The Secret Language of Influence

Dan Seidman

• Publisher: AMACOM
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780814417270
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Communication
• Index: Business

Spanning the use of storytelling, humor, emotion-evoking language, and questions that advance the sale, this entertaining and practical book demonstrates the power of words to break down resistance and incline buyers toward purchase.

A few simple words--the right words--can transform an awkward sales call into a comfortable conversation and a resistant prospect into a happy customer, which is why author Dan Seidman teaches you to think of influence as something occurring at a level just below the buyer's awareness.

The Secret Language of Influence does this by explaining not only how to identify the right words--and which to avoid--but how to use strategic key words and phrases with different potential buyers. You'll learn the best ways to approach buyers who are:

• motivated by benefits vs. problems (i.e., wanting to hear about the money they'll save rather than the pain they'll avoid);
• proactive vs. reactive;
• big picture vs. detail oriented;
• systems thinkers vs. creative minds;
• and those who are influenced by external feedback (testimonials, evidence) vs. internal factors (feelings, personal experiences, beliefs).

Today's buyer is savvy and all too familiar with traditional selling techniques, but great selling is invisible. By identifying different ways buyers are motivated, salespeople can quickly customize their conversations and lead prospects to a yes.

PART ONE
Influencing Others

I confess. . . . This book was originally going to be titled:

Buyers Are Babies
How to Change Them Before
They Stink Up Your Sales

My editor said it was the worst book title he’d read in more than three decades of publishing. I thought the baby metaphor was cute, but he convinced me not to embarrass myself (and ruin book sales).

So you’ll have to settle for The Secret Language of Influence, and in the chapters of Part 1, you’ll learn how to influence other people by speaking their dialect in several ways.

You’ll start with a wild strategy you’ve used at home, but never recognized as a sales technique. Along the way, you’ll discover exactly when your dialogue should address benefits and when you need to sell with pain. You’ll get some quick, cool language tips, and you’ll learn about the use of humor, emotion, and a very potent and psychologically sound strategy for handling objections.

As you absorb the information and think about how you can use it during your selling day, you’ll begin to increase your ability to influence in amazing new ways.

CHAPTER 1
Breaking Buyers’ Patterns

THE “MOST ELUSIVE PROSPECT” … I’m selling for a company in Chicago. When I’m not on the road, I’m pounding the phones at my desk, generating leads. Today, in fact, I’m breezing through my contact manager when I stop and stare at the notes section of one record.

There’s the date and time of the last call, and next to these notes are the letters “lvm,” short for “left voice mail.” Below this note is a string of identical calls going back three years. We have “left voice mail” messages for this woman forty-six times!

Now, what would you do with a prospect like that?

“What is there to lose?” I think, so I dial and—surprise—get her voice mail. I wait for the beep and leave a message.

“Congratulations! This is Dan Seidman of corporate recruiting. You have earned our company’s prestigious Most Elusive Prospect Award. We have called you forty-six times—today makes forty-seven—and you have never returned a single call. I just wanted you to know that nobody in our entire database, with thousands of companies, has ever ignored us as frequently as you. Thanks for not calling. And congratulations on your award.”

I hang up.

And what do you think happens? Ninety minutes later the woman calls me! And I get an earful. “You stupid jerk! I don’t have to return anybody’s calls, ever. How rude to leave me that message. Don’t ever call our company again. You’re a jerk.”

I manage to get a word in—“Wow, I had no idea you’d be upset. I’m so sorry”—and bang! She hangs up the phone.

Oh, man, what did I do? Well, at least she called me and not my VP of sales.

Moments later, the phone rings again. It’s her! She proceeds to tell me how awful she feels popping off at me like that. And, actually, my message was pretty funny. And, yes, she does use services like ours. Then she asks if I would please come in to see her next week, to talk about our offerings

Yes, she became a client and no, my VP never did hear about my cold-calling strategy.

You’re wondering, What happened here? The story I just told illustrates what’s called, in psychology, a pattern interrupt. Its roots are fascinating, and the strategy is useful as you learn to better influence others.

The late Dr. Milton Erickson is considered one of the world’s great psychologists. He perfected pattern interruption and other creative influence techniques to help patients work through problems that result from being stuck in a pattern of thinking or behavior. His ability to help patients change behavior—and to stop doing those things that are damaging to themselves and others and instead do things that are useful—is legendary.

