Persuasion University

This is Bulletproof Persuasion.  This book represents the culmination of over two decades of research into the communication skills of genuinely successful people.  In this course, I will teach you unusual, but potent techniques to get what you want every day and with anyone.  There are two ways to use the systems revealed in this book.  You could just take all the principles of subconscious communication disclosed here and use them to manipulate people. 

 Many of the techniques I’m going to show you do come directly from my experiences as a hypnotist.  They are very powerful, and I do not doubt all that they can be used by negatively motivated individuals.  However, if you do decide to take this route, be warned, your success will most likely be short-lived.  I believe you will get permanently more impressive results if you always go for the win/win situation with everyone encounter.  As Zig Ziglar says, you can get what you want if you can just help enough other people get what they want.

Bulletproof Persuasion is not about coercion or manipulation. It is about winning friends and supporters. While having the skills and confidence to ensure that your views, opinions, and desires are heard and respected. You don't have to become a dominant leader of men but the very learning of this knowledge also means you are protected against it being used against you. Not everyone you meet has good intentions, some of the people you currently call a friend will reveal their true intent over time. You are nobody's doormat and the information in this book will give you the tools to ensure that is never the case.

Once you understand why people react the way they do, you will start to see life on a whole new level. Opportunities and possibilities will open up before your very eyes and you will have the skills to accelerate your achievements quicker than you ever imagined.

The reason human beings are the dominant animal on this planet is nothing to do with their strength, speed or ability to fight.  A simple contest between the world’s strongest man and a bear would quickly demonstrate that point.  Humankind’s ability to communicate is the secret to our success.  I will go as far as to say your achieved level of success is in direct correlation to your ability to communicate.  People who have an advanced knowledge of all our subtle standards of communication have a vast advantage in all areas of their life.

 I first became fascinated by these techniques for a purely selfish reason.  Over twenty years ago now, I was working as a commercial radio broadcaster.  Now, this is a job that people assume is always highly paid.  I wasn’t well paid.  It would frustrate me when people expected to see me driving around in a Bentley, pulling up to my mansion in the countryside.  It just wasn’t like that.  I was young.  I was new to the business.  I was living in a tiny, damp, one-bedroomed flat.  I drove a rusting Mini.  My credit card was getting bigger and bigger. In fact, it was dangerously out of control.

Despite my situation, I was aware that there are many people in the broadcasting industry that do meet the wealthy stereotype.  I spent some time studying these people, and I concluded that there are two ways to attract money and success in this business.  Firstly, by sheer experience.  I noticed some of the older, more experienced broadcasters in the company I was working in were earning up to three, maybe four times what I was.  However, I was far too impatient to merely plod along and hope to grow rich as I grew older.  That seemed like a costly gamble to me.  

I wasn’t interested in looking for a way to earn three or four times my current salary.  I was looking for a way to make ten or twenty times my salary.  I realized that, no matter what your profession, the people that earn the most are the people that specialize in one specific area; from consultants in hospitals to star strikers in football teams.  For example, in a hospital, you have junior doctors and house doctors who are all young and new to the job.  They dabble in all areas of medicine; whether someone comes in with a broken leg or a fractured skull, they will try and help them somehow.  In the same hospital, you will have specialists or consultants, men, and women who only deal with brain injuries for example.  I think you can imagine how dramatic the pay gap is between these two types of medical employee.

So, while I was researching a way to increase my income, a search that involved a lot of people watching, research and modeling of highly successful individuals, I got bitten by something.  I became fascinated by success, mainly how available to anyone it is.  I saw the truth that it doesn't matter where you start in life; it's the choices you make that determine your success. However, the balance in this area of life is way off being equal. I estimate that eighty percent of the population is falling a long way short of their real potential. That vast majority are needlessly living lives full of scarcity because their belief structures are corrupted. So many people never achieve their full potential in life because they are stuck in victim mode. They blame their shortcomings on some event or aspect of their past.  They blame their upbringing, schooling or their parents for something they did or failed to do while they were growing up.  They are always pointing the finger of blame at someone or something while being blissfully unaware that they have three fingers pointed back at the real culprit.

Let me tell you; it is essential to know your background. Your past is significant because it brought you to where you are today.  But as far as the future is concerned, it is mostly irrelevant.  What happened in the past has no bearing on what will happen in the future.  So many people spend so much time worrying about things that have been and gone.  They forget to think about the exciting possibilities of today and tomorrow.  I’ve studied people who have come from the most privileged of backgrounds.  They have enjoyed rich and full childhoods with the best education, where money was no object.  But they then go on to destroy their lives. 

Alternatively, I’ve seen people struggle their way through childhood, living in broken homes with broken families, who then go on to become millionaires.  The fantastic thing is that luck has absolutely nothing to do with it.  I’m going to show you that you can not only get anything and everything you want but, by using these techniques in advanced subliminal communication, you can have other people go and get them for you.  You will find that when you are not only putting all your effort into your goals but using the energy of other people as well, things start to happen.  I want you to become an expert in manifesting success through communication with others. 

In Bulletproof Persuasion, you will learn how to tell when someone is lying to you.  You will learn how to ensure your opinions are heard, and you are not interrupted.  You will learn how to deal with rude people.  I will explain to you the massive power of the subconscious mind.  I will show you how you can make people feel instantly comfortable in your company.  How you can pace and structure your conversations for maximum effect.  I’ll show you how you can hide subliminal commands in your questions.  I’ll even show you how to get people to accept a compliment.  I know that sounds a little strange, but how many times have you paid someone an honest compliment for them not to take it? 

People find it difficult to accept direct compliments.  I’ll show you how to deliver them, so they have no option but to take them.  I’ll show you how to get people ready to say ‘yes.'  The key to all these skills is the subconscious mind.  So let’s do a little dissection of the human brain.  Now, for most people, when I say that, they recall some pretty terrible memory from biology class back in school.  If I’m honest, that’s exactly why I said it.  Using words that you know will trigger a certain response is called ‘activating anchors.'  I’ll show you the power of this technique a little later on in the book. 

The human brain is divided into two sections: the conscious and the subconscious.  The conscious is the smaller of the two and operates in a very predictable, almost primary way.  It’s purely and simply an evaluation computer.  It does nothing but evaluates and ask questions all day, every day. 

The conscious mind is only capable of doing one thing at a time, and that is why, as a child, you were probably challenged at some point to try and rub your belly and tap your head at the same time.  Even now it sounds like the most straightforward task on planet Earth, but for some reason, it is kinda tricky to do with any degree of consistency.  This is because the conscious mind can only process one task at a time before it passes it over to the subconscious for completion.  Because rubbing your belly and patting your head is not a learned or everyday occurrence, the task still requires some evaluation, and it cannot be done automatically by the subconscious mind. 

I know this is a little silly, but I always like to think of the conscious mind as a well-trained puppy.  Throw a ball or a stick for a dog and what will it do every time?  It will chase it and bring it back.  That’s just what dogs do.  Ask a person a question and the conscious mind will answer it every time.  That’s just what the conscious mind does.  No matter how hard you try, if someone asks you a question and you know the answer, your conscious mind will answer the question.  Even if you don’t say it aloud and just think it, it will explain it. 

Let me prove it to you with a little basic mathematics.  What is two plus two?  Just give me the answer to two plus two?  Now, you may be saying to yourself, over and over again, ‘I’m not answering that question.'  You might even if you stick your fingers in your ears and say ‘la, la, la, la, la.  I’m not answering that question!’.  Even so, I bet the answer ‘four’ is floating close by, right now.  Now, you may argue that the answer four is just a memory.  You didn’t work out the mathematics and answer the question; it was only a memory.  But even then, if the answer to two plus two is a primary memory; your conscious mind is still responsible for recalling it from memory and, therefore, you did indeed answer the question.

Let’s try another one.  What color is your hair?  Your conscious mind automatically answers every question.  In a way, this is a lifesaving process.  If your conscious mind only responded to questions when it felt like it, or when you specifically asked for that response, I’m afraid you’d be dead by now.  You see, it doesn’t just answer trivia questions.  It also solves vital issues like ‘How hot is that fire?’, ‘Should I pick up that pan?’ and ‘How fast is that car approaching?’ 

In fact, let’s expand on that example.  When you attempt to cross a busy road, you stand on the curb, and you look in both directions.  Your conscious mind evaluates the situation.  It compares all moving objects against all static objects.  It judges the speed based on information already in your memory from experience.  This is why seniors and children are at particular risk when crossing a busy road.  The mind of a child does not have sufficient information for the conscious mind to make an accurate assessment of the risk.  In the mind of an older adult, the problem is not lack of knowledge but incorrect or outdated information.  Their memories are of much slower moving traffic, and the conscious mind predicts merely the current speed based on those memories.

Once the conscious has performed its risk assessment, it then passes the task over to the subconscious.  It is possible to notice when this part of your brain is acting because things happen automatically without a decision needing to be made.  For example, if a car was approaching you very quickly and you had to run to get safely to the sidewalk. You wouldn’t spend a bit of time deciding what foot to use first as you run, would you?  It would just happen automatically.  In the same way, you don’t have to choose what speed your heart needs to beat to provide your brain with the appropriate amount of oxygen.  You don’t need to decide how wide to open your iris to make the best use of the available light.  Do you get the idea?

Now, in the same way, that your conscious brain answers all questions asked of it, your subconscious will unquestionably process all tasks sent to it.  This part of the brain is a massive solution-generating machine.  However, the subconscious cannot judge or scrutinize.  It just completes, even if the task in question is not in our best interest.  For example, overeating, smoking or drinking too much alcohol.  Our subconscious mind keeps us alive, but it can also kill us if the command we send is high enough.  Fascinatingly, most overweight people are just that because their subconscious believes that’s how they want to be.  They think like a fat person, and thus the task is completed.

Now, when I discuss this theory publically, there are usually a few objections.  The problem is the human brain is the world’s biggest, most powerful, most complex computer.  We all get one free when we’re born but unfortunately, they don’t come with a user’s manual, and the result is that most people program their computer incorrectly.  Once you understand that, the conscious mind will answer all questions asked of it. You must, therefore, understand that it cannot negate certain parts of questions. 

Let me give you an example.  Whatever you do, do not think of an elephant.  Again, whatever you do, do not think of a red car.  The reason this task is impossible is that you must think of an elephant in order not to think of an elephant.  In a way, it’s like your brain receives the command as ‘think of an elephant, not.'  I bet you’ve had this happen to you.  Have you ever been with someone who said, ‘don’t look now but I think so and so is over there?’  What’s the first thing that happens?  You look.  It’s like the command was received as, ‘look now, don’t.' 

So bearing that in mind, if you spend most of the day thinking ‘I don’t want to be fat,' what do you think happens?  If you go on a diet and program yourself along the lines, ‘I will not eat chocolate for a month.  I will not eat chocolate for a month.’  Is it not true that you almost go insane with the cravings for chocolate?  Purely because you must think about eating chocolate in order not to eat chocolate.  It’s a massive catch-22 situation that has made the diet industry very rich for a very long time.  

If you only pick up one point from this book (by the way, I’ll feel as though I’ve failed you if you do, so concentrate), I’d just like it to be that you grasp the power of avoiding negatives in your communication.  Negative statements can significantly change the outcome of your goal. 

Let me show you what I mean.  Picture the scene.  A mother and her small child are in a china shop or a glassware shop.  Now, it may very well be that the picture you’ve just painted in your mind is a memory you have of a similar situation from your own life, and that’s fine.  The mother’s goal is that little Johnny doesn’t touch anything because she doesn’t want to have to pay for any breakages.  So, as she walks into the shop, she turns to her son and firmly says, ‘don’t touch anything.'  Moments later, the purse-shattering sound of beautiful, very expensive china smashing against the hard tiled floors fills the room.  

The mother gets the very outcome she dreaded because the command was phrased in the negative.  I’m pretty sure if she’d said, ‘I’m the only person allowed to touch the china’ or ‘please make sure your hands are in your pockets all the time,' she would have got the outcome she was looking for.  I realize I’m spending a great deal of time on this one subject and that’s just because once you understand the principle, you will see it every day, and everywhere you go. 

Many years ago I saw this happen at home.  My ex-wife and I have two children. Aoife was three and Jordan was six at the time.  For some reason, in our house, no matter what time we got up, there was always a mad rush at around about eight o’clock to get the children ready for school and us all to get out the house.  I find that I work best first thing in the morning.  So sometimes, if I’ve got a lot to get through in the day, I will get up as early as five o’clock in the morning.  There’s always that rush at eight though.  Whether I get up at five or seven, it makes no difference.  

Well, a few days ago, in the middle of that rush, I could hear my ex-wife Denise telling Jordan to get dressed for school.  The conversation went like this.  ‘Jordan, take your pajamas off and get your school uniform on, please.  Jordan, Jordan are you listening to me?  You always ignore me in the morning.  Please get dressed.  We’re in a rush.  Jordan, did you not hear me?  We’re late.  Get dressed.  I’m sick of you not listening to me all the time.  Will you get dressed?  Jordan, get dressed.’ 

It was at this point Denise came storming into the kitchen and said, ‘will you please speak to Jordan?  He always ignores me.’  We sat down and talked about it and realized that he’s reacting that way because that’s exactly how we were programming him to be.  He took our comments about his behavior as permanent; as in ‘you always ignore me.'  Obviously, for a child, the conscious mind does not need to overly judge the words of the parent.   In most cases, there’s a massive level of trust and dependency between the parents and the child, so most commands are merely processed as they are said.

 Imagine saying to your child, ‘your bedroom is a disgrace.  You are so messy.  Clean up your bedroom.  You always make a mess.  Or why are you always so messy?’  All you’re doing in this situation is programming their subconscious to do the exact opposite of what you want.  We could spend an hour talking about this one point, but let’s just summarize it quickly.  Phrase your commands and questions in the positive.  Reward what you want to be repeated rather than chastising the behavior or outcomes you don’t want.  The results you get will be massive. 

 Do you think it’s a coincidence that the top salesmen, politicians, and hypnotists all use very similar ways of communication?  Of course not. They’re all trying to achieve the same outcome.  They’re all trying to open the gateway to your subconscious and speak directly to that part of the mind.  They do this because they know this part of the brain is not only the most powerful, but it will offer the least resistance to the message or command being delivered. 

There is a famous tax advisory and audit company called Deloitte; I am sure you will have heard of them. Deloitte is one of the big boys on the accounting scene, along with the likes of PWC and KPMG. Well, the other day a friend dropped me at Larnaca International Airport, as I was flying to London for the weekend. On the approach to the drop off zone, we drove past a fifty-foot wide billboard. There was nothing on this giant advertising board other than a beautiful woman with striking red lipstick on. In the corner of the image was the Deloitte logo. My friend thought it was ridiculous; he thought they were just throwing away their money on such an ad.

"How is that going to get them any more customers for their auditing service', he mocked as we pulled up at the departures area. Of course, he is right to a certain extent. Nobody will look at that billboard and think 'oh that reminds me, I need to find a good tax advisor.' However, that is not the objective of the advertisement. When you have a particularly substantial marketing budget, as Deloitte obviously do. You can start to play about with more subtle and more subconscious forms of promotion. The attractive woman is being used purely to apply the law of association. Deloitte is attempting to psychologically connect their brand to all the positive aspects of the beautiful model. They are playing the long game with you. Perhaps at some point in the future, you will be in the position to choose an auditing service for your company. When it comes down to choosing you may just find you have a healthy gut feeling that Deloitte is the better choice for your business.

