The Dynamics of Influence

In today’s lesson we are going to talk about influence and persuasion and specifically how you can become more persuasive and attractive with your communication, so that you can help and lead other people, to the desired solutions that are ultimately best for them. Because no matter how good a communicator you are, have you ever wondered why at times people won’t do what you want them to do? Why do people disagree with you? Why don’t people conspire to your vision?

If you are an entrepreneur or a leader and personally I think we are all leaders, we lead ourselves, we lead our community and we lead within our families, but as leaders why don’t people collaborate to our way of thinking, or our visions? If we are in sales, hey aren’t we all are in sales? Today in the 21st century, we are constantly selling our ideas our beliefs and our values! However, regardless of our job, why at times do our customers not buy our product and services? Why do they say no, and how do we get them to say yes more often?

Well obviously some of this will come down to differences of opinion, beliefs and goals. My question for you is this, Are there people out there today, those unique individuals that have this magnetic ability to connect with people with such a way where they can really win over the hearts, minds and imagination of others and get them to do what they want them to do and take action? Are there people out there that get people to do this yes or no?  Absolutely! and that is exactly what this article is about.  How you can do this for yourself, any time, any place, anywhere, because influence like any other quality is a learnable skill.

As I mentioned earlier we have been talking about the leadership framework, which is really a model for change and achievement and how to accelerate this process. The model illustrates that when you and I take control of and make slight changes within our psychology our time and our ability to communicate with other people we can see exponential increases in productivity and results. Also, If we are not achieving, many times it can be traced back to deficiencies within one or all of these three variables and I have to tell you this really hit home for me several years back. Because back in the day I had not developed this framework yet, I did not have this model so I did not have this holistic and strategic way of evaluating and running my business and my personal life and as an result I payed a price. I suffered in certain areas and it was really frustrating for me because I love helping people and as I was going around the country helping break through and achieve their goals, I was helping them achieve but there were areas of my life that were not working at the level that I knew they could be and should be.  However, the gift that came out of that problem was that it helped me to step back and reevaluate everything that I had learned over the course of my career in 15 years, as a professional speaker, seminar leader, cooperate trainer, consultant and coach and  go deeper into the sciences of change and achievement. Everything from my background in neuro-linguistics, to studying neuroscience, to psychology, leadership, influence, negotiation and that’s when I had the break through. I realized that lasting achievement and success is not one dimensional, it is multi-faceted. What I mean by that, is that there are very specific components that drive lasting change and success.

There is a psychological component that drives change and success, based on how you think, on how you evaluate. There is an organizational component that drives success based on how you live and how you invest your time. How you are able to avoid distractions and interruptions so you are more productive. Finally, there is a strategic component based on how you behave, how you interact, how you communicate and these three are always working moment by moment to influence your productivity, your success and happiness.

Ponder this for a moment?  How important is communication to our lively hood and our lifestyle today in the 21st century?  We live in a world today where technology makes it very easy for us to communicate with people around the world any time, any place, anywhere. Think of greatest leaders that ever lived?  Yes they were all men and women of stature, but one of the reasons was because they were brilliant communicators. They could convey their thoughts and and ideas in such a way with other people and get people to act on those ideas. They could move the masses! They could get people to communicate and conspire to their vision, their way of thinking! The people that do this today, they run society! They run the institutions, the organizations, the communities, and the companies. They are the center of influence!

What advantage would it gives you in your business and in your personal life, if you could profoundly expand your ability to impact and influence people any time, any place anywhere. To me in the 21st century that is the ultimate advantage! So how do we do this?  Well first we have to understand a little about what makes up our communication.  Most people think when we are communicating with them it is just language, it is just dialogue, but it is much more than that. Especially today with the explosion of social media and internet now, you have a lot of people that are communicating, exchanging information, but very few are really connecting with people in such a way where they win over the hearts, minds and imagination of others and get them to take action.   So how do we do this?  We have to understand the model of communication and that is what I would like to discuss right now.

