The Language of Influence Manual: Salad
The Language of Influence Manual: Salad
The Language of Influence Manual: Salad
Influence
Manual
salad ®
Table of Contents
What is Language?................................................................... 3
Persuasion & Influence?............................................................ 4
Is it Ethical?............................................................................ 5
What is NLP?........................................................................... 6
The Fundamentals....................................................................7
Presuppositions .......................................................................8
Rapport.................................................................................. 9
Sensory Acuity.......................................................................10
Representational Systems....................................................... 11
Sensory Words.......................................................................12
States...................................................................................13
Anchoring..............................................................................14
Pacing & Leading ...................................................................15
Powerful Language ................................................................ 16
Voice Control......................................................................... 20
Stories..................................................................................21
What is a Metaphor?............................................................... 22
More About Metaphors............................................................ 23
Tips for Storytelling................................................................ 24
Tips for Using Hypnotic Language ............................................ 25
Criteria................................................................................. 26
Instant Replay (Decision Strategies)......................................... 27
Asking for Miracles................................................................. 28
Dealing with Objections...........................................................29
Stacking Benefits................................................................... 31
Cialdini’s Six Principles of Influence...........................................32
Questions..............................................................................33
Bibliography.......................................................................... 34
Reading & Resources.............................................................. 35
Appendix A – Exercises........................................................... 36
Pacing & Leading ...................................................................37
More Information................................................................... 43
...........................................................................................45
About the Author....................................................................46
Acknowledgements.................................................................46
Human beings perceive the world through their five senses (sight,
hearing, feeling, smelling, tasting), and record those sensings in
maps or models of the world in their nervous systems. We do not
experience the world directly, but rather through our sense and the
maps and models we make of those sensings.
You can use language to change your (or someone else’s) reality.
• Bullying
• Pressuring
• Tricking
• Deceiving
• Elegant
• Smooth
• Effective
• Often undetectable
• Ericksonian Hypnosis
• Cialdini’s Six Principles of Influence
• Chris Tomasulo’s ‘Covert Communication’ Model
Best interests
Ensure that you have your own best interests and the best interests
of the person you are persuading at heart. If you know that what
you want them to do is going to be good for them and make them
happy / healthy / wealthy then go for it. If in doubt, don’t! While it
is possible to get people to do things against their best interests,
they won’t make the same mistake twice, and they’ll tell lots of
other people not to either.
Believe in yourself
It is an old adage that ‘people buy people’, and the quickest way to
get others to believe in you is to believe in yourself. There are
many excellent resources available for developing your self-belief –
we suggest you use them.
Neuro
The nervous system, including the brain and the five senses.
Linguistic
The verbal & non-verbal language symbols with which we code &
transmit meaning.
Programming
The ability to structure our neurological and linguistic systems to
achieve certain results.
One of the key NLP questions is ‘What do you want?’. The human
nervous system can be thought of as goal-seeking, and you tend to
get what you focus on. Well-formed outcomes are an important tool
for ensuring that you get more of what you want in your life.
“The map is not the territory.” You must start where the person
you wish to influence is (the ‘Present State’.) Rapport is the
process of getting the attention and trust of the unconscious mind.
Once you know where you want to go, you need to be able to notice
(using one or more senses) whether or not you are going there.
Sensory acuity refers to the ability to notice the signs that you are
moving in the right direction (or otherwise.)
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a
different result.” When you notice that you are not getting what
you want, you need the flexibility to change what you are doing in
order to get a different result. “Intelligence is the ability to have a
fixed goal and be flexible about how you achieve it.”
• The one with the most flexibility of thought and action is most
likely to succeed
• You can have whatever you want (if you help enough other
people to get what they want)
You can train your senses to perceive more and more of what is
happening in the other person – distinctions that would previously
have been ‘invisible’.
If you tell people a story about yourself which closely matches their
experience, it can build a sense of rapport.
You will also notice people using turns of phrase that indicate
certain preferences, for instance:
• That rings a bell; we just clicked; do you hear what I’m saying
• I see what you mean; look at it from my point of view
• It feels good to me; get a handle on this
• I smell a rat
• Just give me a flavour of this
When you use language from the same rep system(s) that the
person you are communicating with is using, it creates more trust
and rapport. If you mismatch their rep systems, it will diminish the
level of trust and rapport.