The cigarette companies used the law of association to devastating effect back in the seventies and eighties when they were still allowed to advertise on mainstream media. If you are old enough to remember, the commercials for tobacco brands used to be very subtle, almost confusingly vague. In the United Kingdom, there was a brand called Silk Cut. Their press marketing campaign one year featured a full page image of a sheet of purple silk cloth with a shark supposedly swimming underneath it. The shark's fin was slicing through the material as it went. People were confused, what on earth did that have to do with smoking cigarettes and how could it possibly increase their sales?

The message is much more devious and underhand than it first appears. Everything about that marketing was carefully planned to pull on the law of association. It all starts with the premise that smokers believe that smoking relaxes them. So what do smokers turn to when they feel stressed? That's right, they smoke. Sharks, cutting and even the color purple (a traditional color of the funeral industry) are all there to induce a slight subconscious uneasiness. The goal is to make the smoker a little stressed because they can be counted on to reach for their tobacco-based panacea.

The law of association is compelling, and it is being used on you every moment of every day. Ever wondered why the companies sponsoring your favorite sports team are willing to spend such crazy sums of money to have their logo on the team shirt? I first used this technique about fifteen years ago when I was running a UK based radio station in a small town called Wigan. This north-west working class conurbation is most famous for its rugby league team. The Wigan Warriors are famous the world over, mainly because they completely dominated the game for several decades. They were the Manchester United of the rugby league world and their reputation spread around the world as such.

When I arrived at the radio station is was performing poorly in the ratings. You always worry when you take on a challenge like this. I knew of the controller I was replacing. He had a good reputation and knew his stuff. So I was a little worried that if he couldn't fix the radio station then perhaps I wouldn't be able to either. I was anxious that the problems would be so deep-rooted that it would be like turning the Titanic. However, I need not have been so concerned. Within a few days of being in my new position, it became clear to me that Wish FM was failing to profit from the town's most prominent asset. The previous manager had dumped the Rugby League coverage from the station. I believe mainly because he didn't understand the game and felt exposed when trying to talk about it with his staff. He had taken the radio down a softer, more lifestyle and celebrity gossip path.

This was all a colossal mistake. This is Wigan, a hard working class rugby town. Not an upmarket district of a major city. I brought the Rugby commentary back and even launched a regular show hosted by famous retired rugby league stars. But the masterstroke came out of a cheeky request that I never expected to work out.

I was having a meeting with the rugby club to try and mend the relationship. The club had felt rejected by the decisions of the former boss and were a little frosty toward me when I first approached them. I didn't have much marketing money, but I had enough to buy one pitch side marketing board at the stadium. I told the club I would be promoting them heavily from now on and would they return the favor by doing one little thing for me. I knew what I was about to ask for was extremely valuable, worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. And I was about to ask for it for free.

'We will certainly try, what is it we can do for you?", asked Simon, the marketing manager for the club.

"Whenever Wigan score will you play the radio station jingle over the PA system," I said, holding my breath and waiting for them to laugh me out of the stadium.

"Sure, pop them on a CD, and we will arrange that," Simon said with a smile.

Boom! I just struck gold and all because nobody appreciated precisely what I was doing. If you don't know much about Rugby League, let me explain. This is not soccer where there may be 2 or 3 scoring opportunities per match. Sometimes Wigan Warriors were scoring 70 points a game. What this meant was with every try scored and every conversion kicked, right at the moment of pure ecstasy for the fans they would hear the name of my radio station.

I had no way of measuring how much impact that specific use of the law of association had on the performance of the radio station. However, I can tell you that within twelve months Wish FM became the number one radio station in town for the first time in its ten year history. The audience figures reached a pinnacle that it had never been to before or since. We did so much damage to the other radio station in town that they eventually had no other choice but to come after me with a big paycheck and poach me over to their side.

Try and observe when the law of association is at play and you will discover it is almost constant. Imagine if you went on a first date and by halfway through you were not sure you liked the individual sitting next to you. The date was pleasant enough, but there was no spark and perhaps a second date may not be such a good idea. However, you carry on in the hope that you will find a connection and relax into it a little better. Then the man or woman sitting next to you starts to talk about their job and horror above horror you realize they are a tax investigator for the IRS. Your opinion of them takes a further nosedive and the second date now becomes a complete non-runner.

But why? Surely someone's job does not dictate their character type or traits as a human being. He or she could have been the most lovely, warm and giving person on planet earth but the law of association chirps in and suddenly their perceptual image is in ruins. It is the same reason why weathermen get blamed for bad weather and why clothing manufacturers choose to have attractive models demonstrate their fashion ranges. They know that most people don't have perfect bone structure and fit into a size zero dress. They don't care about that; they just want you to connect their clothes with subconscious notions of looking good.

Finally for this powerfully effective law I will demonstrate how it works even when there is not a shred of logic to back it up. It’s 2018 as I write this book and the whole world has just finished going crazy about making money out of investing in Cryptocurrencies. The newspapers have been full of stories of how everyday folk have been turned into overnight Bitcoin millionaires. The public just can’t get enough of anything even vaguely connected to blockchain technology. Some businesses are seeing this as an opportunity to exploit.

The Long Island Iced Tea Company is precisely what it sounds like: a business that offers consumers bottled iced tea and lemonade. But today the business publicized a notable change of tactic that would start with altering its name to "Long Blockchain Corporation."

The company was "shifting its main business purpose to the analysis of and financial investment in opportunities that leverage the advantages of blockchain technology," the business said in a Thursday morning news release. "Emerging blockchain technologies are developing an essential paradigm shift across the global marketplace," the company said.

The stock exchange loved the announcement. Trading opened Thursday morning more than 200 percent higher than Wednesday night's closing rate.

The business isn't getting out of the iced tea business. "The Company will continue to manage Long Island Brand Beverages, LLC as a wholly-owned branch," the organization writes in its bulletin.

The new blockchain efforts are only in their "initial phases," the press release states, and will most likely entail investing or forming collaborations with other companies. One prospective partner is providing "blockchain infrastructure for the financial services industry." One more is building a "new smart contract platform for developing decentralized applications."

The former Long Island Iced Tea Company is following the lead of other business that have seen their market value skyrocket after publicizing blockchain-related moves. One small fiscal innovation company experienced its value take off after it announced a blockchain-related acquisition. In October, a biotech organization saw its price take off after it renamed itself "Riot Blockchain."

The move is reminiscent of the late 1990s when business could see their stock prices soar if they incorporated ". com" to their names.

I remember being a young child, while I wasn’t particularly naughty, I did have my moments. There were times where I would really challenge the authority of my mother, really I was just testing the water to see how far I could go. I recall a couple of times I was so bad she pretended to call the police. She would pick up the receiver but secretly keep her finger on the button. Then she would dial 999 (The police emergency number) and tell the supposed operator that she had a very naughty little boy here and could they send an officer straight away. This would terrify me and I would instantly drop the bad behavior and cling to my mom’s legs, begging her to call back and cancel the policeman. I sobbed and pleaded that I would be good from now on. Eventually, when she was convinced I meant it, she would make a second fake call informing the police that I had promised to be good.

But why was I so afraid? I was seven years old; I had had no experience with the police. It wasn’t like I was up late each night watching hard nosed cops in violent TV shows. My only real experience of the police was via cartoons and the like. The reason I became so afraid was because of the built in law of authority.

This is a powerful automatic response of human beings. Social psychologist Stanley Milgram is perhaps most famous for demonstrating the power of this law. Over his career he comprehensively researched the effect of authority on compliance. He concluded people comply either out of fear or out of a need to appear cooperative, even when acting against their own better judgment and preferences. Milgram's timeless yet controversial experiment illustrates people's reluctance to challenge those who abuse power.

Milgram enlisted subjects for his experiments from a variety of walks of life. Respondents were told the research would examine the impacts of punishment on learning ability. They were offered a token cash gift for participating. Although respondents believed they had an equal chance of playing the role of a student or a teacher, the process was rigged, so all participants wound up playing the teacher. The learner was an actor working as an accomplice of the researcher.

" Teachers" were asked to administer progressively severe electric shocks to the "learner" when questions were answered incorrectly. In truth, the only electric shocks delivered in the experiment were single 45-volt shock samples given to each teacher. This was done to provide teachers a feeling for the shocks they thought they would be discharging.

Shock levels were labeled from 15 to 450 volts. Besides the numerical scale, verbal anchors contributed to the frightful appearance of the instrument. Beginning from the lower end, jolt levels were tagged: "slight shock," "moderate shock," "strong shock," "extreme shock," "intense shock," and "extreme intensity shock." The next 2 anchors were "Danger: Severe Shock," and, past that, a simple but ominous skull and crossbones.

In response to the supposed jolts, the "learner" (actor) would begin to grunt at 75 volts; complain at 125 volts; ask to be released at 175 volts; plead with increasing vigor, next; and let out agonized screams at 285 volts. Eventually, in desperation, the learner was to yell loudly and complain of heart pain.

At some point, the actor was told to reach breaking point and refuse to answer any more questions. As a result at around 340 volts the actor would decide simply not to answer any more questions and fall silent. Hoping that if there were no wrong answers then there could be no more punishment.

However, the teachers were instructed to deal with silence as a wrong answer and administer the next shock level to the student anyway.

If at any point the innocent teacher was reluctant to give the shocks, the experimenter would pressure him to continue. Such demands would take the form of progressively severe statements, such as "The experiment requires that you continue.".

What do you think was the average voltage given by teachers before they refused to administer further shocks? What percentage of teachers, if any, do you think went up to the top current of 450?

Outcome

Some teachers refused to continue with the shocks early on, despite prompting from the experimenter. This is the kind of response Milgram expected as the norm. But Milgram was shocked to discover those who questioned authority were in the minority. Sixty-five percent (65%) of the teachers were willing to continue to the maximum voltage level.

Participants demonstrated a range of adverse emotions about continuing. Some pleaded with the learner, asking the actor to answer questions carefully. Others started to laugh nervously and behave strangely in diverse ways. Some subjects appeared cold, helpless, sad, or arrogant. Some thought they had killed the learner. Nevertheless, attendants continued to obey, discharging the full shock to learners. One man who wished to ditch the experiment was told the trial must proceed. Instead of challenging the judgment of the experimenter, he went ahead, repeating to himself, "It's got to go on, it's got to go on.".

Milgram's experiment included some variations. In one, the learner was not only visible, but teachers were asked to compel the learner's hand to the shock plate so they could deliver the punishment. Less obedience was extracted from subjects in this case. In another variant, teachers were told to administer whatever current they desired to wrong answers. Teachers averaged 83 volts, and only 2.5 percent of participants used the full 450 volts available. This shows most individuals were decent, average folks, not twisted and evil individuals. They submitted only under compulsion.

In general, more submission was evoked from "teachers" when (1) the authority figure was nearby; (2) teachers felt they could hand down accountability to others, and (3) experiments took place under the auspices of a reputable association.

Participants were debriefed shortly after the experiment and showed great relief at finding they had not hurt the student. One wept with emotion when he saw the student alive and explained that he assumed he had killed him. But what was different about those who obeyed and those who resisted? Milgram divided individuals into 3 categories:.

Obeyed but justified their actions:

Some obedient individuals gave up responsibility for their actions, pointing the finger at the researcher. If anything had happened to the learner, they rationalized, it would have been the experimenter's fault. Others had shifted the blame to the learner: "He was so stupid and obstinate he deserved to be shocked.".

Obeyed but blamed themselves:

Others felt terrible about what they had done and were quite harsh on themselves. Participants of this cluster would, perhaps, be more likely to challenge authority if confronted with a comparable situation in the future.

Rebelled:

Finally, defiant subjects questioned the authority of the experimenter and maintained there was a higher moral imperative calling for the safety of the learner over the demands of the researcher. A few of these people felt they were accountable to a higher authority.

As with all the laws of persuasion and influence I talk about in this book. They do not care whether you believe in them or not. Neither does intelligence or age make any noticeable impact on the results. I have a very intelligent friend called Mark who is constantly being warned by his doctor that he has high blood pressure. The reason he refuses to take heed of the advice is that he ONLY has this hypertension when he is in the doctor’s surgery. You can test him at any other time you choose and his blood pressure will be perfect. However, the moment he walks into the surgery it raises to a dangerous level and stays there until he leaves. The reason is more common than you might expect, it even has a name; ‘white coat syndrome’.

White coat syndrome can be potentially fatal. If we comply with someone just because of the way they are dressed or because they call themselves a doctor the affects can be life threatening. There are countless stories of nurses administering incorrect medicine or at incorrect dosages even though they knew what they had been asked to do was wrong. All simply because they dare not challenge the authority of the doctor.

This strange form of human behavior demonstrated it’s devastating power in the 1990’s in England. A respected family doctor called Harold Shipman went on a killing spree with his elderly patients. His crimes undetected for many years simply because he was a doctor.

The Guardian newspaper report on the court case said that Harold Shipman was Britain's most prolific serial killer. According to the public inquiry into his crimes, the former family doctor murdered at least 250 of his patients over 23 yrs. He was found dead in his cell at Wakefield prison on January 13, 2004, having hanged himself. The 57-year-old was serving 15 life sentences.

Shipman was convicted at Preston crown court in January 2000 of the homicide of 15 elderly patients with lethal hypodermic injections of painkiller. A public inquiry was launched in June 2001 to investigate the extent of his offenses, how they went unnoticed for so long, and what could be done to avoid a repeat of the misfortune.

His first victim, Eva Lyons, was killed in March 1975 on the eve of her 71st birthday while Shipman was working at the Abraham medical practice in Todmorden. The following year the first clues surfaced that Shipman was no regular reputable General Practitioner. In February 1976, he was convicted of acquiring the morphine-like medication pethidine by fraudulence and deception to supply his dependency to the drug. Later that year, in the name of a dying client, he acquired sufficient morphine to murder 360 individuals. After being given psychological and substance treatment in York, he reappeared as a Family Doctor in Hyde, Greater Manchester. His technique of murder was unfailing: a quick shot of diamorphine - pharmaceutical heroin. He killed 71 patients while at the Donnybrook practice in the town and the rest while a single-handed practitioner at his surgery in Market Street. The majority of his victims - 171 - were females, compared with 44 males. The oldest was 93-year-old Anne Cooper and the youngest 41-year-old Peter Lewis.

When Shipman was fired from the Todmorden clinical practice for forging doctor's prescriptions, he received a considerable fine but was not struck off by the General Medical Council (GMC), the regulatory body for medical professionals. Rather, it sent him a stiff warning letter and allowed him to continue working. This meant that at this moment any hiring manager or patients who inquired about Shipman would most likely not have been told about his conviction. By the late 1990s, his criminal offense was ignored, and he appeared to be a devoted, caring professional. But in 1998, Hyde funeral directors became dubious at the quantity of his patients who were dying, and the nearby medical practice learned that the fatality rate of Shipman's patients was nearly 10 times greater than their own. They reported their concerns to the local coroner who in turn called in Greater Manchester police. But the authorities investigation failed to execute even the most fundamental checks, including whether Shipman had a criminal record. Nor did they ask the GMC what was on his file. Neither Shipman himself not relatives of the dead patients were contacted. The officials did ask the regional health authority to inspect the records of 19 deceased patients for any inconsistencies between the clinical notes and the cause of passing on the death certificate. But the medical adviser was unaware that the doctor he was checking out had a history of forging legal documents - and Shipman had included false illnesses to his casualties' files to cover his tracks. Consequently, the investigation discovered no reason for concern and the GP was free to eliminate three more of his patients before ultimately being apprehended in February 1999.