And isn’t influencing your buyers to change really the ultimate goal of selling?

As I mentioned in the book’s preface, as sales professionals, we need to help prospects to change products and services—to change their minds. And as you probably know from experience, people often follow a well-worn path when encountering situations where discomfort occurs (a sales rep calling, for example). Dr. Erickson revealed how we can move them off this path and, by doing so, open up the possibility of different outcomes. In other words, we’re going to break their tried-and-true patterns.

Learning to Respond in an Unexpected Way

So let’s return to the example of selling: Sales pros encounter similar problems every day when prospects throw the same old objections at them: “We don’t have money for this… . Let me think about it… . Call me in six months.” But what if salespeople can learn to respond in an unexpected manner? They can break that bad dialogue and create a useful conversation that is more likely to end in a decision. But first, how did that jump from the world of psychology to the world of business occur?

The bridge between pure psychological counseling and related business applications was built by Richard Bandler and John Grinder, creators of neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), a technique used in psychotherapy and in organizational change management. Bandler and Grinder studied and then modeled Erickson’s techniques. Bandler had some fantastic success experimenting with and testing the pattern interrupt technique on patients in mental hospitals. He decided to find extreme cases of antisocial behavior—people who had spent years institutionalized—and treat these individuals differently than traditionally trained doctors were taught. His results proved both astounding and at times humorous.

In one case, Bandler was called in to help treat a man who thought he was Jesus Christ. Here’s a fellow who insisted he was someone he was not, in spite of counselors saying, “C’mon, man, you are not Jesus. What makes you think that?”

Bandler approached the man and asked him if he was Jesus Christ. The patient eyed him suspiciously but eventually replied that he was. Bandler left the room and returned some time later, again asking the man if he really was Jesus Christ.

“Yes, my son, what can I do for you?” was the man’s reply. The psychologist left the room again. Soon he returned with two huge beams of wood, twelve-inch nails, and a big hammer.

The man asked, “What is this about?”

Bandler replied, “If you’re Jesus Christ, you know what we’re here for; we have come to crucify you.”

The man looked at the size of the nails and quickly said, “You don’t understand. I’m not really the Christ. I’m crazy. I just imagine I’m the Christ.”

Pattern interrupt had penetrated a solid wall of defense. In that moment the man with the muddled mind was about to take the first important step in his healing process.

In another case, a patient had been in a catatonic trance for more than six years. Catatonia is a state where the person completely withdraws from the world. This individual had not spoken in six years. He’d wake up each day, dress, eat, and walk into the common area of the clinic where other patients played cards and table tennis, read books, and watched TV. But he would just stand against a wall and stare. All day, every day, the man had no connection with anyone or anything except his food. The man’s family would visit and say, “Honey, please, we love you, come back to us.” No response. Drugs did not work, nor did electric shock therapy (which, by the way, is still used today).

Then Bandler went to work: He brought in a red gas can filled with water and some nail polish remover (to add a distinct smell). He walked up to the catatonic patient and splashed this “gasoline” all over him.

No response.

Bandler stepped back, removed a small cardboard box from his pocket, and began to throw lighted matches at the man. Within moments, the patient exploded into a rage, screaming foul language at this man who was intending to set him on fire!

Wouldn’t you do the same?

Again, pattern interrupt had broken down bad behavior and started the individual off on a path of new possibilities.

Applying Psychology in the Sales Environment

Okay, you’re thinking, “This is interesting. But how can I use this strategy in my business life?” There are outstanding ways to apply this technique and other new influence strategies, described throughout this book, in every facet of your world—when leading, managing, or even having customer service conversations. For now, let’s continue to focus on how to use pattern interrupt in a sales environment.

One of the biggest problems we face as sales professionals is that today’s buyers are savvy and they know how to put us off, to get rid of us, by hauling out some standard responses that they’ve learned work. You know what they are: We’re happy with what we have now, or There’s no money in the budget; call back in six months—the kind of responses that get the acid sizzling in your stomach and the blood boiling in your brain.

We’re done with that, a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• About the Author
• Contents
• Preface: Great Persuasion Skills Are Invisible
• Part One Influencing Others
• Part Two: Influencing Yourself
• Part Three: Implementing Your Influence
• Index