So this is the communication model and as you can clearly see it is important because it breaks up our communication into three parts. What this model really shows us is that the weight and the meaning of the message that we convey to others and what we are receiving is not equally balanced at all. And I can tell you most psychologists and sociologists agree with these percentages here, so there is a couple of rules that you want to keep in mind when you are communicating or when you are interacting with other people.

Rule number one is communication is redundant. What that really means is that you cannot, not communicate! You are always sending and receiving messages to and from other people. The real message is this, what are the messages that you are sending and how do you go about sending them to other people?  I think it was the great writer Emerson who said “who you are shouts so loudly at me I don’t even hear what you are saying.”   So that’s the first rule.

The second rule when it comes to how you react to other people is this, is that your communication is the responses and reactions that you get from other people. That’s kind of a big pill to swallow but here is what it means. Many times when you interact with people for the first time, they act like a chameleon. They reflect back to you what you put out to them.  So if you don’t like their responses or their reactions that you are getting in certain situations, you either have to change what you are communicating or you change how you go about communicating your ideas and information.   This model will clearly show us how to do that to effectively to influence others.

Let’s look at this 55%, 38% and 7% is communication.   So if we look right here 55% of the message that we send and other people receive the meaning of the message is control by this. So if you want to take a shot at it what do you think is controlling 55% of the message that you are sending and they are receiving? Take a guess, what do you think it is? Well if you guessed body language, if you choose body language you are spot on.  Body language or Posture is 55% of the message of the meaning you are sending and they are receiving. Another word for this is physiology. Physiology is how you move, breathe and gesture.   So think about that for a moment 55% of your communication of the meaning of what your conveying to others has nothing to do with what you are actually saying! Most people have no clue as to how to strategically position themselves with strangers, more about that in a moment.

So body language is critical and this is all based on something we call congruent communication, which is so critical, congruent communication is when you voice, your body and your words all match up. I learned this years ago, because I learned that when two people meet, if there is rapport, if there is that enhanced meaning of trust and responsiveness between two people, that if the person likes you and they trust you, the individual that is more congruent in their communication, they will influence the other person every single time.

Let’s move on to 38%.  If you were take a shot at it what do you think carries 38%?  55% is body language or physiology, 38% is what, what do you think it is?  Well if you guessed tonality, you my friend are spot on. That’s 38%, tonality or tonal emphasis. What I have learned is just by changing the tonality or the tonal emphasis it changes the meaning of the message, or the words themselves.  If I say to you right now, “I told you, you should not have done that.” That means one thing right. But if I say, “I told you, you should not have done that!” It means something else. If I said, “I told you, you should not have done that!” That means something entirely different. So just by changing the tonality and tonal emphasis it could be very, very magnetic and powerful based on how you communicate with people.

I really believe that one of the indispensable qualities of exceptional leaders, people that we revere is that they have a certain type of charisma; they have a certain level of just appeal, or likeability or charm. Some would argue that can’t be taught, some people were born with it, some people have it, and some people don’t. That is garbage, you want to know what charisma is when you are communicating, please remember this, it is passion in action. Charisma is passion in action.  Think about it, when you meet somebody that is very passionate about what they are doing or what they do, yes you will see it, but if they are expressing it, if they are talking about it, you hear it in their voice don’t you? You hear that passion in their voice! So think about this for a moment, how can you become more persuasive and attractive with your tonality?  What is something in your life right now, that you are completely passionate about? Whether it is your children, a hobby, I mean what’s something that you absolutely dive into?  Something that you love to do, Imagine yourself communicating that to your best friend? Does your tonality shift yes, or no? There is no question about it does. What are the things that we can do with our tonality to become more persuasive and attractive in certain settings? What if you were able to shift your speed?  Do you notice when you talk a little bit faster, does that build excitement and appeal, yes or no? So speed is one thing that you can do with your tonality. What if you were to lower your voice a little bit and speak like you are letting somebody in on a secret, right at that point that you are making that key proposal, or you are about to present your offer and you lower your voice and say, “you know we think this is really important, what if we were able to do this, do you think that this might help?” If you lower your voice in a whisper does that build desire? Yes or no? I think it does! What about pausing, what if you suddenly pause in key moments that build interest, does that create a tension and positive tension, yes or no? Absolutely, so tonality is critical.