As shocking as the Shipman story is, it is important to understand that this law can be used for better intentioned practices to. I will close this chapter with a few words from the master of persuasion Robert Cialdini. On his website he explains how professionals can improve their closure rate by invoking the law of authority: Physiotherapists, for example, can persuade more of their patients to comply with recommended exercise programs if they display their medical diplomas on the walls of their consulting rooms. People are more likely to give change for a parking meter to a complete stranger if that requester wears a uniform rather than casual clothes.

What the science is telling us is that it’s important to signal to others what makes you a credible, knowledgeable authority before you make your influence attempt. Of course, this can present problems; you can hardly go around telling potential customers how brilliant you are, but you can certainly arrange for someone to do it for you. And surprisingly, the science tells us that it doesn’t seem to matter if the person who introduces you is not only connected to you but also likely to prosper from the introduction themselves.

One group of real estate agents was able to increase both the number of property appraisals and the number of subsequent contracts that they wrote by arranging for reception staff who answered customer inquiries to first mention their colleagues’ credentials and expertise.

So, customers interested in letting a property were told “Lettings? Let me connect you with Sandra, who has over 15 years’ experience letting properties in this area.” Customers who wanted more information about selling properties were told “Speak to Peter, our head of sales. He has over 20 years’ experience selling properties. I’ll put you through now.”

The impact of this expert introduction led to a 20% rise in the number of appointments and a 15% increase in the number of signed contracts. 

The Law of Likability is evident to most of us; people prefer to do business with individuals they like. Or, as Jeffrey Gitomer points out, "All things being equal, people prefer to do business with their friends. All things not being so equal, people still want to do business with their friends."

For that matter, practically anything we do in life we favor doing with people we like and enjoy being around. What's not so clear is how we get individuals to like us more. In fact, it might astound you to learn that the secret to the law of likability isn't so much about getting others to like us; it's really about us coming to like them. Too often individuals are concerned with doing whatever it takes to get people to like them, neglecting to recognize if they genuinely like the particular person they're with, that person will sense it and naturally return the compliment.

What can you do to bring this about? There are three particular points: pay attention to similarities, give compliments and look for cooperative efforts. We'll take a peek at each of these.

Ever notice how people who like the same sports teams have a natural link? Or people who own the same car? The same could be said of a lot of things and so many pursuits. What you need to do is keep an eye out for those things you have in common with the individual you're with. Raise those commonalities to the surface, and you'll begin to develop a liking association.

All of us enjoy a compliment ... even when we view it as pure flattery. But, you don't have to give dishonest praise because there's consistently something genuine you can praise someone on (an outfit, a tie, an award, their business office, etc.). By looking for the good in a person, you will naturally tend to like them a little more. They'll appreciate the praise and consequently, come to like you more as well.

Working together toward a goal, a collaborative effort, aids people set aside their differences thanks to the job at hand. Even though we felt like we really did not like the other person we're with, quite often we begin discovering "they're not so bad after all" as we learn more about them when we work together. As our walls come down so do theirs and liking happen.

So, if you want to get more done at work, or in life in general, then try like the individuals with whom you associate more. You can't always make them like you, but you can choose to pay attention to what you have in common instead of your differences. You can make a mindful effort to search for the good in them instead of their flaws. And finally, you can attempt to work in cooperation with them. Do those simple things, and you'll like that other person a little more. Will everybody react in kind? No, but many will and that will make your daily life a little more pleasant and make you a bit more effective.

Just like all the other laws of influence, I will talk about in this book. The Law of Likeability even works when you are conscious of its deliberate application. About twenty years my ex-wife and I were on vacation in Tenerife. Tenerife is one of the Spanish owned islands off the coast of Africa. In the eighties and nineties, they became a timeshare hotspot. For a while, you couldn't walk more than fifty foot without some unscrupulous timeshare tout jumping on you and trying to strong arm you into agreeing to spend thousands on one-week holiday ownership. The sales techniques were high pressure, and many people went home having decided to buy something that they couldn't afford and were generally an all-round poor financial investment.

Eventually, word got around about how these shady salesmen were operating, and tourists got wise to what was going on. The touts now had to work twice as hard to entice their victims. This is where a guy called Brian comes into the story. He stopped us with a huge smile while we were walking down the seafront one evening. He offered us the chance to play a free scratchcard game. We instantly recognized this as a timeshare technique. The way it works is you are provided with a free scratchcard. Slowly you scratch away the concealed boxes and what a surprise you win the mystery prize. The tout goes into full Oscar-winning actor role and pretends that in all his years doing this he had never seen anyone win the prestigious mystery prize. He will then usher you with great haste and urgency into a waiting taxi to send you off to collect your fabulous winnings.

 As we recognized the scam from the outset my ex-wife Denise politely declined, and we turned to continue our evening walk. These touts are never that easily dissuaded and it's at this point he pulled out another weapon in his compliance arsenal... the law of likeability. Recognising Denise's Irish accent. He reached out and shook her hand and with a slight Gaelic lilt to his voice he said 'Oh my God you are Irish, my mom is from Dublin ya know.' Honestly, he was acting like he was meeting his long-lost sister after a decade apart. Next, he reached into his pocket and pulled out an Irish penny.

"Look, even my lucky penny is Irish. I had carried this coin with me since I was ten years old when my dad gave it to me. He died a few weeks later, and I know it's silly, but I always feel like it's brought me good luck. Go to use my coin, give it a go, I would love to see someone from Ireland win the big prize", he continued in full flow.

It was impossible to reject him further. It was obviously a part of his routine and no doubt his pockets were full of currency from around the world, and his dear old mum would change her citizenship with the flip of a coin. However, he was just such a lovely chap, and with such a beautiful smile we couldn't say no. Guess what? We only won the mystery prize, in all his years he had never seen anyone win it before.

As we sat in the taxi on the way to collect our 'prize' we looked at each other and said 'shit, we've been had.'

Everyone likes vanilla ice cream (or perhaps I should say nobody hates vanilla ice cream) but that doesn't mean it's the best flavor out there. Vanilla ice cream and magnolia wall paint are the go to options when you are trying to please (or just not upset) as many people as possible. Sure, hardly anyone has a problem with vanilla, I mean how could you? But equally, not many people are wetting themselves with excitement at the prospect of eating it either. Nobody walks into a magnolia room and says wow.

We get so focused on not upsetting people these days we miss the point of having a personality. I would much rather have 50% of the people I meet love me and 50% hate me than have 100% of people walking away with no strong opinion either way. If you are going to be significant in this life you need to stand out. You have to make your imprint on this world.

Why is it essential to create an impression on people? A significant part of that answer would be because we are not solitary people. We spend all our time living with other people and interacting with them. No matter how introverted you want to be, there is no way around it, people are essential in our lives.

This book is about persuasion, and as such you should know that people will behave and respond to us according to their assumptions about us. They will soon build up a characterization for us, and they will respond accordingly. However, it is a mistake to give the people you meet free range to decide what sort of person you are. We are here to steer the boat, not just be a passenger! What we get out of people-- who form an important component of our lives, will depend on the impact that we have created over them.

For example, if we give out the impression that we are polite and soft-spoken, then many people are going to act with us in the same manner too. These people may behave differently with others, but with us, they will function in the way our impression has built on them. A manager in a company gets a different behavior from the people he meets than an auto mechanic at a garage. Even when these individuals are the same, they react differently with the boss and with the auto mechanic. Why is that so? This type of response is built upon the impression that is developed by these 2 points.

We need to recognize that the way people respond to us is a crucial deciding factor on how we lead our lives. Our actions in life are a culmination of the responses we get from other people.

Monkey Say, Monkey Do

It is a vicious cycle. People react to us according to the perception they get from our character. And then, we get molded according to the response we get from other people.

The impressions we make affect people's reactions towards us, and then these responses shape our personality.

However, even though this is a circle, you can take control of it. You can do something that can greatly improve the predicament for you in a significant way. However, you can only take hold of the steering wheel of your own life if you have what is known as an internal locus of control.

The principle of locus of control is generally unfamiliar to most people, even though, once defined, is commonly understood. Locus of control is an individual's belief system pertaining to the causes of his/her experiences and the factors to which that individual connects success or failure.

This idea is typically divided into 2 categories: internal and external. If a person has an internal locus of control, that person attributes success to his or her efforts and abilities. A person who expects to succeed will be more motivated and more likely to learn. A man or woman with an external locus of control, who attributes his/her effectiveness to luck or fate, will be less likely to learn, develop and grow. People with an external locus of control are also more likely to experience anxiousness since they believe that they are not in control of their lives. This is not to say, however, that an internal locus of control is "desirable" and an external locus of control is "bad." There are other variables to be taken into consideration. However, psychological study has discovered that individuals with a more internal locus of control seem to be better off, e.g., they tend to be more achievement-oriented and get better-paying careers.

For many years I coached broadcasters for large radio stations around the United Kingdom. The reason I left the industry is that it became clear to me that there is a psychological conflict between the business of radio and the art of broadcasting. In my opinion, to create genuinely compelling and entertaining radio, you need strong personalities on the air. To be what is considered to be a talented personality you need a unique outlook on life. As such all the best radio presenters have an internal locus of control. They believe they have the power to be unique. Add a healthy dose of ego, and they also think they are the best too.

The conflict came in when commercial radio became less and less independent. Large groups were swallowing up the local stations all over the country. Because these big groups are often publicly listed, they answer to their shareholders. Having uncontrolled" unique" personalities on the air in all these remote outreaches of the expanding company represented an unchecked risk to the suits in charge of the balance sheets.

The radio groups needed total control of the brand. That's easily done when you churn out a fixed product like a breakfast cereal for example. With physical products, you can specify the ingredients, design the packaging and then arrange the marketing. All according to your highly researched and tested company policy. However, when your product is people, then you are exposed to a lot more risk. High personality broadcasters are entertaining, but they are liable to say something that damages the share price of the company. This was seen as an unacceptable risk. A threat to the bottom line that must be removed.

Of course, removing the talent from the air to protect the share price is a bit like taking the engine out of your car to ensure you don't have a crash. The high personality presenters were removed, one way or another. The most common way was to force them into a creative straightjacket. Only allowing them to read pre-written scripts until they got terminally bored out of their brains and quit or rebelled against the system, giving management the license to fire them they wanted in the first place.

The personalities were replaced by guys who had good voices but would do exactly what they were told. They had an external locus of control. They believed that they needed the guidance of the radio station before they could speak. They didn't have the old school confidence that what they had to say was valuable. I couldn't stay in the industry because I couldn't make silk purses out of sows ears.

But where did they find all these yes men with lovely voices?

Locus of control is frequently viewed as an inborn character element. However, there is also evidence that it is shaped by adolescence experiences, including children's connections with their parents. Kids who were brought up by parents who encouraged their independence and enabled them to learn the connection between actions and their consequences tended to have a better developed internal locus of control.

The benefits of this were specified in a research study that looked at the potential health impacts of the locus of control characteristic. Analysts discovered that of more than 7,700 English adults followed since birth, those who had demonstrated an internal locus of control at the age of ten were less likely to be overweight at age thirty, less likely to define their health and wellness as weak, or present high amounts of psychological stress. The primary explanation for these findings was that children with a more internal locus of control behave more healthily as grownups because they have higher confidence in their ability to influence outcomes through their actions. They may also have higher self-worth.

The decoy is perhaps my favorite of all persuasion and influence techniques, it is so wonderfully deceitful and sneaky. Let’s say I am out in the mall collecting for a charity or worthy cause. The charity organizers have explained to me that their average donation amount is just $2 and they really want to break that ceiling. They challenge all the people who have agreed to go out collecting to get as many donations over $5 as possible. The individual with the highest average donation amount will win a fantastic prize. So, I have three options here. I can go out shaking my collection bucket and see what happens. However, we know from past data this approach yields an average donation amount under $2 and certainly nowhere near the goal amount.

The second option is I could just straight out ask for five dollars. What puts me off this approach is it wouldn’t work with me. I would feel ordered to pay the specified amount and I don’t respond well to orders. I am sure you are the same. Plus it fails to deal with the expectation of the giver. When someone waves a charity collection bucket under your nose you probably have an amount in your mind that seems reasonable. That amount will depend on several factors including but not limited to your disposable income, generosity and how much you value the cause at hand. However, if I approach people and ask for $5 specifically I will offend the people who can’t afford this amount and it will likely have a limiting effect on the people who may have been able to give more.

Personally, in this situation I would use a decoy. Remember my goal is $5, this is all I want to achieve. So, I would approach people and ask them to commit to a regular donation of $15 a month. I know that most people don’t like to make open ended commitments like that and so my expectation is that over ninety percent of the people I ask will refuse. Even the few that agree I will only consider to be a bonus to my endeavors.

When I am refused the original request I would make an attempt to persuade them to support this wonderful cause. On the second refusal I would appear to be a little crestfallen and admit defeat. However, it is at this point I would say ‘I understand, but do you think you could maybe spare $5, just as a one off donation. It would make a huge difference.

This is such a powerful technique because it pulls on several psychological laws. Including the law of reciprocity and the law of contrast. When you combine several motivating elements like that the whole becomes stronger than the sum of its parts. Later I will explain the devastatingly powerful effect of combining the law of scarcity with the law of social proof. But first, let’s dissect what I have asked for in a little more detail. First of all I have demonstrated to you that I am a reasonable guy. I wanted $180 a year out of you, but because I am so accommodating and willing to work with you I have dramatically reduced what I want to just $5. I am not even asking you to meet me half way, I have moved so far from my original request that there is pressure on you to move from your opening stance too.

It’s important to know this stuff, not just so you can use it to get what you want. But also as a defense against other people using such techniques against you. Only last month I experienced the decoy trick being used on me in an expensive cosmetics store in London. My daughter and I were out Christmas shopping when we walked past a famous boutique cosmetics store. Outside were elegantly dressed guys handing out bars of their hand soap free of charge. Normally these sell for a couple of pounds each so they were nice freebies to get. We gratefully accepted the gifts and as we turned to continue our walk down the high street, the guy smiled and said ‘say, would you mind If I showed you our amazing new hand softening gel’.

Now, was I in the market to buy extremely over priced hand softening gel? Of course not, but he had primed the pump and pulled out the law of reciprocity to make the sell a little easier. We felt indebted to him and so agreed to come in and try the hand gel, hey it was the least we could do right? Once inside the palatial store he went into full tactile presentation mode. Gently washing and conditioning our hands with this wonderful smelling balm. Then he asked to compare the difference. Wow he was right, this stuff was amazing. The hand he had been working on was a soft as a baby’s bottom – as the saying goes.

My daughter was sold and gave me those ‘’Dad, can we buy some’’ eyes. I asked the price and had to quickly pick my jaw back up off the floor after he nonchalantly revealed it was one hundred pounds per jar. I immediately came over all Northern and said ‘no way’. My daughter looked heartbroken and repeated the pleading eye thing she is so good at. As we turned to leave he again stopped us. “I tell you what, I can see your daughter really wants this product so I will give you two jars and this special edition make up bag all for the same price as one jar’. My daughter’s eyes lit up, she was certain that I couldn’t turn down such an amazing offer. She was shocked and stunned when I did.

We left the store and explained to her that the chances are better than good that the price of 2 jars and the make up bag was always one hundred pounds. We were being manipulated by a well-practiced sales technique. Her response? Anger! “Dad, why do you have to always spot these things”!

