Maximize Your Influence

One element that increases your presence, charm and likability…..Is humor. Great persuaders naturally develop rapport while using humor. It is very unlikely that your audience will feel angry, depressed, anxious, guilty, or resentful while enjoying your humor.

Your humor can have a domino effect of goodwill and of instilling positive emotions in your audience. If you can help your audience members to feel happier, you will in turn open the locked doors of persuasion and influence. Humor also increases energy and productivity, which will feed your audience's positive emotions even more.

Is Caffeine Persuasive?

Humor for persuaders not only connects you to your audience but also increases people's attention to you and your message. Humor also puts your audience in a good frame of mind. When your audience is in a good disposition, they are less likely to disagree with you. When you develop rapport with your audience, they will like you more. Humor also increases trust.

How do you use this tool of charisma?

Charisma Series: Get others to believe in you, trust you, and be influenced by you

Do you have Presence? Are you able captivate your audience or prospect? You can tell when you meet a charismatic personal and when they enter a room. People are drawn to them because deep down people want to be passionate about something and when they see that passion in your eyes, you become more charismatic. They sense that you can help them and improve their lives. This does not guarantee everyone will like you, but they will respect you for your conviction and your passion.

Passion is very contagious. When you transfer this passion, the people around you start to radiate that passion. They perform better, if it is at work, it is no longer work. They become more proactive, more willing to work as a team and become more optimistic. When you have tapped into this passion you become more determined and it increases your persistence. It starts to become a burning desire and consumes you and it radiates to others.

How Mental Rehearsal Preps Us For Action

A word of caution, just because you are passionate does not mean you can forego learning the skills you need to be successful. It is a critical piece of the charisma pie, but you still need more pieces of the pie to radiate powerful long-term charisma. Can you learn this skill?

Listen and find out….

4 components to win an audience every time

Touch can help you influence and connect with people. Touch can be a very effective psychological technique. Subconsciously, most of us like to be touched; it makes us feel appreciated and builds rapport. It is true, though, that we do need to be aware and careful of a small percentage of the population who dislikes being touched in any way.

In most instances, however, touch can help put people at ease and make them more receptive to you and your ideas. Touch increases influence. When you are able to touch your prospect they usually becomes more agreeable, enhances mood and increases the chances they will agree and do what you are asking.

Touch can create a positive perception. Touch carries with it favorable interpretations of immediacy, similarity, relaxation, and informality. In one research study, librarians did one of two things to university students: either they did not touch the person at all during the exchange or they made light, physical contact by placing a hand over the student's palm. Invariably, those students who were touched during the transaction rated the library service more favorably than those who were not touched at all.

SMART Study

Touch Story

Waiters/waitresses who touched customers on the arm when asking if everything was okay received larger tips and were evaluated more favorably than those waiters who didn't touch their customers. Touch also induces customers to spend more time shopping in stores. In one study, physical contact on the part of salespeople induced customers to buy more and to evaluate the store more favorably.

Even a handshake is touch. Handshakes tell a story about you and if they will remember you. It dictates your first impression that will last forever. A good handshake will make someone feel appreciated and connected to you. A bad handshake could set you back an hour in rapport building. Are you touching too much? Not enough? Do you have a good/lame handshake?

Listen and find out!

Learn how to get others to believe in you, trust you, and be influenced by you

We have all had the experience of feeling an instant connection or bond with someone after just a few seconds of being in their presence. This is the Law of Connectivity. On the flip side we have all met someone that rubbed us the wrong way or repelled us. We instantly did not want to be around them. This is caused by a lack of connectivity and usually takes only a few seconds to manifest itself. This disconnect closes the door to persuasion.

NINE WAYS TO MAKE PEOPLE LIKE YOU WITHOUT SAYING A WORD

The Law of Connectivity states that the more someone feels connected to, similar to, liked by, or attracted to you, the more persuasive you become. When you create an instant bond or connection, people feel more comfortable and open around you. They will feel like they have known you for a long time and that they can easily relate to you.