Notice what you do with your tonality when you are passionate, when you are excited about something.  What do you think is 7% the smallest portion of communication of the message we are sending and they are receiving? 7% is obviously you might have thought, is words! It is words and language.   So let’s think about this, 93% of our communication is non linguistic!  First of all I want to emphasize this, that I am in no way shape or form downplaying language or words, because words have power.  Later on, we will discuss covert persuasion patterns, how you can sincerely and subtly use your language with volition and intention to literally control the meaning to reframe things, so the person changes how the feel about you, how they feel about the offer, your  products and your services etc.  I mean all you have to do is read Emerson, Shakespeare or Throuogh and you realize that words have power.   The problem however is in a face to face setting when you are  communicating with other people, the words alone without body language and words without tonal emphasis or tonality it renders the person most of their message impotent. so knowing what we know now, how do we bring all of this together in such a way, so that we may become better influencers?   So that we can be more persuasive and attractive with our communication and understanding that the 55% is body language, 38% is tonality and 7% is words. How do we bring all of this together so that we make a good first impression? Because have you ever met somebody and you did not really know them well, but you liked them, you trusted them, you felt as if you have their best intention at mind, they kind of rub you the right way, you have a good intuition of them, we have all had those experiences before right? Would it be useful if you could in any contacts, position yourself as the most charismatic, likeable, trust worthy and competent person in that room in any context whether it gives you an edge, absolutely? So how do we do that, well first and foremost our first impression is important yes or no. Well first and foremost when we meet somebody for the first time what happens, they stamp an impression of you in their mind,  they get a feeling about you and then within the next minute or two they start looking for a reason to reinforce that feeling, so knowing what we know if body language controls the meaning of the majority of the message, how do we really position ourselves in an intelligent strategic way for the first time?  Much of this comes down to common sense and being a likeable person.

I was thinking about this the other day, but I was thinking when you meet somebody for the first time in certain settings, there are two types of people out there in the world, there is appreciators and there is depreciators. Appreciators are just that, they appreciate you, they appreciate the environment, they appreciate life, they appreciate this kind of conversation, they are usually joyful, they are cheerful, they are optimistic, and they usually have big goals, dreams and aspirations. They talk about what they want, what they’ve got and what they are grateful for.  Even if there is a problem in their life they look at those problems as if they are temporary and they build you up. They add value to you and their conversation, they are interested in you, they are interested in life, they really elevate the energy of everybody in the room around them and you just want to be around them and we have all met people like that, right?

And then there is just the opposite, there is the depreciators in life, and depreciators devalue everything. Everything to them is a problem and a crisis, the world is conspiring against them, they constantly talk about what they can do, can’t have, can’t make happen, can’t afford, they talk about their problems all day long, they wonder why they never go away, life is conspiring against them, they are unlucky, and everything is a crisis. And you almost feel sorry for these people but truthly you just want to get the heck away from them.  And the question I have for you is, which are you?

Now personally I believe you are an appreciator of life. You have goals dreams and desires, you want to be a better communicator, you want to be the best leader that you can be in any situation.

My point is this, how do others perceive you in certain contexts that haven’t met you yet, who don’t really know you and would it be useful for you if once again you could position yourself as the most likeable trustworthy, charismatic competive person in that room, and would that give you an edge as a leader yes or no? I think it would so how do we do this?

