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Persuading With the Unconscious Mind

"Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding." ~ Ambrose Bierce

When it comes to persuading the affluent, or anyone for that matter, we've got to dig deeper... into uncharted waters... where most business people are afraid to go. We've got to appeal to the unconscious mind, using emotions in our selling.

Our conscious mind can only hold seven (plus or minus two) bits of information at a time. Seven bits of information. . . that's not a whole lot, is it?

There are so many things to think about. . .what we see, what we hear, what we feel, what we need to remember, what we are trying to forget. . . All of these things take up space somewhere. . . but we're only able to consciously think about seven of them at a time.

So while we're thinking of our seven little things, we've got a gigantic internal hard drive to hold the things we need to be able to access when necessary.

So what happens to the information around us that is available to us at any moment in time, but that we don't pay attention to. Where's it going? Well, it goes into our other-than-conscious. It's not that it isn't perceived--it is often being perceived--it's just that we're not consciously aware of it.

I'm a huge fan of the unconscious. Logic and rationality are hugely overrated in my book. Not that there's no use for them, but the emphasis has overshadowed the power of our unconscious. And really, we've prioritized them incorrectly. Our unconscious isa gigantic iceberg and our conscious minds are just the tip.

How do we take the conscious mind of another individual, the tip of their iceberg, and set it aside so it doesn't object to us as we go directly and access the real boss, the unconscious mind?

Knowing that this is the case, we need to realize it's true that people are actually persuaded based on emotional things that are going on with them, not logical things. Logic helps, but people make the decision emotionally and they back it up logically.

Our job as persuaders is to give them a little logic at the end so that our prospects feel good about the decision they've made emotionally. This is easy if we appeal directly to their unconscious.

Side stepping logical thought and eliciting the criteria of our prospects and clients gets to the emotional core of what is important to them.

If 'freedom' is our prospect's highest value and we tap into that, this immediately stirs up a lot of emotion.

So the way you interact with that emotion of humiliation or frustration or rage (in the 'away from' person) or the liberation and feeling of dominion (in the 'towards' personality) and make your product or service the antidote (away) or access to more of (towards), then you will have succeeded in navigating the uncharted, murky (emotional) landscape where most business transactions are afraid to go.

Article Source: http://www.dummiesguideto.com

Kenrick Cleveland teaches techniques to earn the business of affluent prospects using persuasion. He runs public and private seminars and offers home study courses and coaching programs in persuasion techniques.

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