When we feel connected with someone, we feel comfortable and understood; they can relate to us and a sense of trust ensues. This connectivity is critical on the phone, during a presentation or using social media.

Listen and find out….

We've all been told, "Never judge a book by its cover." Yeah, right. Everyone is judging everyone else. Intentionally or not, people are constantly judging and categorizing others, compartmentalizing them into boxes. There are many boxes—sharp, strange, weird, intelligent, dense, geeky, powerful, annoying, and more.

A great persuader can connect with anyone in thirty seconds or less. First impressions take only seconds to form, but they last a lifetime. This is a critical skill to develop because the cement dries fast. How do you ensure that you're making those early seconds really count?

That first judgment or opinion about you is vital to your success. In this fast-paced world, you probably won't get a second chance—you have to make it happen the first time.

Many persuaders can't tell if they're connecting. They think that they're doing everything right, that they're doing all the stereotypical rapport-building things: being friendly, enthusiastic, or fun. But the reality is that in most cases, they are not building rapport and are failing to connect with their audience. Studies show that not only do 75 percent of people not like all the "gushy, chit-chatty stuff," but 99 percent of them won't even bother to stop you when they're annoyed.

Changes In Human IQ Are Frightening

The proverbial bad salesman comes to mind here. He acts too chummy and tells stupid jokes, all the while thinking everyone loves him. You've probably met him. What did you do when you met this person? If you're like most people, you politely endured the encounter, made up some excuse to get him off your back, and then swore to yourself that'd you'd never get stuck talking to him again.

Reality check: This annoying person could be you.

Do you know your Persuasion IQ?

Why is it so easy to lose at a casino? Why do they know about human nature that you don't? It is all about the subconscious triggers.

In his book Triggers, best-selling author Joseph Sugarman reveals that 95 percent of the reasoning behind a consumer's behavior is associated with a subconscious feeling. In other words, most behavior is done for reasons a person hasn't even fully formulated.

Whether we realize it or not, we love shortcuts to thinking. When we buy an item, we don't always take the time to research the product or read the latest consumer guide's ratings on the product. Instead, we could rely on the salesperson's advice. We might just buy the most popular brand, the cheapest, or rely on a friend's opinion.

Although we would never admit it, we sometimes even buy an item just because of its color, smell or packaging. Certainly, we know this is not the best way to make decisions, but we all do it anyway, even when we know we might make a mistake or feel regretful afterward. If we considered every single decision, we would constantly be overwhelmed our brain would be shut down and we'd never get anything done.

This tendency means that inclinations like "It just feels right," "I like this product," or "I don't trust this person" are all based on subconscious triggers. This thought and emotional reaction occur in the unconscious mind, without our awareness.

The reason this happens is the Amygdala. Joseph Ledoux of New York University says the amygdala allows emotions to dominate and control our thinking. The amygdala has control over the cortex in the brain. What does that mean? The cortex is responsible for memory, perceptual awareness, thought, and consciousness. The amygdala stores our memories that we associate with emotional events. This means subconscious triggers are always occurring and triggering feelings and emotions usually without our awareness.

How-To Questions Each State Googles More Frequently Than Any Other State

What triggers are getting you? How do Las Vegas casinos utilize these against you?

Listen and find out.

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Want to negotiation tips from a FBI hostage negotiator? What negotiation tools are working? Which tools lost the value? Listen to this interview with Chris Voss.

Meet Chris:

Prior to 2008, Chris was the lead international kidnapping negotiator for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as the FBI's hostage negotiation representative for the National Security Council's Hostage Working Group. During his government career, he also represented the U.S. Government at two (2) international conferences sponsored by the G-8 as an expert in kidnapping. Prior to becoming the FBI lead international kidnapping negotiator, Christopher served as the lead Crisis Negotiator for the New York City Division of the FBI. Christopher was a member of the New York City Joint Terrorist Task Force for 14 years.