This is the model or formula for influence.  This Formula is important to us, because I guarantee you if you are not selling enough of your product and services, if people are not collaborating to your way of thinking, or agreeing with you I guarantee you, there is a break down in one or all of these three steps.
So let’s move into this step by step, you are really going to enjoy this:

Step one: the first step in influencing another person is to create rapport, rapport is the gate way to effective communication, with rapport you can do incredible things with another person, without it, you can hardly do anything. Rapport is defined as an enhanced feeling of trust and responsiveness between two people. It is based on the fact that when people feel that they have something in common with another person they feel comfortable around them, it creates comfort, it creates likeability, it creates trust. Think about it in your own life, think about your best friend, or think of something that you are most comfortable with, your best friend, your husband, your wife, your boyfriend or girlfriend?  One of the reasons you feel comfortable around them is because you have things in common with them.  Therefore, rapport really gets ignited by a feeling of commonality between two people.  The obvious question is how do we create it with complete strangers, how do I create it with somebody that I don’t know?  The first think that you need to understand with rapport is this, your state of mind, your intention and your emotions, you’re dominant driving emotions, in other words how you feel in the moment, has more than an effect on rapport than you might be aware of.  You need to understand something called mirror neurons.

In your brain right now you have 100 billion neurons, and these are nerve cells and whenever you think a thought, you make a connection between these nerve cells and then it secretes chemicals throughout your brain and body, and then you start to feel a certain way.   What we know is within our brain we also have mirror neurons, and these mirror neurons do just that, they have mirroring capabilities based on what is going on inside someone else’s mind while they are communicating with you. So is you have an intention to serve, to help, to make a difference, to really connect with that other person, to give and to add value, and you have an intense feeling while you are communicating with them, what it will do is it will activate these mirror neurons inside somebody else, for them to get a good intuition about you. They will get a good feeling about you and they won’t even know why.

They used to say this about spiritual leaders like Gandhi and Mother Teresa or Jesus Christ, they would say just their presence alone would elevate the energy of everyone else in the room and the reason was yes they were obvious spiritual leaders, but it was because of this principle of how mirror neurons work. Some people would argue that it was because they had such a widespread infamous reputation.  Historically speaking though they were people at that time that did not know of Mother Theresa or Gandhi or even Christ at the time but something about their presence would elevate the energy of everyone else around them.   Because all they had inside them was love. Remember this phrase, “you can’t give away what you don’t have inside you, but what you do have inside you, you are always giving away.”   So, if your intention is to serve and add value and really make a difference in this person’s life, and you are genuinely and sincerely interested in them, they will pick it up, it will trigger their mirror neurons and they will feel the exact same way about you.

The second thing about rapport is that how do we create it?  Well what most people would do when they are attempting to creating rapport is first they would ask question, which makes sense because questions can be powerful, questions are really a tool that we use to find something in common with somebody else.   For example  if you and I were talking, and I say, “hey where are you from, and you say hey I am from Arizona, no kidding you’re from Arizona, which city did you grow up in, Tempe? I am from Tempe. What school did you go to? What University? You went to Arizona State? I went to Arizona State.” And now there is this energy or feeling between us, so now I am in rapport, there is this magnetic energy because we have something in common.

The key that you need to understand about rapport is this, it can be gained or loss moment by moment. Rapport is an enhanced feeling of trust and responsiveness between two people. So it can be gained or lost moment by moment, and the challenge with questions is, yes they are powerful and yes they work, but have you ever had the experience where you are trying to find something in common with another person and maybe because you are just so different, or you are not asking the right questions or you just don’t have enough time, you have nothing in common with that person. A Common example of this is what most people would do when they meet someone for the first time is ask the basic questions like hey, “what’s your name? Where are you from? and what do you do for a living?”  And if you do that though, what happens is the person says, “yeah my name is Cleo, I am from Prison and I actually rob people for a living!”   What are you going to say? “Hey me too!  where did you do time?”  No, obviously this approach of asking questions will not always work.   But there is something that will always work and it is something that you are probably familiar with.  It’s powerful because it will allow you to gain comfort and rapport with somebody outside their conscious awareness, and we call it matching and mirroring.  Now whether you are familiar with matching or mirroring or not, the good news is that you are already skilled at matching and mirroring, because you already do this when you are in rapport with somebody.  Matching and mirroring is based on the fact that we tend to like people that are like us and like how we want to be, we tend to feel more connected and comfortable with people that communicate with us in our style, so if you talk real fast like that more than likely you are going to get along with people talk a little bit faster. You will connect with them much easier.