When you tell stories, you can use sensory words & descriptions to
get the person more ‘into’ what you are telling them. Contrast the
sentence “I ate a steak yesterday” with the following:
External Signs
There are usually external signals that accompany a particular
state. When you imagine someone who is feeling ecstatic, they are
likely to look different to someone who is feeling down. These
differences are also likely to be evident in voice analogues (eg.
Tone, volume) and many other external signals.
Eliciting States
If you want someone else to access a great state (Eg. Excitement),
go there first yourself. If you are telling a story where a character
was experiencing pleasure, feel that pleasure yourself & it will come
out in the story. Your listeners will pick this up & respond to it.
When they do, you can anchor it (see ‘Anchoring’).
• tonal (eg. the special way a certain person has of saying your
name)
• tactile (eg. The effect of a certain type of handshake)
• visual (eg. The way people respond to certain items of clothing)
• olfactory (eg. The effect of smelling fresh lemons)
• gustatory (eg. The taste of your favourite food)
Setting anchors
Anchoring is particularly useful for helping people to recreate certain
states. In order to get a ‘strong’ anchor for the state, it is
important to
Tip: When you (or someone you are with) are experiencing
something you want to have more of, anchor it.
“We’re here at BNI, it’s Friday morning, and it’s early, and you
may be wondering what I’m going to tell you about today…
because we’ve all come here for a reason, and the reason is
to build our businesses, so I know you’re going to be
interested in helping me build mine etc… ”
On the face of it, this is a fairly ordinary intro, but as you look more
closely at the way the statements are structured, you may begin to
notice that there is a mixture of things that are ‘true’ and things
that are more ‘speculative’.
Pacing and leading often sounds ‘clunky’ at first, but as you practice
it more and more, you’ll begin to find yourself doing it
spontaneously, without even planning it consciously.
Quotes
Milton Erickson used to say “Use quotes to tell people what to do.”
When you put something in quotes, it gets attributed to someone
else. When you put a command in quotes, it gets processed by the
unconscious, but not by the conscious. When Bandler & Grinder
said “Learn to use quotes immediately”, they knew what they were
talking about. As soon as I realised the power of quotes, I said to
myself “Start using quotes in everything you do.”
Embedded commands
You can embed a command in a larger sentence – just think of what
you want someone to do, make it into a command, then create a
larger sentence that can contain it. (Eg. “When I first decided to,
you know, learn to embed commands, I was excited by the
prospect.” or “I remember last time you decided to give me a pay
rise, I was really made up!”
Analogue marking
You can enhance embedded commands by marking them out with
some other behaviour (Eg. shift in voice tone, raised eyebrows, a
touch etc). You can even mark out different words in one or more
sentences (Eg. I really hope my time off will give me a chance to
look at the high rise apartment being built next door.” or “I think
the time you’ve spent on this is a sign now that we can explore
some exciting opportunities.)
Benefit headlining
Would you like to know how you can get people to pay 75% more
attention to what you say? Put a headline in front of it. If you use
a headline (just like a newspaper does) that contains a valuable
benefit for the person you are influencing, they will be much more
likely to listen to what follows. If you frame it as a question, you
can get immediate feedback on how interested they will be (see the
first line of this paragraph.)
Tag questions
‘Tag questions’ are the name for the small phrases like “isn’t it”,
“aren’t they” etc that people sometimes add to the end of
sentences. When someone adds a tag question, it makes the
sentence difficult to disagree with, doesn’t it. And it’s useful to be
able to make things tough to disagree with, is it not. I’m sure you
can think of lots of situations where tag questions could be useful,
can’t you. If you combine the tag question with a slow head nod
and command tone down (see Voice Control), it becomes almost
irresistible, doesn’t it.
Linkage
There are a number of useful patterns to learn, and linkage is one
of the most powerful, because it allows you to create a smooth flow
in your language while the other person becomes entranced with
what you are saying. Use words such as as, and, while, because
etc to create linkage between words & phrases, and you’ll create a
smooth flow for the listener, because it’s nice to listen to someone
who’s easy to listen to, isn’t it.