Your defense against these compliance techniques is to see them for what they really are, a device to extract money from you. When you change the gift of expensive soap from being a ‘gift’ to being a compliance device you will feel less inclined to engage with the law of reciprocity. 

This year I spent Christmas with my son Jordan and his girlfriend. As we sat by the tree opening our presents I noticed a very expensive bottle of wine among the gifts he had received. I enquired as to who had sent him the wine and he told me it was his childhood friend Bethany. They were born on the same day in the same hospital ward. Jordan and Beth were friends until about the age of seven when we moved away. However, they have kept in touch but this was the first time they had exchanged gifts for Christmas.

I mentioned how nice it was for Bethany to have done that and Jordan agreed. However, he added that he wished she hadn’t. I was surprised to hear this and enquired why. He said ‘well, because it meant I had to go out and buy her a gift in return’. Civilized human being can’t bear the thought of being indebted to someone. It’s upsets the balance of life.

I am sure that Bethany did not buy my son a gift purely to get one in return but it would have been very unusual for that not to be the outcome of her kindness. When you recognize and understand the inbuilt need of people to repay the generosity of others you can use this as a means to solicit a specific response from your prospects.

I was in London a few months ago and as I was walking down a very busy Regents street, a happy and smiling Buddhist monk stepped into my path. He handed me a golden piece of card, roughly the size of a bookmark. On the card was a blessing for good fortune and a happy life. He smiling monk told me that it was a gift and he hoped I would have a blessed and wonderful day. I said thank you and popped the card into my jacket pocket. As I moved to walk on by, he held out a notebook and asked if I would be willing to make a donation to his order. I immediately said yes and pulled a five-pound note from my wallet. He got me!

I know for certain that without the gift, he would of got nothing from me. This is not because I don’t like to give to good causes but because I disagree with the practices of the charity muggers who pounce on people and try and shame them into making a regular ongoing donation. So, I have a personal policy that my donations to charity will be done privately and never as a result of direct solicitation.

The smiling monk caught me off guard because I didn’t recognize what he was doing until it was too late. But what it demonstrates is just how powerful the law of reciprocity is. Robert Cialdini, perhaps the most prominent expert in the field of persuasion engineering, has written extensively about how Hare Krishna fundraisers became the scourge of airports around the world. Using the law of reciprocity to extract money from unsuspecting travellers. You may have even fallen for their ‘flower’ technique yourself at some point. The organization looked for a place where there was a constant stream of footfall. The arrival and departure zones of international airports proved to be the perfect site.

The monks would simply approach travellers and give them a single small flower. They would tell the individual it was a free gift and usually the person would say thank you, which is the normal response to an act of generosity. However, then the monk would ask for a donation. More often than not the traveller would oblige. You notice that the monks did not ask if the person wanted a flower and they did not state that the flower had a price. They did not need to, they knew that the law of reciprocity would do all the hard work for them.

Here is a gift that nobody wanted, had absolutely no value and was not even practical to carry around along with your luggage. Yet, despite all that, most people paid for it. Professor Cialdini spent many hours watching the monks running this sting operation at various airports and he noted that around 90% people the people who had received a flower would dispose of it in a trash can before leaving the airport. The monks were acutely aware that their gifts were unwanted and being discarded almost immediately. So much so that when they ran low of flowers, a member of the group would go on a resupply mission by retrieving all the dumped flowers from the trash cans around the airport exit.

The law of reciprocity is powerful and it’s being used on you everyday in a variety of ways. If you head over to my website now you will see that I offer a range of free downloads. However, to get them I need you to give me your email address. 

The law of scarcity is without a shadow of a doubt the most powerful persuasion technique in the box. It doesn’t matter what you are selling or trying to persuade someone to do, nothing gets it done better and more effectively than this automatic self-induced law of human behavior. If you take nothing else from this book than a greater awareness of the power behind the in built fear of scarcity then you will reap some pretty sizable rewards.

According to the scarcity principle, people assign more value to opportunities when they are less available.  The use of this principle for profit can be seen in such compliance techniques as limited number, limited edition and deadline tactics wherein practitioners try to convince us that access to what they’re offering us is restricted by an amount of time or quantity.

The scarcity principle holds true for two reasons: because things that are difficult to attain are typically more valuable. The availability of an item or experience can serve as a short cut cue to its quality and secondly as things become less accessible we lose freedoms.  According to psychological reactance theory we respond to the loss of freedoms by wanting to have them more than ever before.

The word freedom here is an incorrect use of the word ‘BECAUSE’ what we are really losing is not freedom but a perceived sense of control. If you are at a party and you witness a male guest paying particular attention to your wife or girlfriend does this not cause an uncomfortable sensation to rise? This feeling is the ego panicking about losing something it thought it had nailed down. The ego as we will discuss can’t cope with any form of loss because it reminds it that it isn’t anywhere near as in control of life as it would like to be. This uncomfortable reminder to the ego is passed on to you in the form of emotional pain. Essentially your own ego is punishing you as a way of motivation you to stop the current situation from happening.

I appreciate it does sound a little schizophrenic to talk about this part of the mind as though it is a separate entity but it helps us understand this powerful force of human motivation if we think of it as an insane and illogical aspect of the mind. It helps to think of it almost as a third person because it is capable of making decisions that are entirely to the detriment of its host. The ego will push a person into situations and environments that are entirely harmful purely to get away from a source or pain (normally this constitutes any sort of reminder of its own temporary existence).

Have you ever been on a diet where food becomes scarce?  Now granted, that’s by your own decision but how much do you crave calorific goodness at that point?  This is just another reason why diets generally don’t work.  Scarcity is a powerful motivator and research indicates that it doesn’t just apply to food, the act of limiting access to a message causes individuals to want to receive it more and to become more favorable to it.

In the case of censorship this effect occurs when even the message is not being received.  Sometimes the most profitable thing that can happen to a movie is when it gets banned.  Everyone wants to see it because it’s banned -because it’s scarce. 

The scarcity principle is most likely to hold true under two optimising conditions:

• Scarce items are heightened in value when they are newly scarce.  We value those things that have become recently restricted more than those that were restricted all along. 
• We are most attracted to scarce resources when we compete against other people to try and get them.  It’s difficult to steel ourselves cognitively against the scarcity pressures because they have an emotional effect that makes thinking difficult.

This was demonstrated on mass in 2011 in the United Kingdom when a rumor circulated that the petrol tanker drivers were planning to strike. In a mass panic drivers queued for up to four hours at gas stations to fill their tanks. This was despite the government’s assurances that there was no shortage, no confirmation of strike action and actually at no point any real shortage of fuel.

The power of this one psychological trait should never be underestimated. People operating in a scarcity mind-set will ignore all logic and advice in a desperate desire to correct the imbalance and sensation of loss.

I will switch from a sales prospective on this to one of relationships to demonstrate to you how strong the Law of Scarcity can really be. When somebody you love dies how intensely do the sensations of loss feel for that person? Is it not true you are filled with a myriad of different negative emotions? You wish you could go back and say all the loving words you now feel and at the same time you are filled with regret for all the hurtful comments and deeds you did. You question why you didn’t treat them better when they were alive, you pray for them to come back so you can appreciate them more. Even if you spent a lifetime arguing and quibbling with the loved one, you can’t help but be overwhelmed by an aching pain beyond description.

The Law of Scarcity generates this pain; human beings will always want what is restricted to them. Tell your grumpy teenager that he can’t have that new model of phone and they will drive you to despair with demands and an insistence that life is not worth living without this particular phone – even if they don’t really need it.

Think about it, who really NEEDS to see a movie that has been banned by the censors for being too gruesome. You already know the answer to this is NOBODY but people will crawl over broken glass to get a copy of that movie.

If you have ever been dumped by a partner (and who hasn’t?) then you will know first hand how scarcity feels at this moment. Is it not true that for days and weeks after the love of your life walks away, you can do nothing but pine for them? You spend extended periods of time just looking at old pictures and thinking back at the relationship with rose tinted glasses. Your friends try to comfort you with statements such as ‘it’s her loss’ or ‘you are better off without him’, ‘you were too good for him anyway’ and the ultimate ‘cheer up, there are plenty more fish in the sea’. Has that well-intentioned line EVER helped anyone get over a love affair? Yes, logically we all know there are plenty more prospective dates out there but we don’t want them for the very reason that they are out there and freely available to us. We want the one who has suddenly become restricted to us.

Girls want diamonds because they are rare and expensive (i.e. ownership is restricted to the wealthy). Boys dream of one day driving around in a Lamborghini for the same reason. Once you become aware of the Law of Scarcity you will see that there is not a single area of life that it doesn’t influence. There is a well-known expression that goes ‘never meet your hero because you will always be disappointed’. This perception of disappointment is purely the act of removing a level of scarcity from an event and noticing the drop in desire as a result. If your hero is Robert De Niro and since you were a little boy you have sat in movies theatres worshiping your idol up there on the big screen. Robert De Niro will be someone that you have subconsciously conditioned yourself to seeing but will also assume that you will never have the possibility meeting the actor. 

Robert De Niro is a scarce commodity; the chance of meeting him in day-to-day life is virtually zero. This situation creates a scarcity mind-set around this person and you mentally place him on a pedestal, he is up there with those diamonds and fast cars.

If one day you meet Robert De Niro, while you might be a little star struck and then get annoyed at yourself because you pulled a ridiculous face when your friend took a picture of you both for Facebook ™, most people report a sensation of disappointment at meeting their idol. It’s the strangest thing… when asked what they thought of their hero they come out with negative statements such as ‘yeah it was ok but I thought he would be taller’ or ‘he was really nice, but he’s better looking in the movies’. How can people spend a lifetime adoring someone from afar and then when their deepest wish is granted the first thing they have to say is a negative. In reality they are not disappointed with the superstar they just met but rather are vocalising what the removal of scarcity feels like. The negative expressions are not disappointment at the individual but rather disappointment that the amount of desire generated by the ego (in response to a scarcity mind set) did not meet the reality.

This fundamental law of human motivation is generated by the ego. When most people talk of the ego they are normally referring only to behavioral traits revolving around the traditional definition of the word. Ego is mostly considered to be a temporary expression of over inflated self-confidence, demonstrated as conceit, selfishness and self-importance.

The ego is so much more that that narrow band of negative patterns and yet that doesn’t mean there is a good side to it, no aspect of the ego can be viewed in any sort of positive light or considered an advantage to the human existence. The ego is the little part of our psychological make up that is quite frankly insane. Nobody is free of it, not even the most enlightened being. We all have differing strengths of ego and ergo according levels of insanity that present themselves in a myriad of different ways that we might label as character traits or personality.

The first thing you should know of this part of you, is that the ego cannot ever be satisfied it can only ever be sedated temporarily. Like a naughty child at the ‘all you can eat’ ice cream factory it will always want more no matter how much it gets, even if more of what you crave is in the long run detrimental to your well being. Put a child in an unlimited ice cream factory and she will eat until she throws up – the ego is very similar. It is for this reason alone that giving a person the exact amount of money they have declared will bring peace is only effective as a temporary sticking plaster solution to the problems. Very soon the same person will start to come up with reasons why that amount was too conservative and now needs to be increased.

Unhappiness, pain and misery are human emotions created directly by the ego to manipulate a desired response. These painful feelings are generated by the ‘thinking mind’ when it doesn’t get what it wants but also rather ironically also directly as the result of giving it exactly what it wants too, such is the insanity!

Your ego can achieve peace only for the tiniest fragment of time, normally immediately after you give it what it wants. For a briefest of moments it affords you a small break from the insanity and stops relentlessly punishing and manipulating you. When the sedation begins to fade the ego reawakens as ravenous as a grizzly bear stirring from a long hibernation. It demands more of what you gave it before but ten times stronger and will not accept anything but your capitulation, sending massive pain in the form of a hundred different negative emotions such as jealousy, low self esteem and self loathing until it gets what it desires.  This is the exact reason why 95% of diets fail, trying to arm wrestle the egoic mind into submission with a technique incorrectly labeled as ‘will power’ is like trying to move a mountain with a spoon.

Nobody has ever achieved anything with ‘will power’ because it’s an oxymoron - there is actually no power involved in it at all! The ego cannot be strong-armed into submission by defiance; it has you outgunned on every level. Your ego has the power to cause you pain beyond your wildest nightmares and it isn’t afraid to use it. The only way you achieve anything of significance in life and beat the discontentment of the ego is by harnessing the divine power of the subconscious. At this level of being you are capable of limitless joy, anything and everything is possible without the need for anything to make it possible. From contentment to perfection and everything in between your subconscious mind has the power to deliver it to you. 

What you believe about yourself in this state dictates what appears in your life. If at an unconscious level you no longer believe you are a smoker then you will stop smoking, nothing your ego throws at you will either hurt or make the slightest impact on your journey to your goal, its delivery is as certain and night follows day.

Until this point I have carefully used the word subconscious when really I would have preferred to say soul. I do this deliberately because for me to expect you to accept the word soul (and all its connotations) I have to make an assumption that you believe it exists in the first place. Virtually everyone accepts the concept of a conscious and a subconscious, I can comfortably bring these aspect of the human mind up nice and early in the book but I wait until this point hoping to have whet your appetite before I appear to go ‘all spiritual’ on you!

For me your soul and your subconscious are one and the same because what happens to you unconsciously and by that I mean without the interference of your ego or your thinking mind, happens with divine power. By divine I mean there is simply nothing that is impossible if your soul or subconscious so desires it. Naturally, the first skeptical objection to this grand claim of miracles is challenging statements like ‘if I am all powerful, why aren’t I rich already’ and so on.

The deeper answer to that question you will discover as you journey through this book, but as a temping morsel to keep you going; and of course to avoid ‘question dodging’ accusations flaring up so early in our relationship as author and reader I would ask you to consider that it is only your ego that believes you need money to be happy. Anything that has its solution in the future is pure speculation of your conscious mind, one of those specific requirements of how happiness should be packaged for your consumption. Your soul doesn’t believe anything; it desires nothing, needs nothing and it automatically knows what will make you happy.

As a natural born cynic myself, I will try and answer your logical objections as we discover these secrets together. By this point I understand that your mind is probably acting like the Hydra beast of Greek mythology; for every question I answer two new ones appear to take its place. This is the ego again attempting to reassert its authority and we have been taught from an early age to listen to it.

From childhood we are told that to want too much is to be greedy, rich people are immoral and somehow tainted by their own success. Conversely to not have enough money, to be poor is also judged to be a failure. We project this confusing concept out to the masses through our movies, books, television news and tabloid newspapers. We love the underdog until they become successful and then we demand that they are brought down a peg or two.

Society wants us to have ‘just enough’ but not quite enough to be happy – this is what we have collectively agreed is ‘normal’ which for some reason when you write it down appears to be quite insanely ridiculous. Our parents also subscribed to this standpoint, as did their parents and all who went before them.  It’s the bizarre relay race of the ego forever passing its delusions onto the next generation. This is demonstrated by our parents in the vocalized desire for us to work hard and get a ‘good job’ to ensure our future happiness. What parents mean by a ‘good job’ is a safe and secure job that may even be boring but is continuous. Rarely do parents hope and dream that their children will follow their heart, throw caution to the wind and take risky, dangerous but exciting jobs.