If you talk with people who talk slow like this,  then you will tend to get along with people that talk slower like that. Are you with me on that? The more you become like the person, the more that person will like you.  I mean think about it, we tend to feel more comfortable around people that communicate in our style.  So if we want to serve and lead other people, we have to initially enter their world and the only way we are really going to do that, is to develop a connection with them that helps them to feel connected us. So matching and mirroring will help us to do that. I like to call it more echoing, than anything else, because here is the thing, if you mimic somebody, if they go like that, and we go like this, they are going to pick up on it right. But if you subtlety and slowly just mirror or echo certain aspects of how they communicate with you, they will feel connected to you.  So knowing what we know about remember the model of communication, what is it that carries most of the weight of the meaning of the message that we send and others receive?  It’s body language!   You can develop a deep level of rapport with somebody, and not have to say a word, and I know you have seen this before. Have you ever seen two people, let’s say at a parade, a husband and a wife and they are deeply connected with one another, they are in a deep conversation and you almost see a synchronized dance going on back and forth; that’s because they are in rapport. This is a key to remember: all rapport is done by pacing and leading, rapport is done by pacing and leading. What that means is that when you are really connected with somebody and you are in rapport, you can start to lead them; you can suddenly start to notice that when you move in, they will start to move in, and then if you kind of move back they will start to move back. As you do that, now you know you are connected to them and you have rapport.

So what are some things that you can subtlety match, mirror or echo in other people. Let’s start with the body. You can mirror gestures and postures, you can mirror facial expression. I mean you can get really precise with this, and even mirror breathing. If you mirror breathe rate or breathing, people will feel very connected to you. You can use even mirror blink rate. What are some things that you would match and mirror with other people; what about voice? Tonality, voice inflection is another thing that you could mirror; what about the speed, the rate of speech, or the volume?

Say you meet somebody and they have a really rich, profuse kind of vocabulary, they use words like prodigious or prolific or prodigy. If you use those words at the right time, when you are communicating with that person, it will light them up, because those words appeal to their personality. Does that make sense? So, always remember, the most popular way to gain rapport with somebody is through matching and mirroring.

Let’s go on to step number two, after you have this connection, a deep level of rapport, what do we want to do next?

Step number two: on our formula chart is about creating interest. Creating interest is based on the fact that you want to think about what interests the person you are talking to. In other words, what are this person’s problems, needs, desires and wants? What are they looking to accomplish? Socrates said that everything, today, that people do is teleological in nature.  Basically that means that everything we do is aimed towards some sort of improvement, solving a problem, or achieving a goal. In fact, influence is a process where you are uncovering or discovering a person highest valued their needs wants and emotions, and then linking those emotions to your products, your  services and to your unique solutions in a way that really gets people to make a decision and take action for their reasons. Because, think about it, in real life do people do things for their reasons or our reasons? It is always for their reason. Everyone listens to their favorite radio station.  WIIFM!  People ask what’s in it for me, what’s in it for me? If you can realize what those reasons are, what’s driving them, what their problems are, what their concerns are, what their needs are, what their deep, deep desires are, that is going to give you incredible leverage in the conversation. And that ties into what I want to say right now: there are a couple of principles that you want to remember when you are communicating with other people.

Principle number one is: that the person that can go from abstract to specifics in their communication will have more influence in the conversation. This means that the more you can know about the reason, the purpose, the intention, or the motive as to why somebody is doing something or wants something, the easier it is to influence that person. And the more you can go from that reason to the specific desired result or the process of how they are going to obtain that result. The more power you are going to have in that conversation.