• Phonological – meaning two words that sound the same but mean
different things. As eye right this ewe can sea watt eye mean.
Analogue marking
You can mark out phrases in your communication, using any
perceivable behaviour, such as facial expressions, eyebrow
movements, voice tone change, a gesture etc. The unconscious will
process the marked out element of what you are saying as a
separate communication, outside conscious awareness. Merely
choose the covert communication you wish to mark out, then do it!
By now, you probably can begin to see how this could be used.
Presupposition
One of things that you’ll begin to notice as you start to use become
more aware of language is the power of presuppositions. A
presupposition is something that must be accepted as true for the
sentence to make sense. To use presuppositions, think of what you
want your influencee to accept as fact, then construct a sentence
that presupposes it. You can stack presuppositions to make them
even more difficult to resist. One of the things you’ll really start to
become aware of as you continue to practice these more and more
is just how much fun you can have with them!
Rhetorical questions
Do you like to feel good? Rhetorical questions are questions that
don’t require an answer, but generate ‘yes’ responses. Use them to
get people saying yes from the outset.
Time
You can use language to shift people’s awareness through time.
Back before you started this training, you may not have believed
that was so, but now, as you consider just how much you’ve
learned, you may start to become curious about the many ways
that you can, in the future, start to become more comfortable using
language in this way. When you imagine yourself six months from
now, having really learned how to use these patterns skilfully, you
can look back to the present and realise just how far you’ve come.
• Tone
• Pitch
• Rate
• Rhythm
• Volume
• Timbre
• and many other voice ‘analogues’
As you start to listen more closely to other people speak, you will
begin to recognise the differences in the ways other people speak.
While matching their voice analogues can be powerful for building
rapport, there are some other key features which are also good to
know:
Stories are like gestures or eye movements – they’re there all the
time, it’s just a matter of noticing them.
For the purposes of this training, the word metaphor will be used to
refer to all of the following:
• Metaphors
• Similes
• Stories
• Anecdotes
• Tall tales
• Factual explanations
• Jokes
Stories are one of the most powerful resources there is. You can
use stories to…
• Put people at their ease, build rapport & pace their experience
• Elicit states & gather resources (eg. decisiveness)
• Induce age regression (take them back to childhood)
• Captivate their attention
• Speak to the unconscious mind
• Illustrate a point
• Grab your audience’s attention
• Get people to take off their armour & overturn objections
• Reframe / change the meaning of something (eg. a problem)
• Tell them how to think about something
• Induce trance in your audience
• Install strategies
• Do covert rehearsal
• Disassociate people
• Change beliefs
• Do covert changework & healing
• And generally act as great camouflage
While in this case, a clear and obvious comparison has been made,
it has been noticed that people do this ‘mapping across’ whether a
comparison is invited or not. For instance, people watching a film
will often identify with one of the characters, putting themselves
into the protagonists shoes.
h) Use detail to engage people & make them enter fully into your
‘reality’.
Ask a person “What is important to you in your work?” and they will
tell you what their criteria are for their work (Eg. helping people,
doing a good job, money.) Ask the same person what is important
to them when choosing somewhere to live, and you are likely to get
different criteria, because the context is different. Criteria are
context-dependent.
So, how do you elicit peoples’ criteria? The first way is just to
listen, and you’ll hear them jump out (“We went to Greece last year
& the place we stayed was so CONVENIENT, right next to the
airport.”) The second way is to tell stories that refer to your criteria
in the context. Many people will tell a related story about
themselves that reveals their criteria. The third way is to use
specific questions to elicit someone’s criteria in a context, such as:
Once you have someone’s criteria, you can unpack them by asking
someone “How do you know when you’ve got [criteria]?” They’ll
give you information about their process or equation that allows
them to know they’ve got that criteria. If they go ‘inside’, ask
“What has to happen for you to get that?” For example…
Let them know how what you’re offering satisfies their criteria.
“I’d like you to think of one of the times you made this sort of
decision and, every time you think of it, you know it was a good
decision. [wait for confirmation] How did you decide that?”
