If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

In a previous article “Persuasion Continuums” I began to describe one of the most powerful tools of persuasion. When I last left you, you were either completely confused about or you were well on your way to understanding one of the slickest tools in the persuasion toolbox.

To recap: Continuums work most powerfully when you find that the prospect you’re influencing is at either end of the continuum not more or less in the middle. In other words, the powerful continuums are the ones where the person is extreme.

If your prospect is at the far left side of one continuum (say the towards and away continuum) but in the middle of another one (like the internal/external continuum), then you’ll want to concentrate on towards and away and ignore the internal external because whatever language you’re using in that regard is not going to affect them much anyway.

Continuums are organizing principles. They represent a way of looking at things. They are a filter through which people view their circumstances. And the best part, for persuasion purposes, is that they are habitual. People generally keep the same perspective within the context in which you have inquired.

Radical life changes can alter orientations but for the most part, they are a set way of experiencing the world.

Some of the different lenses we have are ‘toward and away’, ‘internal/external’, and ‘options and procedural’. When you understand what they are, they enable you to zero in on the functioning of the person you’re influencing with laser like precision. Things start to get incredibly powerful here.

All it takes is some attention and knowing how to adjust your language to fully take advantage.

Most of us, we just assume that everybody else thinks the same way we do.

I think the way I do. You think the way you do. They think the way they do. We’re all complex little creatures.

So step one in learning how to work this is to put your mind in a white board state. . . a blank slate, so to speak. Your interaction with your prospect is about you being there to be marked upon and allowing a part of you to be molded by the way your prospect thinks and speaks. It’s a kind of mirroring/matching.

This is not at all about you changing your beliefs or core values. This is only about temporarily changing the way you express yourself within the context with this one client.

You’ve heard the saying, ‘You are what you eat.’ Well, are you? Are you what you wear? Are you what you drive? Are you where you live? Are you who you’re with? We are all made up of any number of things but not one solitary thing.

Are you a belief? No, but you’re closer to that than you are a shoe. Are you a value? Well, that’s part of who you are. You’re part of all those things. When you combine it together you have you.

It’s really important to understand that when you change your language, you’re not changing who you are, you’re changing your shirt, you’re changing your shoes, you’re changing your tie.

When we’re pushed into a corner and we have to come out swinging, we’re going to simply do what it is that we know how to do. And from there, we hope to improve. Every time you’re in front of a prospect, you’re in a corner, so to speak, and you do what you know how to do as best as you can. The goal is to have flexibility, to increase that.

Remember, that as the context changes from like work to home to love to health, so too will the way a person uses a continuum including not using that continuum at all in some, but not other contexts. Don’t assume that because you know the continuum in one context that it will hold up in others.

Coming soon: Backing the Ambulance Up to the Door: The ‘Away’ Perspective.

Tags: NLP

Popularity: 24% [?]

Share This