There are many millions of people around the world in the most menial and insignificant of low paid, unskilled jobs that are content with their lot and truly happy within themselves, but no parent would wish or encourage this lifestyle for their child.  Instead their aspirations for their young are generated from the ego and they dream that they will be the world’s next doctors, scientists, accountants, managers and directors. Hopefully, along the way they will meet the man or woman of their dreams, setting down with a mortgage (a word derived from the Latin phrase meaning until death) have kids and live happily ever after, only to repeat the process again.

A list of handed down expectations that compound the belief that happiness is a destination achievable through the attainment or attachment to external things. They want this for us because it’s what they want for themselves and therefore assume it is also the best that could happen to us. This belief is an oasis in the desert to the thirsty man, nothing but a pure illusion.

The biggest fear of your ego is sensation of loss, driven ultimately from the biggest loss of all, death. If you force your conscious mind to experience any form of loss it will hit back with massive levels of emotional pain until you return or replace what it was attached to. This is evident in its strongest form when we suffer bereavement. I am sure you will know first hand just how much pain is involved in grief. This pain is generated by an ego which has been doubly wounded, first by the removal of love, attention and affection from the person who has died and can no longer service those specific needs but also because it reminds your ego of its own ultimate fate. You also experience lesser but still very painful forms of this egoic reaction when someone steals from you, a relationship ends or you lose your job. All forms of loss causes major trauma to your conscious mind and it doesn’t take it at all well, kicking and screaming like a tempestuous child until it is pacified. In the same way you wouldn’t give a child everything it demands your approach toward the ego should be the same.

I always say knowledge is potential power and understanding that loss is the big red panic button for your conscious mind allows you to step back from the pain and observe it as the Law of Scarcity rather than experience it as an anonymous sensation of loss. This is your defense against this powerful state being used against you. From a sales point of view knowing this information is priceless. If you know that by inducing a sensation of scarcity that you can create internal leverage that the prospect will almost do anything to correct the imbalance then you are a powerful salesman indeed. You are effectively having the client sell your products to themselves –  now isn’t that an amazing prospect to consider? 

Wikipedia describes social proof as “a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others reflect the correct behavior for a given situation… driven by the assumption that the surrounding people possess more information about the situation.” In other words, people are wired to learn from the actions of others, and this can be a huge driver of consumer behavior.

Consider the social proof of a line of people standing behind a velvet rope, waiting to get into a club.  The line makes most people walking by want to find out what’s worth the wait.  The digital equivalent of the velvet rope helped build viral growth for initially invite-only launches like Gmail.

Before Google offered a free email service I was using Yahoo mail you were probably using the same or one of the other traditional providers such as Hotmail and AOL. I would describe my feelings toward Yahoo as indifference. I was neither impressed enough to stay loyal or disappointed enough to actively leave and go elsewhere. That was when rumors started to circulate that Google was going to launch an email service that would be commercial free, highly customizable and would come with a massive amount of free online storage that would forever keep increasing. If you went to the website you were told that only a select few people were currently being invited to try the beta version of the email client. There was a sign up box to put you email address in if you would like to be considered in the near future, I of course obliged and took my virtual place at the velvet rope waiting to enter the club.

In work over the next few weeks occasionally someone would come up and brag that they had been invited the try Googlemail. Every time this happened I was genuinely envious and felt left out of something exclusive. Then one day it happened for me too, an email arrived asking me to set up a Googlemail account – I had arrived. I signed up and did exactly what everyone else had done; told five or six of my geekiest friends the good news.

There are many thousands of documented examples of real world social proof out there. In one study, his team tested messages to influence reusing towels in hotel rooms.  The social proof message –“Almost 75% of other guests help by using their towels more than once” had 25% better results than all other messages.

In another study, a restaurant increased sales of specific dishes by 13-20% just by highlighting them as “our most popular items”.  Social Proof also works on your subconscious – it’s the reason why comedy shows often use a laugh track or audience; people actually laugh more when they can hear other people laughing.

Social proof is in my opinion the second most powerful subliminal sales persuasion technique you can use to accelerate your closure rate. I talked about this briefly in the original Hypnotic Salesman but here I would like to break in down further so you can really become an expert in using it.

Last year I woke up with a pain in my right flank. For a few weeks, I assumed I had twisted myself in my sleep or something equally innocent. Eventually, I started to worry that it must be something more significant and I decided to visit my GP. He said it was probably muscular related and not to worry about it. Unfortunately, my overactive brain had already got to work. I was unimpressed with his diagnosis and came quickly to the conclusion that he had made a mistake. I mean how can I trust his seven years at medical school when I have Dr. Google just a click away.

So, I went home and quickly diagnosed myself with a kidney stone. The more I read, the more certain I became that I had a kidney stone. Search after search was revealing symptoms that exactly matched my own. Okay, well not exactly but close enough damn it. With it being the weekend I had had a full 48 hours to research this terrible, painful condition before I could get back in front of my doctor. Monday morning I was at his office and blurted out that I am pretty sure it’s a kidney stone. He just looked at me with an emotionless expression and said ‘it’s not a kidney stone.’ Being a stubborn pain in the ass, I asked him to humor me and send me for the ultrasound regardless. If you are a doctor, I can appreciate how insulting this is, and I can only apologize to your profession.

The scan was negative for a kidney stone. I was half relieved and half terrified. Sure a kidney stone was painful, but it wasn't life-threatening. It wasn't long before Dr. Google was suggesting much worse causes for my pain. Liver cancer or pancreatic cancer were staring out from the screen and burning into my imagination. I decided I needed to step up my game, I didn't visit the GP again, but I instead found a private consultant. She didn't rule out all the sinister problems I had convinced myself of, but equally, she didn't think any of them were likely.

Over the space of six months, I had a vast array of blood tests, CT scan, and colonoscopy. All of them I were sure would prove my self-diagnosis to be correct. However, none of them did. Eventually, we got to the point where the doctor said 'there are no more tests we can do; Whatever the pain is, it's not the byproduct of an underlying serious illness'. I went home confused but reassured and stopped investigating the strange pain on my right side. A few months later I was walking the dogs with my wife, and I stopped dead in my tracks. Daniela turned and asked what was wrong. I said I had suddenly realized that the pain wasn't there and I couldn't remember the last time I had felt it.

I had spent several thousands of euros on tests because I believed what I was reading on the internet. However, in hindsight, the innocent diagnosis the doctor first made all those months ago was probably the correct one, and yet I steadfastly refused to believe it. This, I think is a clear example of what I call the law of personal bias.

We become more convinced by something the more we commit to it.

You can observe this law in action with gamblers and stock market investors. Before a gambler picks the horse he will place his bet on, his mind is unsure. He examines the information on each horse carefully, right up until he commits he remains suspicious and doubtful. However, once the bet is placed the gambler becomes increasingly convinced he has picked the winner. Why does this happen?

The reasons I call most of these compliance principles a 'law' is because they happen whether you want them to or not. In the same way that the Law of Gravity doesn't care whether you believe in it or not. Once you have a vested interest in something, the subconscious will actively seek out evidence to support your decision. So in the case of a stock market investor who has just plowed significant funds into the stock of a particular company. He will be hypersensitive to information about that stock. If he hears the company mentioned on the news, his ears will prick up, and he will take note of what is being said. He is more likely to overhear people talking about that company, and he will see favorable posts all over the internet.

Have you ever bought a make of car and then literally no sooner have you got it home you seem to see the same make of car everywhere you go. All of a sudden your new vehicle is as common as you like. This is the law of personal bias in action. You have invested and committed to the car, and now your subconscious will go on a scouting mission to validate the decision.

So you may be wondering how we can make use of this automatic action of the brain when it pertains to influence, compliance and persuasion. First, you should be able to see why repeat business is so vital to the success of any company. Do you think it's easier to persuade someone to do their first parachute jump or their second? The same is true in business. It's much harder to sign up a new customer than it is to convince an existing client to spend more with you. With the law of personal bias in mind, you should be able to see that if you can get your client using your product in their day to day life, then your chance of getting them to buy it becomes much more comfortable.

Often business owners are concerned at the suggestion of giving away a free product or running loss leader campaigns. On the surface, it seems counter-intuitive to give away the very product you need to sell. Once you understand the psychological reasons for doing so, the logic does an impressive backflip.

Neurolinguistic programmers and psychologists are adept at persuasive techniques and have discovered a magical tool.  They have uncovered the secret used by compliance professionals, or salesmen, that guarantee almost unbeatable results.  They have discovered that, by exactly mirroring the person you’re attempting to persuade, you can create a very deep sense of rapport and trust in that person.  To mirror someone is to do exactly as they do, one hundred per cent.  This means you mirror their posture, their gestures, their body language, their tone of voice, their inflection, their speaking rate, their disposition, even the way they breathe.  Mirroring is simple. When he or she leans forward, you lean forward.  When he gazes into your eyes, you return with like intensity.  When he crosses his arms, you fold yours.  When he smiles, you smile.  When he lifts the cup to drink, you do the same.  Match the speed of his voice; speak as fast or as slowly as he does.  Incorporate his words and phrases, mirror the vocal inflections, and mirror the rhythm and speed of his movement.  Breathe when he breathes by inhaling and exhaling as he does.  Be as outgoing or as reserved as he is. 

The hypnotist uses the mirroring of breathing to an extremely powerful level.  Rather than trying to copy the subject’s breathing, he has the luxury of forcing the subject to mirror his own.  He will actually say: ‘breathe deeply with me now, breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out’.  The assumption of the person being hypnotized is that this is no more than a relaxation technique, but it’s so much more than that.  During this process, the person is starting to hand over control and open the gateway to the subconscious. 

I always think you should mirror a person’s moods as well, just to intensify the rapture of the bond.  If the person appears depressed, the last thing you should do is be all excited and happy.  Validate their moods by mirroring them.  Let them see that their moods are reflected in your person.  For instance, you could say, ‘I can see how unhappy you are about this’.  The worst thing to do when attempting to mirror someone is to invalidate or belittle their feelings.  Never say, ‘ah you shouldn’t worry about it, it’ll be okay, things will look up’.  Such a disastrous statement instantly breaks the rapport, because you’re effectively saying, you are wrong, you are wrong to feel like that.

Don’t just mirror body movement. You should also take on a person’s beliefs and opinions, validate their notions.  Take care on matters of disagreement; it’s important to establish a strong similarity between the both of you.

The reason mirroring is so important is this.  When you mirror another person, you’re effectively saying, ‘we are alike, you are safe with me, you can trust me’.  By mirroring, you build trust, you establish credibility.  It’s an exceptionally reliable method and it can bring compliance.  It works magnificently because the mind is affected on a subconscious level. Once you have mirrored someone for about ten minutes, the magic really starts to kick in.  You can start to lead the conversation, you can actually force people to mirror you without really doing that much.

Mirroring establishes a subtle bond that makes it easy for you to gain agreement.  After a short period of mirroring, begin suggesting options for your prospect to follow.  You’ll find that the other person tends to continue the artificially generated rapport by acquiescing to your suggestions.  Why do they do that?  Well, you see, the act of mirroring induces a psychological feeling of pleasure. In order to maintain that pleasure, the mirroring must continue.  Essentially, it feels good to be with people who are like you. It’s a basic human need to be around those who are the same as us.  So the person being mirrored initially wants it to carry on because it feels good.  It’s kind of an imposed, self-conscious, catch-22 situation.  If the other person stops the mirroring process, the good feeling ends.  If they continue it, it allows you to control the outcome of the conversation, and what a fantastic catch-22 that is.

At this point, you no longer need to persist to actively maintain the mirror.  Your prospect willfully undertakes that burden, but before attempting to lead or persuade the other person, find out first if you’ve successfully established rapport.  You can do this very carefully and very subtly in a non-verbal level.  You can test to see whether your facial expressions, posture and speech rate are mirrored.  Mirror that person briefly and, after a while, change your posture and see if the other person responds.  If they do, rapport has now been generated.  If the other person resists your lead, this indicates that rapport does not yet exist.  Continue to mirror and test again in a little while.  Once rapport is verified, proceed with making suggestions in line with your objective.  As you make these suggestions, persist in testing for rapport.  When rapport is broken, back-track, step away, and seek new opportunities to suggest – but only after agreement has been re-established. 

The advantages of these skills are obvious in the field of sales, but they can also be a very effective way of meeting people and making friends.  When you have successfully gained rapport or trust with someone, they subconsciously notice that you are very similar to them.  Their mind seems to come up with the suggestions that this person is so similar to me. I must know them.  They start thinking things like, ‘this person’s like me, they must be a nice person, after all, I’m nice’.  Rapport, trust and mirroring are key essentials to the attraction process.  We use them all the time to gain someone’s respect or admiration.  In fact, we are naturally so good at gaining rapport already, that we’re often unaware that we’re doing it.

The next time you go to a club, watch the people who are dancing.  You’ll easily be able to pick out who’s attracted to whom.  It can be quite funny just to stand back and watch people as they follow each other around the dance floor, copying one another.

A quick tip for mirroring, though: don’t just start straight away. Allow the conversation to flow before you begin.  There are consequences for getting caught mirroring.  If you start as soon as you meet someone, they’ll still be judging you physically.  They’re more likely to notice your behaviour in relation to their own.  Just hold back at first and let the conversation begin.

Mirroring is used plainly and simply to disable a section of the brain.  That section is called the critical faculty and the theory is that the conscious mind is like a series of filters.  If I’m selling something to you, I’m trying to get my information past all those filters.  For example, imagine I approach you in the street and say, ‘I found a miracle cure for all ailments and it’s just going to cost you all your money’.  I have virtually no chance of getting that request through your filters of trust, belief and self-preservation.  One of those filters can be disabled by mirroring, thus making the task of communication one step easier.

Pacing is all about the way you communicate.  In every area of life I’ve found the success you achieve is in direct correlation to the effectiveness of your communication.  The first thing to remember is this: the way you prefer to communicate is largely irrelevant.  Pitching a deal in Spanish to a client who only speaks English is only going to result in one outcome: no deal.  Now, you may think that you can be very funny in Spanish, and the presentation may flow like a dream, but to your client, it’s irrelevant.  I know I’m stooping to a very basic scenario to illustrate the point. Nevertheless, the same rule applies; not only to the language of your communication, but pitch, tone, intonation, accent and volume too.  You must adjust your communication for every individual you meet.  To do this, you must first seek to understand how that person communicates. That’s where your active listening skills come in.  Find out whether they speak slowly, and think carefully about each and every word. Or perhaps they speak at a high speed, trying to squeeze as many words as possible into each and every breath.  Do they use their hands to emphasise important points?  Do they speak with a strong accent?  How do they use their speech?

All these areas are important to you because they give you a path into the person’s subconscious, and so begins the process of indirect hypnosis.  For example, if you speak at high speed to a person who prefers to digest every word, individually, and himself speaks slowly and precisely, you are subconsciously saying, ‘I am different from you, do not trust me’.  For the same reason, speaking loudly to a quietly-spoken person would have the same effect.  Think about it. If you’re a well-spoken person, how would you feel about a person who tried to sell to you in rough slang, littering his presentation with swear words?  You would automatically take a dislike to him because he’s not like you.  The barriers would go up. In fact, I’d be very surprised if that chap would make a single sale until he came across another client that communicated in a similar, rough slang.