At this point WATCH & LISTEN as they run you through their
decision strategy. Things to pay attention to include:
• Sensory language
• Criteria
• Number & content of the steps
• Gestures
• Eye movements
Once you know what the strategy is, you can structure your
persuasion process in the same way.
OBJECTION COUNTERMEASURESTM
Here are some of the most powerful countermeasures to use once
you have identified a genuine objection:
Objections can often result from people’s hidden needs & fears –
they won’t mention them, but they’re there. You can find ways to
alleviate people’s unspoken fears & needs. Ideally, address them
before they ever get a chance to cause you problems.
Amplifying possibility
• What would have to happen for this to massively exceed your
expectations?
Whispering In The Wind, John Grinder & Carmen Bostic St. Clair, J &
C Enterprises, 2001
NLP
• NLP for Business & Personal Success, Smart: A 6CD set
introducing NLP and covering the core skills in the NLP skillset.
Available at www.saladltd.co.uk
• Frogs Into Princes, Bandler & Grinder: The first ‘popular’ NLP
book, this is a transcript of a number of seminars given by
Bandler and Grinder, and is packed with stories.
1. A states a complaint, taking the form “I’m too X.” or “He’s too
Y.”
• Extremes of volume
• Different tonalities
• Different facial expressions
I remember being told as a child that: "You were given two ears and one mouth
so that you could listen twice as much as you talk".
Imagine you're flying a sophisticated fighter plane in the midst of a midair dogfight. If
the plane's radar only registered whenever the enemy plane was firing, you might
well be able to avoid the worst of the incoming barrage, but you would effectively be
"firing blind" when it came to your own attempts. Similarly, the danger with only
listening when the other person is talking is that any purposeful conversation is a kind
of an ongoing feedback loop – I say something to you, and based on your reaction, I
adapt my communication accordingly. If I stop listening to you the moment I open my
mouth, I lose the feedback and can no longer effectively "aim" my communication.
Today's experiment is surprisingly difficult for most people when they first try it, but
with a bit of practice it will utterly transform your communication (and your
relationships!) for the better...
Today's Experiment:
1. Choose any item in your immediate environment and begin to describe it aloud.
Keep your attention on the object you are describing as you are describing it. When
you are comfortable doing that, proceed to step two.
ex. "This ring is gold with little knobbly bits on it and it was made by a jeweler named
John Scott in Camden Lock and it's round and it has some dimpled impressions in
the gold and my wife has an identical ring with diamonds in the dimples that I got her
for our first anniversary and it has a bit of dirt which has collected between the
knobbly bits, etc."
You're ready to move on to step three when you can switch between description and
story without having to re-direct your attention inwards to figure out what to say next.
4. When you are engaged in the conversation, set the intention of keeping your
attention on the other person both when you are listening and when you are talking. If
you notice your attention wandering or you become aware that you've "gone inside"
your head, gently bring your attention back to the other
person.
When you can keep your attention firmly on the other person and still make intelligent
conversation, you are ready to bring this skill to bear in your more important
conversations and exchanges, be they in a role as coach, partner, trainer,
salesperson, or friend.
Bonus Tip - Communicating vs. "Thinking Aloud" Not all talking is for the
purpose of communication. Sometimes, we speak purely in order to hear ourselves
think. In these instances, it is best to let your attention wander where it will.
Have fun, learn heaps, and keep listening!
Until tomorrow,
The Coach
PS - If you enjoyed this week's tip, you may want to consider attending our
teleclass on "Creating Conversational Change". Click on the link or visit
our website at http://www.dailycoachingtip.com/ to find out more!
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• Build rapport in moments, then lead people where you want to take them
• Get people to tell you exactly what you need to do to persuade them
• Use hypnotic influencing skills to press their "buy this now" buttons
• Get the 6 principles of influence to work for you, rather than against you
• Captivate people’s attention and lead them into an ideal persuasion state
• Use the secrets of subliminal persuasion ethically, & stop them being
used against you!
• Turn hesitation into motivation and take decisive action.
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Acknowledgements
I’ve been fortunate to learn from a number of great NLP Trainers and other
innovative thinkers and teachers. Thanks to anyone whose efforts have made
their way into this work.