Principle number two is this: the person that asks questions controls the conversation. Now here is what we know: we know that most of the time when it comes to influence there is a direct relationship between your question proficiency and your ability to create results with other people. I mean think about it, the greatest leaders of all time didn’t necessarily tell us much as they asked us. Did Jesus Christ ask a lot of good questions? Did Martin Luther King Jr. ask a question about a dream? Did John F Kennedy ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country? So the greatest leaders know how to strategically use questions with volition and intention. Principle number three is this: questions control what people focus on. Questions control what people focus on, and what they focus on as they feel an experience. Does how we feel affect our behaviour? Does it affect our ability to make decisions? Does it affect our overall attitude? Does it affect our motivation and our desires, yes or no? Absolutely. Feelings drive behavior. Look at it like this, emotions distort evaluations, the more emotions that you can activate and ramp up in another person, the more likely they are to do what you want them to do; the more of an impact and influence you are going to have on them. As people, we are all 100% emotional, we make decisions emotionally and then we justify them logically. Here is my question for you: are there emotions that we experience throughout our day that are more intense in our minds and body, yes or no? Absolutely.  What do you think is the most intense human emotion? I have heard love and hate, but it is actually fear and desire, fear and desire. Let’s do an experiment here, tell me what emotions are more intense in your minds and in your body. When it comes to creating interest, pleasure in the future or the anticipation of a goal that is in the future, or immediate fear, pain and discomfort that you are feeling right now, which one has more intensity? Usually most people would say it is fear, pain and discomfort; that people are more likely able to avoid pain than they are getting pleasure. They are 2 ½ times more likely to avoid losses or failure than they are to achieve goals or get pleasure. So knowing that can be very powerful, in our ability to get interest and to get interest in full engagement and full attention.   What do I mean? Well, if you ask somebody a question about a problem, fear, or worry you know they have, you make an assumption based on a fear problem or worry on a problem they have, would that get their interest, yes or no? Absolutely, and people always say how do I actually do that? How do I go about structuring that? The way you would have to do it is to first say “hey, can I ask you a really quick question;” this is all assuming that you have a high level of rapport. So they have that enhanced feeling of responsiveness between you. Then you might want to say something like, hey can I ask you a real quick question, they said yes sure. When you ask them that they are basically saying yes you can ask me that question.

you, I don’t know if you can relate to this or I am not sure if this makes sense.” Now why would you want to say that? Because whenever you say these kinds of phrases, I call them linguistic softeners, it creates a tone in the conversation that you are genuine and sincere. Does that make sense? People don’t like to be manipulated; they don’t like to be sold. They don’t want to be jostled into position, they want to feel relaxed. If you make this kind of statement it creates a sincere tone or atmosphere, and then you say, “hey I don’t know if this is relevant to you, and I don’t know if you can relate,” that’s a hypnotic phrase in and of itself. Because if I say to you “don’t think of the color blue, I don’t think you should take the color blue, where did your mind go?” It is called a negation and what it means is that you can’t think about what you don’t want to think about without  first having to think about. So when I say something like this, I would just say “I don’t know if this is relevant to you. But you know, in talking with other people, they told me some of their biggest problem, fears, and worries, are this, this and this. Can you relate to that?” Or another way you could structure it is this, you could say something like: “I don’t know if this would relate to you or not, but you know I was having a conversation with this guy who had so much talent, have you ever really wondered why people can have so much talent, skill, capability, but they play small?” Now what did I just do?  by using the phrase “have you ever wondered why,” it creates a context. Have you ever wondered why some people are better than others? Have you ever wondered why some people get excited? Have you ever wondered why some people are more positive, whenever you say that it creates curiosity in the other person and now you have a topic you can move into, so creating interest is absolutely key. So you always want to ask yourself, what is this person’s level of engagement? Do I really have their full attention? Are they riveted? Do I have their interest? Do I know enough about them?