Next, in Bulletproof Persuasion, I need to ask you a question.  It may appear to be a strange question.  What language do you speak?  Most people would answer that question with ‘English’, but that’s too broad a concept.  The English language is an envelope for many thousands of different dialects.  The basic differences start to show at a regional accent level.  Here’s an example for you. In England, someone speaking perfect, accent-less English (what’s sometimes referred to as Queen’s English) may respond to a statement you make with the words, ‘I don’t believe you’.  I’m sure we could all understand that, but travel three hundred miles north and the reply could be in a regional dialect and sound something like ‘huddaway man’.  It means the same thing. It means ‘I don’t believe you’. Nip into a local bar in the East End of London and you might get the response, ‘I don’t Adam and Eve it’. This is another example of a local dialect.  Some people in London use cockney rhyming slang; they use words that rhyme to mean other words.  ‘I don’t Adam and Eve it’ means ‘I don’t believe it’.  But if you asked them, they’d all say they spoke English.

Those differences are obvious for all to see and hear, and I don’t advise you to adjust your conversation to match.  In fact, many people will think you are making fun of them if you try and mimic their local dialect or accent, so stay well away from that.  It’s the more subtle differences; the ones related to the subconscious than the conscious that you should be aware of.  An awareness of difference in sensory communication is vital.  Human beings tend to have a favorite or preferred sensory communication. 

We have visual people.  These are people who organise their world by means of what they see, what they perceive visually.  They tend to speak predominantly using visual words.  For example, ‘look at that fast car, I’d look great in a car like that’.  These people are often more concerned with their appearance than others. As children, they probably tended to do better at mathematics, as opposed to reading and spelling in school.  Visual imagery is often easily attainable for these people and frequently they have vivid and colorful dreams.  A visual person often needs to see something before he or she will believe it to be true.  Therefore, they understand better when you show them how to accomplish things.  You may also notice that visual people tend to look at the person who is speaking more than others.

Then we have auditory people. These people speak using words that predominantly relate to sound.  They say things like, ‘well, it sounds to me like she won’t listen to what you’re saying to her, I think she’s turned you off’.  These people are real talkers.  As children, they tended to speak early in their development.  Their voice tone really gives indications of their moods.  Their temper when speaking is often very rhythmic.  Auditory people respond best when given verbal instructions, and they can actually listen very well when they appear not to be listening.

Finally, we have kinesthetic people.  These are people that communicate best through their sense of touch and emotions.  They speak most often in feeling words, like, ‘I’ve a feeling if he doesn’t get in touch with what’s bugging him, we’re all in for a rough time’.  These people may be labeled clingers or huggers due to their strong need for physical contact.  They’re often considered sloppy because they pay more attention to how their clothes feel than how they look.  Their voice pitch is slightly lower than visual and auditory people.  A kinesthetic person is often labeled emotional.  They may use a lot of hand gestures when they’re speaking and often count with their fingers.  Kinesthetic people usually enjoy crafts and body contact sports. 

The one thing to bear in mind is that nobody sits completely in one of those three categories.  These profiles are not fool proof; in fact, we’re all in each one of them. However, we’re predominant in just one.  Your homework for this section of the course is to find out which one you are.  You do this by writing down on a piece of paper five or six subjects that you would like to talk about.  Then get a tape recorder and record yourself talking about these objects.  They may be things like your family, your children, your car, your job, your house, your garden.  Talk about them for as much as you can and then play back the tape and see if you can tell which phrases you use more than others.  Are you a visual person, an auditory person or a kinesthetic person?

Okay, let’s expose some body language.  We all use body language every day.  If we’re feeling great, it shows in how we hold and use our body.  Conversely, if we look at someone else’s body, we can often tell how they’re feeling by the signals their body is giving off.  If you’ve ever watched a couple flirting, you’ll know exactly what I mean.  Have you ever been present when you’re with a couple who obviously are attracted to each other?  Neither of them has to turn to you and say, ‘we’d rather you weren’t here, actually’.  You get the message loud and clear just watching their body language.

When I talk about communication with people, they automatically assume I mean speech and talking.  But the fact is, only about seven per cent of the information we receive is from the words we actually hear or say.  Thirty-eight per cent of the information we receive comes from tone, intonation, inflection and speed of the other person’s voice.  Let me give you an example.  You don’t need to understand French to know that, when spoken with angry intonation, ‘vous êtes répugnants, je vous déteste’ is not a nice statement.  You can tell from the tone used that it means ‘I hate you’.  Likewise, if spoken with gentle intonation, ‘vous êtes si beau, je t'aime’ is obviously non-threatening and is quite likely to be a compliment.  Even as powerful as tone and inflection are, they’re still only representing thirty-eight per cent of the message coming to you.  A staggering fifty-five per cent of the information we receive in a conversation is from the other person’s body language.

These non-verbal signals help us deal with the person and stay focused on what the person is saying.  If you focus too much on their body language signals, the other person might become uncomfortable, so be careful.  It’s useful to be able to read another person’s body language, but it’s equally useful to learn how to get your body to send the right signals and eliminate the wrong signals.  A word of warning, however: body language and eye motion is not an exact science. It’s very much open to interpretation.  Many signals have different meanings; depending on the person and the situation that person is in.  Please keep this in mind when you assess a body language signal.  Professionals, such as police interrogators, look for groups of messages, rather than just one specific action.  If they’re interviewing a suspected criminal regarding a theft, they will be looking for the same body language repeated whenever they talk about the crime.

But before we talk about body language, let’s talk first about the only part of the brain you can see from the outside, the eyes.  The brain operates in sections rather than as a whole.  The left hand side of the brain controls the right hand side of the body, and is also responsible for logic.  The right hand side of the brain controls the left hand side of the body and processes calls on the memory.  This applies to virtually all people; however, there are a few exceptions to the rule.  About one in twenty-five people are left handed, and just over half those people have a reversed brain configuration.  The great advantage for us to know is that, when various parts of the brain are being accessed, the eyes move to locate it.  When someone is imagining or making things up, the left brain becomes active and the eyes have a tendency to glance right at the same time.  So putting it simply, when you ask someone to recall a fact, they will glance left to locate it in their memory.  If you them to imagine something or, indeed, if they are lying to you, they will glance right.  Here and now you can only begin to imagine how many situations you could be in where this would be an amazing thing to be aware of.

Now, let’s go a little deeper.  If you notice someone glance towards their upper left, we already know they’re accessing their memory banks. This upward angle also indicates they’re specifically looking for a visual memory; something they’ve seen.  To test this reaction, ask someone what colour their car is, or ask them to describe their garden.  If they look right and up, they’re imagining something visual. They could be thinking of the type of car they would like in the future, or what they think their garden will look like in summer.

So what does it mean if you catch someone glance down and left?  Well, we already know that left means memory recall. The downward angle means they’re accessing what’s called the auditory dialogue cortex of the brain.  This means they’re remembering words or sounds, or something someone has said to them before.  You may also notice this glance from someone when they’re being very careful about what they’re saying.  Finally, a downward right glance is still the auditory dialogue cortex, but the right-sided direction means the person is imagining how something would sound.  The glance can also indicate the person is imagining how something will feel.

This is something to practice, but you also need to practice doing it without getting caught.  If you stare at someone while they’re talking to you, after about five seconds they will start to become very uncomfortable under your gaze.  They may even stop what they’re saying and ask if everything’s okay.  So be very careful.  Another thing you should notice at this point is how comfortable the person is in your company.  If they’re sitting, are they facing you or pulled away to one side?  Are they slumped back in the chair, or sitting bolt upright?  When they sat down, did they move the chair closer to you or further away? 

When you meet someone for the first time, you subconsciously set your personal perimeter. This is an area surrounding your body that you claim as your own.  You never notice that space until someone steps into it.  Perhaps you can remember a time now when an over-pushy salesman just got too close to you.  Remember how uncomfortable it felt.  Again, once you’re aware of this invisible territory, you can use it to your advantage.  Let’s just say you’re at a party and you seem to be trapped talking to someone you don’t want to be talking to. Take a step forward into their territory and watch how it alters the conversation.  If they step back, you just move closer.  Eventually, they’ll feel so uncomfortable they’ll wrap up the conversation and walk away.  Before this happens, you may even see them looking around the room for an excuse to get away. Just watch out and be aware of this, because some high pressure salesman use this technique to get a quick signature off you.  They make you feel so uncomfortable you will literally do anything to get them to go away.

Another non-verbal response to discomfort I want you to be aware of is the effect of adrenaline on the body.  When a person is uncomfortable or threatened, their body releases adrenaline.  The origin of adrenaline was to fuel the body in the ‘fight or flight’ response; either to run away from the situation or fight your way out of it.  However, it is more than likely these days that adrenaline is not used for that purpose and it must be burnt off in other ways.  When someone is lying to you and, as a result, feels uncomfortable, adrenaline is being burnt by the body.  The by-product of this process is heat.  The body temperature rises and sweat is produced to compensate.  Watch a person’s skin. Does it become shinier?  Does it develop beads of sweat without any increase in ambient room temperature?  It could be a clear sign that they’re uncomfortable being there with you, and it could mean they’re lying.

You see, we say what we want, but our body conveys how we feel.  Someone doesn’t say, ‘I’m shaking in fear’, but his body automatically conveys that.  Body language is the final barometer of truth.  It bears and reveals innermost thoughts.  Anyone can tell a tall tale in a flat tone and appear credible.  Your tongue may say one thing but your body may say the exact opposite.  It very rarely lies, unless you’re one of the very few people that knows how to control it.  Studying the body can identify whether an individual actually believes in what he is saying.  It also reveals at that moment – in fact, it lays before you – an entire range of emotions that you can’t grasp from listening to his speech.

But understanding body language does so much more than help to identify the mental state of others.  Expert knowledge of this non-verbal form of communication empowers you to project any image desired.  A master uses his body language to subliminally influence his prospects.  He creates irresistible messages that subconsciously persuade and control. Through special gestures he communicates in very subtle, yet forceful, ways.  By combining verbal persuasion with subtle non-verbal persuasion, compliance becomes all too easy to obtain.  Body language can identify you as calm, confident and credible.  Just as easily, it can reveal that you are shaky, unstable and questionable.  The objective is to use body language that identifies you as confident, likeable, charming and authoritative.

There are three powerful benefits you gain from body language mastery. You quickly identify hidden emotions of others; negotiations become easier when you instantaneously identify areas of discussion that cause discomfort, and ?.  Master the fundamentals of body language and you will find you have a potent new force in your arsenal of communication.

In the next chapter, I’m going to give you a list of what different parts of the body are saying when they react a certain way.  I’ve specifically put this in it’s own chapter so you can go back to it frequently and make notes, if you need to.  But before you read that section, please bear in mind that when you are looking for eye movement and body language, you are not looking for just one reaction.  If somebody looks right once, it doesn’t mean they’re lying.  You’re looking for clusters of body language and clusters of eye movements.

We may have been chastised when we were young by our mother for being overly inquisitive and repeatedly told that ‘curiosity killed the cat,’ but the reality is, as hard as we try we can’t stop being curious creatures. This trait is hard-wired into every human being alive today. It is this peculiarity of our species that has allowed us to build buildings that almost touch the sky, to put a man on the moon and fly through the air like a bird. Our curiosity and urge to explore are responsible for all our successes and, on the flip side, all our disasters too.

One of the most important medical advances in history occurred from an accident born out of curiosity. On the morning of September 3rd, 1928, Professor Alexander Fleming was having a clear up of his cluttered laboratory. He was sorting through some glass plates that had previously been coated with staphylococcus bacteria as part of research Fleming was doing.

One of the plates had mold on it. The mold was in the shape of a ring, and the area around the ring seemed to be free of the bacteria Staphylococcus. The mold was penicillin. Fleming had a life long interest in ways of killing off bacteria, and he concluded that the bacteria on the plate around the ring had been killed off by some substance that had come from the mold.

Further research on the mold found that it could kill other bacteria and that it could be given to small animals without any side effects. However, within a year, Fleming had moved onto other medical issues, and it was ten years later that Howard Florey and Ernst Chain, working at Oxford University, isolated the bacteria-killing substance found in the mold - penicillin.

IN 1941, a doctor, Charles Fletcher, at a hospital in Oxford had heard of their work. He had a patient who was near to death as a result of bacteria getting into a wound. Fletcher used some of Chain’s and Florey’s penicillin on the patient, and the injury made a spectacular recovery. Unfortunately, Fletcher did not have enough penicillin to entirely rid the patient’s body of bacteria, and he died a few weeks later as the bacteria took a hold. However, penicillin had shown what it could do on what had been a lost cause. The only reason the patient did not survive was that they did not have enough of the drug - not that it did not work.

Florey got an American drugs company to mass produce it, and by D-Day (June 6th, 1944), enough was available to treat all the bacterial infections that broke out among the troops. Penicillin got nicknamed "the wonder drug," and in 1945 Fleming, Chain and Florey were awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine.

The Wright brothers wondered what it would be like to fly like a bird; Alexander Graham Bell was curious as to if it would be possible for a human voice to be carried down a cable just the same as electricity travels. Every other inventor of our time was powered into action by the human fascination with the world in which we live. Children will always burn themselves on the hot stove and fall off things they have decided to climb. As frustrating as it is for us parents it is an essential part of the human psyche. It is an unbreakable law that stays with us all the way through life. Sure, with every day that passes we learn more about the world we live in and gain valuable insight from the mistakes we make so that we don’t repeatedly burn ourselves on the stove, but the spark of curiosity is never extinguished. This law of human behavior is a powerful one to know about when it comes to the art of persuasion.

The same as the Law of Scarcity and the Law of Social Proof, as hard as we try, we can’t prevent ourselves from responding to anything that triggers the Law of Curiosity. I started this chapter by explicitly asking you not to read it, in fact, I went further than that and told you that to carry on reading would be ill-advised and perhaps even dangerous to you. Despite this, you ignored my words and carried on. Probably for many people reading; this chapter suddenly became the most important and exciting in the book. It’s the same reason why when any new product is launched they cover it in a sheet or hide it behind a red drape. This is a deliberate manipulation of the Law Of Curiosity. Think about it, if the manufacturers of a new automobile model really didn’t want us to see the product until the CEO proudly walked onto the stage to announce it, why wouldn’t they just keep it stored off stage in the wings and just drive it into view at the appropriate time. This rarely happens; instead, the vehicle is placed center stage, covered in a tarpaulin with a spotlight on it deliberately teasing us. We all want to lift the sheet and see what is hidden beneath – even if we are not particularly into cars.  

Striptease artists have inadvertently tugged at this automatic response for thousands of years. Above all else, the art of stripping was initially created for entertainment purposes. What better venue for entertainment for a man than a woman and her body? The idea which had created the striptease was not meant to be a form of legal prostitution, but to allow the men in the audience an erotic, entertaining and artistic fantasy which afterward would enable the men to return home to their wives and children with their morals intact.

The burlesque houses of the 1920s really seized upon the power of the Law Of Curiosity and saw the real money-making potential of it by using it to relieve men all over the world of their hard earned wages. After all, if an ankle could cause a man to hand over his horse and carriage, the thigh could only cause him to hand over the house and children. Heaven forbid! So all sorts of tricks were devised to draw men into watching these "burlesque" shows under the guise of "entertainment." Things such as full body stockings known as "fleshlings" started making appearances. Merely think of oversized pantyhose pulled over the length of a corseted body that came in shocking colors of flesh or white. All were giving the illusion that the man was watching nude women prance about the stage when in fact they were very well clothed. Of course, giving men a bit too much entertainment always has given the government cause to get involved. When women grew even more creative on stage (with the help of the male bosses offstage, of course) Senate Bills were promptly being proposed in the 1890s to hold back the inevitable. They tried to fine such performing women $5 to $100 for their involvement in burlesque. The crime? Horrid pornography, of course. Never mind fining all the men that attended these venues...it was all Eve's fault, to begin with, remember?

