Get Others to Do What You Want

In my sales psychology training practice many of my clients are asking essentially the same question, "How do I get others to do what I want them to do?" It is helpful to believe that people always decide in favor of their perceived highest emotional benefit.

So, if someone is not acting as per your request, simply turn up their perception of the emotional benefit.

Lets take a look at this deeper.

Perceived
Emotional
Benefit

Our ability to perceive is quite limited. We have only eyes, ears, and kinesthetic receptors to process information around us and since there is so much information hitting us all the time we delete, over generalize, and bias our perceptions. Perception therefore is a matter of overcoming deletion by increasing attention, utilizing generalization by introducing new labels and frames, and utilizing bias such as recency and frequency.

Overcome Deletions: Let me ask you this, what is the temperature of the chair that you are sitting on right now? With all the information around you, you decided that the temperature of the chair was not important - until I asked you the question... you had deleted the chair temperature from your awareness and how did I bring it back to your awareness? (What is the temp now?) I simply ask questions.

Overcome Generalizations and Labels: We simply can not walk around focused on all the painful possibilities in life. Nor can we function well if we are in a constant state of euphoria. So we conveniently use labels and generalizations to disassociate ourselves from peak pain or pleasure. Help a client to associate into emotional context of your offering by asking them impactful questions that help your prospect to see, hear, and feel the experience through their own senses.

Utilizing Bias: Our brains are quite susceptible to bias. People tend to place more weight upon the first, last, and most frequent data. So when you organize your communication put your important points first, last, and use repetition.

Numbers do not sell, features do not sell, and benefits do not sell... none of these cause anyone to do anything. Emotion causes action. It is useful therefor to explore the emotional content associated with the number, option, or benefit at hand.

Benefit is measure of two components; positive and negative measured in balance. It is important therefor that our awareness is increased not only to the positive benefits of acting but to the negative benefits of not acting. One of the powerful understandings I gained through training in the White House is that negative emotions have a 70/30 weighted average over positive emotions. Remember to use negative emotion as well as positive to be more effective.

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Larry Farris is a White House trained sales and persuasion coach.