During Chris's 24 year tenure in the Bureau, he was trained in the art of negotiation by not only the FBI but Scotland Yard and Harvard Law School. He is also a recipient of the Attorney General's Award for Excellence in Law Enforcement and the FBI Agents Association Award for Distinguished and Exemplary Service.

For more info about Chris and his work visit: https://blackswanltd.com/

Chris has taught business negotiation in the MBA program as an adjunct professor at University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business and at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business. He has taught business negotiation at Harvard University, guest lectured at The Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, The IMD Business School in Lausanne, Switzerland and The Goethe School of Business in Frankfurt, Germany.

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How do you get a raise? How do you strategically negotiate a raise to earn what you are worth? Or is it better to persuade? What is the difference between the two? Persuasion occurs when your ideas are so convincing that the other party ends up adopting your point of view.

With persuasion, there is no compromising, as there is in negotiation. Rather, the other party willfully and enthusiastically abandons their position to embrace yours. The other party clearly sees the gains and advantages of doing business with you.

Negotiation, on the other hand, is a process of give and take, give and take, give and take. We meet somewhere in the middle. It's being able to overcome objections on both sides of an issue and ultimately reaching some kind of common ground. Remember, always persuade first, negotiate second.

What is the number one predictor for personal success?

While persuasion is the ultimate ideal, anytime one of us is presenting our ideas, the other party is often equally committed to their own convictions, thus making negotiation the next-best path. Salary negotiations are different because you are negotiating with a known party (your boss), This requires a different set of tool.

Listen to the podcast and get those tools!

FREE copy of Best-Selling Maximum Influence

Of all the tools in your persuasion toolbox, questioning is probably the one most often used by Power Persuaders. Questions are used in the persuasion process to create mental involvement, to guide the conversation and to find out what your prospect needs. Questioning is a very diverse and useful tool. An important study observed hundreds of negotiators in action in an attempt to discover what it takes to be a top negotiator. Their key finding was that skilled negotiators ask more than twice as many questions as average negotiators.

Much like movements, questions elicit an automatic response from our brains. We are taught to answer a question when it is posed to us. We automatically think of a response when asked a question. Even if we don't verbalize the answer, we think about it in our head. Most people want to be cooperative. We don't want to be considered rude because we don't answer the questions. In this way, a question stimulates our thinking response.

The Cheerleader Effect

How do you form a good question? First, design your questions ahead of time. The structure of your questions dictates how your listener will answer them. When asked to estimate a person's height, people will answer differently depending on whether the question asked is "How tall is he?" versus "How short is he?"

In one study, when asking how tall versus how short a basketball player was, researchers received dramatically different results. The "how tall" question received the guess of 79 inches whereas the "how short" question received the guess of 69 inches. Words have a definite effect on how people respond. "How fast was the car going?" suggests a high speed, but "At what speed was the car traveling?" suggests a moderate speed. "How far was the intersection?" suggests the intersection was far away.

How to turn a no into a yes and a yes into a sale

What is NLP?

Neuro-linguistic programming, or "NLP" as it is called today, is a very interesting science. NLP was first developed by UC Santa Cruz professor John Grinder and graduate student Richard Bandler.

Its basic premise is that one's thought patterns, beliefs and attitudes can be used to "preprogram" actual experiences that are yet to happen. NLP is very focused on how we think, what influences the way we think, and how we structure what we think. Subscribers to the science are encouraged to closely study and then model those individuals who do things well. When studying them, you don't ask them how they did it—just what they were thinking when they did it.

The Negative Side of NLP

For example, if you asked Michael Jordan how to play basketball, he could give you a big list of dos and don'ts. He might outline a series of necessary drills, but that is not what NLP is about. Instead, you would find out how Michael Jordan perceives basketball in his mind. What are his beliefs and attitudes about basketball? When he makes a decision on the court, what is he thinking?

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Many academics are haters of the science of NLP. On this podcast, I will reveal what upsets them and what aspects of NLP work/don't work.

– Listen and find out