you remember the conversation we had about Africa? Well, I checked my e-mail and found, unbelievably, that I won an international lottery which originated in Africa. I'm just convinced that everything happens for a reason, aren't you?'
  • It's Time To Bury Cold Calling
    Endings are hard. Sometimes we cling to people, places, things, that we've outgrown, because of a nostalgia, or out of habit.
  • Jumping Off the Bandwagon
    Yeah, I know, things are getting expensive. Grocery prices are soaring because gas prices are soaring because there's a war going on because a fear of scarcity has been instilled in us because . . . well, it's complicated, right? Regardless of the reasons, I get back to the point that things are expensive.
  • Let's Get Emotional
    Forget about appealing to your prospects and clients with logic. Sales is all about appealing to emotions and logic comes a (way) distant second. To illustrate my point, I'm going to tell you a story about some college students who figured this out and put it to the test.
  • Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire
    Under the heading of 'human nature' comes lying. Humans lie. Period. Big lies, small lies, lies to spare feelings, lies to spare trouble.
  • Master Your Fears
    "Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear-not absence of fear."--Mark Twain
  • Misery Loves to Spend
    The John F. Kennedy School for Government at Harvard University recently released a study that found that even momentary sadness causes people to increase spending.
  • Need: Persuading Prospects Based On Their Deep Values
    "Nothing has more strength than dire necessity." ~ Euripides
  • Negating Words: But
    I really like you, but. . .
  • Obstacles Into Opportunities
    "It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities." --Eric Hoffer
  • Old Fashioned Sales: Features and Benefits
    If you've ever cooked noodles you know that you can determine if they are done by throwing the noodle against the wall to see if it sticks. If it does, then it's done. When I think of 'features and benefits', I think of someone throwing a whole pot of noodles against the wall to see what sticks.
  • On Being Receptive To Our Prospect's Energy
    From time-to-time I like to bring up some concepts that might be considered a little woo woo. I ask your indulgence with this and suggest that if it works, even woo woo has value.
  • On Gratitude
    "It is necessary, then, to cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude." -Wallace D. Wattles, The Science of Getting Rich or Financial Success Through Creative Thought
  • On the Contrary: How To Deal With a Polarity Responder
    All of us have known a polarity responder at one time or another. A polarity responder, regardless of the situation, will respond in opposition to anything you say. 'It's a beautiful day.'
  • Open Your Ears
    "It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
  • Organizing For Persuasion
    "Three Rules of Work: Out of clutter find simplicity; From discord find harmony; In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity." -Albert Einstein
  • Overcoming The Collective Negativity
    "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." --Seneca, Roman philosopher, mid-1st century AD
  • Paper Seeds: An Exercise in Sprouting and Manifesting
    I lived on my grandpa's farm as a kid and he taught me some very important life lessons including the Biblical verse: As you sow, so shall you reap.
  • Paying Attention With Patience
    When I was a kid I was raised on a farm. I used to help my grandpa plant fruit trees. Some of them were hybrids - really cute little trees.
  • Peeve Number One: The Victim Mentality
    "Thou shalt not be a victim. Thou shalt not be a perpetrator. Above all, thou shalt not be a bystander." --Holocaust Museum, Washington, DC
  • Persuade With The Temporal Loop Pattern
    Language patterns are some of the most powerful strategies in persuasion. And one of my favorites is the "Temporal Pattern Loop".
  • Persuading Elegantly
    "Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple, or more direct than does Nature, because in her inventions, nothing is lacking and nothing is superfluous." --Leonardo da Vinci
  • Persuading from The Zone
    We've all heard of athletes who say they were really in 'the zone'. The zone is that perfect point where whatever we're doing is accomplished with ease and elegance whether it be playing an instrument, driving down the perfect road at the perfect speed on the perfect motorcycle, or selling to one prospect after another.
  • persuading personally
    In business, we have rules of decorum, obviously, but I am of the opinion that some rules were meant to be bent. Not broken entirely, but molded and bent to suit your persuasive needs.
  • Persuading Through Embedded Suggestions
    "Persuasion is often more effectual than force." -Aesop
  • Persuading With The Awareness Pattern
    "The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself." -Henry Miller
  • Persuading with The Competitive Edge
    The gym I attend is by no means a meat market. There are few mirrors, and the clientle appears to be there to maintain and/or work on their health, not to see and be seen. And I noticed something amazing at the gym that I want to share with you.
  • Persuading With The Thirty Six Chinese Stratagem
    "So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will win a hundred times in a hundred battles. If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you win one and lose the next. If you do not know yourself or your enemy, you will always lose." -Ancient Chinese Proverb
  • Persuasion And The Media
    "The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." -Friedrich Nietzsche
  • Persuasion Metaphors From Around The World
    While the concept of 'energy' may seem new-agey, I personally find it integral to the understanding of self, which is the first step in understanding persuasion.
  • Persuasion Through Competition
    Lately I've been really dedicated to working out and recently I noticed something interesting at the gym. My gym is most definitely not a meat market. A very large percentage of the patrons are there because they care about their health and not for dating purposes or to see and be seen.
  • Persuasion Without Thought
    I recently saw a humorous bumper sticker that read, "Don't believe everything you think." I liked it because it made me ponder thought and how at times, I find thinking to be somewhat overrated.
  • Persuasive Blaming: Use With Caution
    In previous articles I've written about using superstition and people's beliefs as a means to persuade. The term 'everything happens for a reason' is one of these concepts; 'there are no accidents' is another. If you've read these articles, you're already familiar with the power that they can hold in persuasion.
  • Persuasive Oration: Watching What You Say
    Language, like persuasion, is an art. It's an art that can be mangled, yes. (Just look at poor Miss Teen North Carolina for a classic language malfunction.) And as with any art, (unless you're a prodigy as Mozart was with music, as H.P. Lovecraft was with poetry, as Pablo Picasso was with painting), most likely you will have to practice to be good at the art of language, and subsequently the art of persuasion.
  • Persuasive Storytelling
    'Facts and figures are forgotten. Stories are retold.' -Jeffrey Gitomer
  • Persuasive Words: Framing Islamophobia
    Phobias and isms... they come in all shapes and sizes. There's racism, sexism, classism, sizeism, anti-Semitism, anti-intellectualism... All of these represent a belief of superiority of one race, gender, class, size, or religion over another or a hatred of one against another.
  • Pitch Your Pitch, Ditch Your Script
    "The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself." - Peter F. Drucker
  • Practical Persuasion: Ways We Learn
    One of my newer students asked me on a recent call, "Kenrick, how are you able to keep track of all of the different language patterns and persuasion techniques that you know and use? I mean, each time we're on one of these coaching calls, it seems like you're not only using new techniques, but combining two or three or more techniques at once. Sometimes I can't even remember the first step. How can I remember to remember?'
  • Rapid Rapport With Storytelling
    Here's the scenario: you are face to face with a new prospect and they've heard a little bit about you or your reputation and the kind of person you are to work with, but maybe they still have a few questions, a few defenses up. It's your job to overcome these before they can trust you with their business.
  • Rapport though Vibration
    "We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world." ~Buddha

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