As times changed, allowing more freedom on stage, so did the acts going into the 1920s. Fleshlings were tossed aside, and fans and bubbles and birds were introduced as a substitute. Which of course is where we begin the striptease that we know of today. A woman steps out on stage covered in balloons and playfully pops one at a time as men yell out for her to keep right on popping. When the last balloon is done away with, that is when the men realize the fantasy is over and she is actually wearing tassels and a pair of underwear. The men loved it and continued to love it up into the 1950s. If the girl had burst all the balloons at the same time, do you think the effect would be the same? Of course not, if the new automobile model were simply driven onto the stage at the start of the presentation the drama and excitement would be significantly reduced also.

There were no limitations when it came to the striptease once we found ourselves past the 1920s. Underwear and tassels were about all that was left by the time the striptease was in full swing. And this may surprise you to no end, as it did me, but the striptease, as we know it, disappeared in the 1950s. Pornography and strip joints took over, leaving nothing else to the imagination of a man and creating a whole new generation. Once the curiosity is gone it all over, and this is why we live in a world of fashions and trends.

Back in the 1980s when I was a young teenager, there were some very peculiar phases of fashion. For a while, it was the craze to wear odd socks and the more dramatic the color difference, the better. It became popular because it was unusual and intriguing to us but once everyone started to do the same thing is no longer held any curiosity to us. It became commonplace, and it’s quite challenging to be fascinated by such things.

Masters of persuasion know how to take advantage of this personality trait in their prospects to generate interest in their products and services. Playing directly to this automatic law you can ensure that your emails, newsletters, commercials and marketing get noticed and don’t join the thousands of others in the garbage.  Whether you are leaving a message on your client’s voicemail or emailing him to set up an appointment make sure that you deliberately activate his sense of curiosity. If two different cleaning product salesmen emailed an automobile dealership over the space of a few days and the first one sent an email with that stated:

‘I want to arrange a time to come and see you to discuss our new range of upholstery shampoo.’

The second salesman wrote:

‘We have been doing a lot of research into keeping automobile interiors clean, and we have stumbled across quite an unusual discovery. Can I make an appointment to come over and show you this strange thing we have found?’…

Which one is more likely to generate a positive outcome for the salesman?

Both the emails set out to achieve the same result and both salesmen are selling the same product, but by carefully selecting the words to tug at specific psychological laws we can manifest an entirely different and better outcome.

Joe Sugarman of PsychologicalTriggers.com is worth checking out because he really knows the power of playing to the Law Of Curiosity and writing sales messages that hit the mark and it all starts with the headline. He says:

Actually, all the elements in an advertisement are designed to do one thing: Get you to start reading the ad copy. For it is in the ad copy that you really begin to sell.

Think about it. If you get people to read the first sentence of your advertising and then can keep them reading through exciting copy and good solid writing, chances are you're going to make the sale.

But if they skip by your ad, read just a few words and then turn the page to something else, you've lost them.

Keeping this in mind, what should the headline say or do to attract attention? First, I keep my headlines very short. A short caption will draw attention, be easy to read and create (hopefully) enough curiosity to cause a reader to understand the subheadline. Strong words like "Free," "Breakthrough," "Sale," "Secret" and maybe a dozen other words that have proven attention-getting power can be used.

Typically, a short sentence might look like: "Computer Breakthrough" or even "Internet Secret Revealed." In each case, the headline isn't long enough to say much except create curiosity if the reader indeed is interested in the subject of the ad.

If you are successful in stopping the reader, getting the reader to read your headline and be curious enough to read on, the subheadline is the next element you've got to address. A sub-headline should have approximately 16 words, explain the concept or product being sold but still arouse a lot of curiosity. Telling too much in the sub-headline should be avoided.

For example, "Computer Breakthrough" might have a sub-headline like: "New concept in circuit design triples speed, increases memory and has a mind of its own." That last part: "a mind of its own," would certainly make me wonder and read further. And if my copy were productive and successful, I would be well on my way to selling my prospect.

One of the useful tips in writing good headlines is going to your local supermarket and pick up some of the hot tabloids or magazines that appeal to the same group you are interested in attracting. Often the sensational headlines are tested to work using many of the hot words that will help you write your headline. And many of them can directly be modified to fit your product.

One final thought about headlines. Keep the headline type large and bold but with a type style that is easy to read. Keep your sub-headline smaller, much less bold and of course easy to read. Comprehension is the key here. Too complicated a typeface or too bold and you'll lose the reader. Plus you want the reader to transition into the text, and the sub-headline is like a bridge to the text.

In summary, keep your major headline short and bold, so the prospect is compelled to read your sub-headline. Then make the sub-headline so compelling that the reader wants to find out more and read the text of the ad you've written. And finally, make the type easy to read.

Follow these tips, and you'll find yourself writing many strong headlines in the future.

Welcome to the most important section in Bulletproof Persuasion.  So far we’ve talked through how the human mind works and why people react the way they do.  Now, with this knowledge, we can start to create a way of communicating that accesses traits of the human mind that people have no conscious control over.  Remember, the subconscious cannot judge or evaluate, so the path of least resistance is always to go directly to this section of the mind.

The first secret I’m going to tell you about in this vital section of Bulletproof Persuasion is the three most important words in the whole world.  Right now, I’m going to tell you about word number two and word number three, and I’ll reveal the world’s most important word at the end of the course.  I want to keep you concentrating, you see.

The one thing that all three of these words have in common is that people don’t hold them in high regards.  These words are casually thrown away in every conversation every day by everyone.  Nobody uses them with respect, and if I went out now, out on the street and asked one hundred people if I could pay them never to use these words again, I’m sure it wouldn’t take me long to reach an acceptable figure.  People just do not understand the power of these words.  If they did, they just would not use them the way they do.

So let’s start at number three.  The third most important word in the whole world, in my opinion, is the word ‘BUT’; just that small word, ‘BUT’.  You see to me - and I hope for you too, by the end of this course - The word ‘BUT’ just sounds like a colossal alarm bell ringing.  In fact, sometimes when it’s used in conversation, for a few moments afterward, I can’t hear anything except that significant alarm bell ringing.  The word ‘BUT’ has a unique ability to delete sentences that have already happened.

For example, imagine during a conversation with your boss, he says to you, ‘yes well I think you’re a very effective manager, but virtually everyone else I’ve asked disagrees with me.’ Only the world’s most positive man could come away from a comment like that with his boss and think, ‘wow, he thinks I’m good at my job.’  The word ‘BUT’ deleted the sentence before; it became irrelevant after The word ‘BUT’ was said.  The message the boss was trying to convey was, ‘people around here think you’re pretty poor at your job.’

The word 'BUT' is often used to soften the blow of the real content of the statement.  The less confident the communicator, the more often and more incorrectly The word ‘BUT’ is used.  For example, rather than having the conviction to walk up to someone who’s been talking behind their backs and say, ‘I’m extremely annoyed at what you’ve been saying about me,’ they will probably use the but word to ease their true intent into the conversation.  For example, ‘listen, I normally have a lot of respect for you, but I’m upset about what you’ve been saying.’  Master communicators use the but word less often; they get to the point quicker, and they don’t detract from what they’re saying.  When they do use the but word, they have a full appreciation of the subconscious power it holds.

Assume The word ‘BUT’ deletes the previous statement.  If you reverse the content of the speech, you can force a person to concentrate on the positive aspect rather than the negative.  You see, most people would put the positive thing first and then detract from it with the but section.  If you went to a car dealership and the salesman said to you, ‘I’d love to reduce the price, but I’m going to have to check with my manager,’ the way you would regain positive control of this conversation would be to reverse the angle of that statement.  You would say back to him, ‘so you’re going to check with your manager, but you really want to reduce the price.’

Another compelling way of deleting a negative is to use the word 'AND' instead of the word 'BUT.'  The meaning of the sentence remains the same, but the effect is massively different and more likely to be in your favor.  Let’s try that sentence again using and instead of but:  ‘So you’re going to check with your manager, and you’d love to reduce the price.’

The second most powerful word I want to tell you about is because.  Again, another word that people throw away without really understanding its power, and the power of the word ‘BECAUSE’ is a little bit more complicated than the word 'BUT'.  In a study, a young girl was told to approach the front of a queue of people waiting for a shop to open.  She politely asked if she could join the queue at the front rather than having to go to the back and stand in line.  She was always polite, she always offered a smile, and the result was that between fifty-five and sixty percent of people let her cut in line.

Then they repeated the experiment and had the girl add onto the end of her request the line, ‘because I’m in a rush.’  So the approach went like this: ‘excuse me, do you mind if I join the queue here rather than joining at the back because I’m in such a rush?’  The effect was amazing; ninety percent of people let her cut in line.  This wasn’t because she had such a convincing argument, it was down to that word ‘BECAUSE’. She was effectively saying, ‘well just because I want to.’  So why did it have such a dramatic effect?  This goes back to our childhood.  The word ‘BECAUSE’ is what I call a developmental power word and its used frequently and often in extreme and powerful situations when you’re a child.

When you were growing up, if you went to touch the hot stove your mother may have shouted, ‘no, don’t touch the stove!’.  As a growing child, you ask why and your mother says because it’ll hurt you - and that’s it.  There’s no further explanation of why it will hurt, how it will hurt or what will happen; that’s all you get.  The because is held up as a good enough reason for you to do as you are told.  This happens so often as you grow up that the repetition embeds the word ‘BECAUSE’ so profoundly in your subconscious that it becomes what we call a trigger word.

The extreme example of this is when you’re arguing with someone, and they offer no more than the word ‘BECAUSE’ as their explanation of their thinking.  I’m sure you’ve been in this situation.  Let me give you an example.  ‘Dave, I don’t understand why you prefer the red car over the blue car.’ Dave replies, ‘well, just because I do.’  What a great argument.  So if you want to manifest compliance in your conversations, always give a because.  Even if the reason is not fantastic, the word ‘BECAUSE’ is often enough to provide you with the last word.

Now, remember, these are the two words I consider to be the second and third most important words in the whole world.  There is one word that has much more power than either of those two, and I will tell you about that at the end of the course.  Just a reminder at this point that I consider us all to be salesmen.  Whether you’re trying to persuade your boss to give you the day off, or trying to get your father to buy you a new puppy.  From the day we’re born we learn how to become salesmen.  So if I make reference to selling and that’s not your particular career choice, please don’t switch off or skip forward assuming it’s not relevant to you.

So, with that thought in mind, imagine after a hard day at work you decide you would just love to go to the bar and enjoy a freezing cold glass of beer, just to unwind, you understand.  So you ring a friend and ask him to come along to keep you company, but he doesn’t seem too keen.  Eventually, you manage to talk him round; you tell him how cold that beer’s going to be, how great it’s going to be to go to the bar and you might even say to him that you have some gossip for him and you can only tell him face to face.  Eventually, he agrees, and you meet him at the bar.  Effectively you just sold the idea to him.

Anyone can communicate on a basic level; even babies manage it eventually.  You only need a few words to express a point of view or ask a question. However, it’s the master communicator who can not only make a person hear the words but also feel emotions connected to them.  The ability to make a person feel an emotion is a potent skill.  Before we start to consider what we can do with emotions, we must first understand (a) what they are and (b) what effect they have on our lives. 

I’m always telling people to keep learning. 

Never let a day go by that you don’t’ learn something.  I personally never make a journey without self-improvement, motivational or educational tape series in my car.  I just can’t tell you how valuable to my life this habit has become. I do urge you never to stop learning.  We’re all very good at learning new sports or manual tasks like painting the house or even learning to build a chair or a table.  We’re all very capable of expanding our intellect. 

Let’s consider the example of, say, learning another language or even listening to this course in subliminal persuasion.  We rarely take time to learn more about and develop our emotions.  When you think about what feelings are, and the power they hold over us, you begin to see how short-sighted this is.  Emotions are love, peace, despair, anger, happiness, hatred and all these other extreme conditions. 

Every year the number of suicides in the world increases.  Nobody ever commits the ultimate act of destruction to their life just because they want to.  They don’t do it because someone told them to do it or even because other people they know have done it.  They’re driven to do it by emotion.  That emotion could be grief, despair, fear or loneliness, but the person feels an emotion so powerful they would instead cease to exist than handle it anymore.  I always think that’s a real eye-opener to the real power of human emotions. 

Emotions are even more powerful than the conscious mind, and I can prove that to you.  We all know positive thinking is the best way to think.  You certainly get more success in everything you do if you approach it in a positive frame of mind.  Say I get you a glass and fill it halfway with water and ask you if it’s half full or is it half empty; I know you’re a confident, successful type of person.  So you will say without a shadow of a doubt ‘Craig, that glass is half full.’  Some may even add an expression to that true belief, like ‘it’s half full, and I’m so lucky I have half left.’ 

Okay, so with that in mind, how about tonight, while you’re sleeping I come around to your house and I let the air out of the tires on your car.  Now, don’t get me wrong, not all the air, just half.  Now, are you still Mr. and Mrs. Positive?  I mean, those tires are half full, aren’t they?  Or perhaps there’s an emotion pulling quite hard on your opinion of the situation now. Maybe anger, revenge, perhaps you’re upset, maybe you hate me now. 

An extreme example, I know, but once you acknowledge the power of these emotions, you must see that every feeling you can have can be both good and bad.  Let’s take the passion of desire as an example. Desire as a fulfillment of a pure human need is fine, but what happens when what you desire is unavailable to you or restricted from you?  The emotion just doesn’t go away or subside.  It grows, and it mutates.  It can turn into greed or lust. 

Emotions are complex.  They don’t just do one job.  They are fluid.  They are uncontrollably changeable.  For example, you may feel jealous of a successful work colleague, but you don’t feel the same thing towards a successful child.  Emotions are the precursor to every sale that’s ever been made.  People don’t buy products, they but what that product gives them. 

People don’t buy a car because they want a car.  They buy a car because they want to get from A to B, because they want freedom, because of the way it makes them feel.  People don’t buy a light bulb; they purchase light and security.  They acquire the ability to see in the dark.  For this reason, the world’s top salesmen don’t sell items; they sell feelings. 

Imagine you’re the salesman selling fire alarms.  You visit a prospect who has just lost everything he owns to fire.  As you pitch to him, he says how impressive your product is, but goes on to explain that he just can’t afford to buy from you.  There’s thousands of dollars’ worth of damage to his house, and he’s just found out he wasn’t adequately insured.  Most salespeople would sympathize and leave. 

The advanced salesman would empathize and say, ‘well it’s a good job I came along.  If you want to ensure that you never feel like this, if you want to make sure that you don’t feel as bad as you’re feeling right now, one of our fire protection systems is not a should, it’s a must.  You absolutely must have one’.  So, let’s look at the skill of calling an emotion.  The quickest way to pull a specific emotion from a person’s subconscious is to use an anchor. 

Anchors are psychological bookmarks, literally scarred into the subconscious.  They’re created by intensely emotional experiences or heavily repeated events.  For example, as a child, whenever you misbehaved your mother perhaps gave you the look - that certain little expression that told you exactly what she thought of your actions.

Later in life, you’re arguing with your partner, and inadvertently he gives you the same look.  For no apparent reason, you just fly off the handle and storm out the room.  Your partner’s left behind thinking ‘well, what did I say?’  You’re angry upset beyond belief and you have no idea why.  Your partner certainly has no idea that he accidentally touched a negative anchor and released it.