Step number three: is creating solutions. Creating solutions is based on the fact that people tend to buy into what they help create. What that really means is the more a person is an active participant in a conversation with you rather than a passive recipient, the more likely they are to take action, the more likely they will do what you want them to do. To do that, what we really have to do, is we have to ask the right questions at the right time. So there is a series of questions that I want to give right now, called a questioning methodology, that you kind of move somebody through. Remember there is a direct relationship between our question proficiency and our ability for people to agree with us. To do this, walk them through this questioning process. This will give you some guidelines for some steps you can follow so you can be more persuasive and attractive with your language, so your questions really influence other people so they do what you want them to do, but for their reasons. This gets other people actively involved, they are active participants. Understand that people always buy into what they help create.

So let’s dive into this, I think you are going to find it a lot of fun. Step number one is this: when it comes to creating solutions, you want to diagnose and explore the situation.  You want to find out what’s more important to them, why and how it’s important to them, what it would give them, what they are looking for most in that situation. Remember what we talked about earlier, the more we can know, the reasons, the motive, the drive, the desire as to why somebody is doing something, the easier is it for us to make solutions and the more you can influence them.

Step number two is this: after we diagnose and explore, we want to clarify, magnify and quantify the solutions. This will allow us to make something that might be a little bit of a solution, that might be somewhat intangible or lack substance, this gives it substance, this gives it punch, this gives it more meaning. To do this we would ask something like this, “what would this mean financially” or “what would this mean specifically,” or “what would this do for you,” or “what would this give you?” If he said it would give me this? It would mean this: it would make a difference in my career, and then you would say, “well Matt how do we go about doing that?” Or “what specifically would have to happen for you to feel you would achieve that.” “Well you know John, I would have to feel this, this and this!” and that leads us into step number three. Step number three is: where we gain agreement, and the way you settle into that is that you use this phrase, “in your opinion do you feel…” See, when you ask somebody how they feel about their opinion, most of the time people find it very difficult to disagree with their own opinion. It is a very subtle, sincere way of getting people to be in line with you. You say, “do you feel in your opinion” or “In your opinion, do you feel…?” Or you would say something like “have you considered what this would do?” “Have you considered what this would mean?” Well no I haven’t.  “Well, Matt what do you think would have to happen for you to get this.” Well I don’t know, what do you think?   “Well can I try a few ideas on you?” “And can I make a few suggestions?” And the fourth and final step.. Is to safely move forward and wrap up. And that’s very easy and this is where you use phrases such as, imagine, just suppose, or what if. When you say imagine, what do you think people start doing in their mind? They start imagining. If you say, “Imagine for a moment,” “you know this is really important, what if there is a way that we could do this,” or “just suppose,” or “if you were to?” “I am not saying you are going to, but if you were to?” You have to understand the mind does not know the difference between something that we vividly imagine with feeling and something that we actually experience. So if you say “you know what, I don’t know if you can do this…,” it is very much like saying.. “hypothetically speaking” and the mind goes in that direction.
Always remember that whatever people focus on, they feel and experience.  And when they feel it, it distorts evaluations. It’s hypnotic. it makes people much more suggestible. So then you say this one phrase, you would say: “you know how you said this, this and this was important, what if we were able to do this?” or “if you were able to do this, what would that give you?” “If I could show you how I can do this, would you maybe give it a try?” Or “if I could show you how we could do this, would you want to do it?” “Would it make sense to you, would it help you, would that be ok?” Notice my posture here, notice my body language, right at the point where I am ready to ask them to do it. Remember what we talked about, by opening body language, people open up their mind. Notice my feet are facing forward.  So remember influence, it is a process. It’s a two way process of you uncovering and discovering a person’s highest value needs, wants and emotions, and then linking that to yourself, your products, your services, your solutions in a certain way to get them to take action now for their reasons.

Follow this methodology, try it on for size, have fun with these tools, these questions, and I think you will be astonished what happens when you are working with other people.