As a salesperson, it would be impossible for you to know about all those little looks and psychological anchors that people have repressed, but there are some universally shared anchors.  There are certain words that get tend to get used to intensely emotional experiences and, once you know what these are, you can punctuate your speech with them to induce a specific response.  Anchors can be both positive and negative.  They can be created accidentally or by design. 

For example, imagine a funeral - poor John has just buried his wife, and naturally, he’s devastated.  All his friends and family are there to pay their respects and support the poor man at his time of grief.  One by one, the people come up to him, pat him reassuringly on the shoulder and say how sorry they are for his loss.  Several times this is repeated.  People approach him, pat him on the shoulder and share his grief. 

Now imagine that six months down the road, he starts to get over his incredibly traumatic experience and starts to regain control of his life.  Initially, when people asked how he was feeling, he couldn’t help the tears flowing, he just couldn’t hold them back. He was still so sore, so upset.  But now, as I say, the time has healed his pain a little and he can talk about his wife and his feelings quite calmly and reflectively.

But then one day a friend walks up to him and pats him on the shoulder and asks how he’s feeling.  Instantly he breaks down in tears.  He’s inconsolable with grief and emotion.  He says things like ‘oh, I’m sorry, I thought I was getting over it all but apparently, I’m not.’  Both people are unaware they triggered an anchor.  The mere action of patting him on the shoulder and asking him how he is released an emotional anchor.

Similarly, perhaps you’ve watched a TV programme in the past with a friend.  Maybe the main character in the show has a catchphrase that you find funny.  You and your friend start using the slogan as a private joke between yourselves.  You use it every day in conversation.  It’s funny to you because you understand where the joke came from and the context of the line.  Then, one day you’re at work without your friend, and the boss inadvertently uses the phrase in a presentation.  You can’t help but let out a splutter of giggles and have to embarrassingly excuse your behavior. 

These are all examples of accidentally anchored emotions.  The great bonus for the master communicator is these powerful and irresistible calls for emotion can be deliberately created in both yourself and all those around you.  For example, if every time you feel fantastic you click your fingers, eventually, with enough repetition, the act of clicking your finger will automatically bring that feeling to you. 

This is an excellent technique for summoning confidence when you need it.  If every time you feel super-confident you click your fingers, then eventually to feel confident all you need to do is click your fingers and start your presentation.  The feeling of confidence will automatically come to you. 

I know it may sound a little farfetched, but this powerful reaction of the subconscious has been heavily researched, most famously by the Russian Nobel Prize winner, Pavlov.  You’ve heard the story.  He would merely ring a bell every time he fed his dogs.  Eventually, over time, he would only have to ring that bell, and the dogs would start salivating and drooling, regardless of whether he had any food or not. 

If you don’t have the advantage of time or a deep enough relationship with someone to develop anchors in them, you can use specific pre-existing verbal anchors that virtually everyone has in them.  We call these ‘power’ words or ‘trigger’ words.  A power word automatically calls an emotion from the subconscious.  These are words like love, pain, desire, loss, money, mother, father, death.

Some words are more equal than others. These words can be used to significant effect in your presentation and your persuasion techniques, but use them with respect.  They’re not to be thrown away.  They work best when delivered in a slightly different tone to the rest of your dialogue.  You’ll find ways to use these verbal anchors by always being aware of your prospects’ environment.  There will be traces of their private lives and personality in their office, in their car, in the way they dress, everywhere around them.

If a salesperson turns up to see a client and notices that he has a baby seat in the back of his car, you can be pretty sure what the most important thing in their life is.  Once you know what turns them on, what motives them, what triggers emotion in them, you can make compelling presentations to them. 

Here’s an example of a power word in use.  Imagine our salesman walks into a client’s office, and he notices on the desk there’s a silver-framed picture of a child of the age of about two years old.  Now, he could show an interest by saying ‘oh is that your kid,’ but, as any loving parent will tell you, the better way to say it would be ‘oh is that your baby.’  The word baby automatically generates an emotion.  It’s an anchor word.  Kid is just a word.  It’s a throwaway. 

In the same way, certain words are embedded as emotion calling trigger words.  Even specific tones of voice or ways of speaking can recall feelings.  I don’t know about you, but my mother had a tone of voice that filled me with dread.  I only had to hear ‘Craig!’ bellowing out, and I’d think ‘oh my God, what have I done now?’.  If it I had been very naughty, I’d get my full name mentioned.  She would stand in the kitchen and shout, ‘Craig David Beck, get down here now!’.

The entertainer and circus owner, PT Barnum, knew the best way to please a crowd of people was to make every one of them think the show was being produced just for them.  He was looked on by most people as a lovable rogue, but others saw him as a manipulator and a swindler.  He designed a way of creating sentences that appeared to be directly relevant to every person he met - so he could say them to people, and they would be astonished as to how he knew them so well having never met before.

These lines became known as ‘Barnum statements,’ and they still work today.  Psychics and fortune tellers have been using them to con willing fools for many years.  Let me show you some examples of Barnum statements, statements that appear to be purely relevant to you but are relevant to everyone.  You may have seen some of these if you read your daily horoscope in the newspaper. 

You have a strong need for other people to like and admire you; you pride yourself as an independent thinker, and you don’t accept other people’s statements without satisfactory proof.  Or at times you’re extroverted and sociable while at other times you’re introverted and wary; you find it unwise to be too frank and revealing yourself to others.  Or on the outside, you seem to be pretty tough and hard but on the inside you’re soft, and you have feelings too.

I am not suggesting you use Barnum statements, but I do want you to be aware of when they’re being used on you.  They’re statements designed to make a lot of people feel special, but remember, it’s a trick. It could be the forerunner for a heavy sales pitch.  Don’t fall into the trap of Barnum statements.

We couldn’t talk about emotions without talking about the two biggest ones, pleasure and pain.  These two are such powerful motivators that some people believe everything we do, everything we have ever done, has been purely in the avoidance of pain and the achievement of pleasure. 

Some psychologists theorize that we will do more to avoid pain than we will do to gain pleasure.  However, I believe the concept is more complex than that.  If that were true, then anyone who went on a diet would succeed, but the reality is that research shows us that ninety-five percent of people who go on a diet within two years have not only put back on the weight that they lost but an extra two pounds as well.  Ninety-five percent is a pretty startling number, and I believe it has a lot to do with the pleasure/pain motivation versus time.

You see, if you’re overweight, the pain is that you feel fat, unattractive and unhealthy.  You have low self-esteem, you can’t always shop in the shops you want to for the clothes you want.  You can’t keep up with your young children.  You feel sluggish and tired all the time.  There’s a whole pile of pain in this situation.  So to try and get away from the pain you go on a diet. 

The problem with a diet is the time it takes to move from pain to pleasure is pretty substantial, especially if you are, say, fifty pounds overweight. The weight will not come off overnight.  It could take a year or more before you reach your target before you reach your pleasure goal.  Since it takes so long to move away from the pain, people get depressed and fed up with the diet and then along comes a chocolate bar. 

Now, the difference with a chocolate bar is that the pleasure is instant.  You open the wrapper, you smell the milk chocolate, and you taste the sugar and the cocoa beans.  The energy rushes through your body, the endorphins are released, and you get your reward instantly.  If you had a chocolate bar or any other food that’s tasty (but considered unhealthy), and you had to wait six months for the taste and feelings to come, how many people in the world would be overweight?  I don’t think it would be many.

Bearing this principle in mind, during your persuasion conversation with someone, remember that if you can show them by doing what you are suggesting they will move quickly away from pain or promptly towards pleasure, you will have one very willing prospect.

For example, a pharmacist could say to a patient with a severe cough, ‘yeah, sure, that cough medicine you’ve selected will certainly help.  In fact, it’s one of our best-selling lines.  It should have your cough cleared up in around three days.  Mind you if you’d like something a bit more effective then you should try this product.  It’s a little bit more expensive, but everyone who has tried it so far says their cough has been gone by the morning’.  Which one would you go for?

Another set of automatic anchors in every one of us are triggered by the way our body moves or the action we take with it.  The most potent example of this is a smile.  The act of smiling causes the body and mind to act accordingly.  Try it.  Smile your biggest smile.  Laugh out loud.  Hold your head high and put your shoulders back and smile.  Now try not to feel happy.  Try moaning and complaining in your head but without letting the smile drop.  It’s tough to do.  The action of smiling is a heavily repeated and embedded trigger. 

Over your life to date, every time you’ve been in an intensely happy state, you’ve smiled at the same time.  So if you want to feel happy just smile, a real smile, not just showing your teeth to the world.  Feel it.  If you stand tall with your head held eye, eyes wide open, breathing firmly and deeply, you get an almost instant rush of confidence, as opposed to if you’re just slumped in your chair head down, softly breathing. 

If you can, try jumping into the air and punching the air and shouting yes!  Now try doing it while feeling miserable.  It’s virtually impossible.  These psychological anchors are so embedded, they control the way you feel when you use them.  Again, this is a bonus for the master communicator, since this rule applies to everyone you speak to. 

If you’re not driving in your car right now, try this anchor with me.  This one uses nothing more than your breathing.  I just want to show you that by doing a particular thing with your body you can induce a feeling of relaxation; just by doing one thing.  All I want you to do is slow down your breathing.  I want you to find that your breathing matches mine.  I want you to take a big breath in now and hold it.  Breathe out and breathe in, take a big breath in and breathe out and just keep going at this pace, breathing in and holding it and breathing out.

Notice how your body relaxes of its own accord.  Your muscles loosen, thoughts slow down, and you just automatically relax, purely and simply by altering your breathing. 

Penultimately for this course, in Bulletproof Persuasion, I would like to give you my ten key qualities of the master communicator.

Number one - understand that human beings at their very core are good-intentioned people.  Humans do not enjoy negativity.  They don’t seek out pain or suffering.  They may accidentally move people around them into that stage while trying to move away from it, but they don’t intend to do it. 

People can be kind and loving, supporting, but also, at the same time, manipulative, violent and obnoxious.  They don’t manifest these negative traits for the sake of it, or because they hate you or even because they enjoy being obnoxious.  We are, as a general rule, all good people who happen to be driven by our needs.

Whatever communication you’re in, whether it’s a pleasant one or an aggressive one, remember everyone is trying to move some part of their situation away from pain and towards pleasure.  If you can help them do that, you will get what you want as a natural by-product of that action.

Number two - believe there is no such thing as failure, only outcomes.  Everything that has happened before has served to bring you where you are today, and for that, you should be grateful. Tomorrow is always an exciting new day.  Remember, it took Thomas Edison 10,000 attempts to create the electric light bulb - 9,999 versions did not work, but he would never have got to success, version 10,000 without the other 9,999 outcomes to learn from.

Number three - become a perspective shifter; step into the other person’s shoes.  We all see things perfectly clearly from our point of view, but to understand the situation better, just pause to consider the conversation as it sounds in the other person’s head.

Number four - understand the power of emotions.  Be aware that our minds and bodies are as one.  Powerful emotions can be triggered in a multitude of ways, from the smell of a familiar perfume to a hug from a friend to the kind words whispered from a colleague.  Emotions are compelling things.

Number five - continually review your approach.  What works for one person may not work for another.  Tailor your communication for every person you meet and, if your plan is not working, be ready to change it in an instant.  Don’t keep pounding forward, assuming they will give in and see your point of view eventually.  If you speak French to someone who can only speak German, you can shout and scream as long as you want but they will never get to the point where they understand what you want until you change your approach.

Number six - expect success in everything you do.  If you’re trying to get a new job, act in your head like you already have it.  Remember the subconscious cannot distinguish fact from fantasy.  Believe you are rich, and the subconscious will go all out to deliver that to you.

The funniest and most ridiculous statement you will ever hear anyone say is ‘oh, I always expect the worst to happen so then I can’t be disappointed.’  I still laugh when I hear people say that.  They do have no idea that they are subconsciously programming every aspect of their life for failure.  What a disaster.

Number Seven - understand why avoiding negatives are so significant in everything you do.  The brain has real trouble with negatives and often gives you the opposite result as to what you wanted.  Remember what happens when someone says to you ‘whatever you do, don’t look over there now.’

Number eight - remember that you finish school, but you never finish learning.  Subscribe to the theory of the automobile university.  Listen to educational, motivational and success audio products in your car every day.  Surround yourself with successful people and their books, tapes, and videos. 

Stay away from those negative people who expect failure and would prefer you to fail too so that they have some company at the bottom.  Remember, if you lie down with dogs you will get up with fleas, so aim for the top and shrug off the people who try and convince you to stay where you are and as you are.  Think of life as a triangle.  Aim to be one of the people at the top.  It’s less crowded there, and the view is fantastic.

Number nine - always go for the win, win situation with everyone you meet.  The best salesman in the world will only sell a product to people if they firmly believe they will have a better life because of it.  People who sell anything to anyone, regardless of whether or not it will fulfill a need for that person are not a salesman, they are conmen.  You may see them reach the top, but they’ll be there on their own, and their journey back down is a certainty.

The best salesmen only sell products they firmly believe in and use themselves.  If sales are your chosen career, ask yourself this question: ‘would you sell your products to your close family and friends?’.  If the answer is no, then your products are not good enough for your family and friends and, subsequently, they’re not good enough for your customers.  Get a different job or a different product.  Never approach any sale or persuasion with your reward in mind.  You get what you want as a by-product of giving other people what they want, not the other way around.

Finally, critical number ten for the master communicator - understand what the most important word in the whole world is.  You know the English language is a beautiful thing.  Playwrights and poets can reduce you to tears or fill you with joy, just by the way they construct words on a page.  Generals can motivate an army to die for their country by the way they communicate their passion for victory and freedom.

However, there is just one word, one word in the whole world that stands head and shoulders above the rest, regardless of language, dialect, tone, intonation. Only one word that creates a powerful instant emotion in a person. That word is their name. 

A person’s name is a beautiful thing to them.  It’s one of the first words they ever learn.  It’s what their friends, relatives, husbands, and wives call them.  When you say their first name, you massage the most reliable, most deep-rooted desire found in every person on earth, the need to feel important.  By proving you remember their name, you’re saying you are important enough to me to remain in my memory, and I care about you.

I challenge you here and now to experiment with those most basic of concepts.  For example, next time you’re walking to work, go up to the receptionist and smile and say ‘good morning, Jean, how are you?’.  I know that you will get a much brighter response than the day before when you gave her a simple, non-personal greeting.

Thank you for reading Bulletproof Persuasion.  It has been my privilege to share my ideas with you.  While I’m sitting here at my desk - and here and now I don’t know where you’re reading this book - you could be just a few feet away from me or many thousands of miles, but I do feel that I know a great deal about you.

I believe that you are either in the top five percent of the people in your field or you intend to be in that five percent.  I believe you are serious about being the best that you can be.  You are fascinated by success and what it can bring you and the many people in your life you care deeply about.  I believe you are the sort of person who is willing to invest in their future. 

If I’m right and you are all those things, then I do know you because you and I are a kindred spirit.  I hope this book has been enjoyable for you and I hope you’ve already found ways to start using and benefiting from the techniques we’ve discovered. 

Bulletproof Persuasion is a work in progress.  It will never be finished.  There is always more to learn and discover, and for that reason, I’m always delighted to hear from people who have studied the course.  I would very much like to hear from you.  You can contact me by email craig@craigbeck.com.  For now, and until we meet, I wish you all the success you desire.  I sincerely hope you become a master of manifesting absolutely anything you desire into your life via communication with your fellow man and woman.

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