I have not blogged here in some months, but it’s been a very busy time for 7 Triggers, and we are getting ready to share some very exciting developments. New products, new web sites, new partners, and new opportunities are just around the corner for business professionals seeking to gain commitments, forge agreements, and close sales faster and more often.

Please be sure to register for this site in order to receive a one-time email announcement (coming soon!) on how to get a free e-book and sign up for the YesMaker early adopter program.

China has the fastest growing economy on the planet – they certainly don’t need persuasion skills to grow and prosper– or do they? Our McGraw-Hill book, The 7 Triggers to Yes Chinese language version has just hit the streets in Hong Kong, Singapore, Beijing, Taiwan and throughout Chinese speaking Asia. The Chinese want it, love it, because they understand the value of persuasion.

Whatever your location in the world, to succeed, to grow and prosper everyone needs persuasion skills. Whether in sales, management, or leadership of an entrepreneurial business, persuasion is the key to success. The Chinese have a legacy of generating great wisdom – They now have The 7 Triggers to Yes to add to that wisdom.

Think about it – is politics based on facts, realities or emotional persuasion? It’s a no-brainer. Politicians do their best to activate our emotional triggers. Fact and reason do not persuade. Try your own logic and reason to persuade a friend or relative who strongly believes in one party to change their affiliation. Won’t happen. Can’t happen. A study in futility.

When the ancient Greeks came up with their crazy new form of government more than 2,500 years ago, they quickly realized that to govern successfully in a democracy, one needed great persuasion skills. Persuasion became so important that Aristotle wrote 3 volumes about the persuasion process in the fourth century BCE. He correctly determined that there are three main elements to persuade successfully. He called these elements Logos, the appeal to logic, Pathos, the appeal to the emotions and Ethos, the credibility and authority of the speaker. Aristotle wrote that the best route to persuasion should be logic and reason.

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One of the 7 key emotional triggers is consistency. We are emotionally forced to be consistent with our past beliefs and actions. And we are hard wired to be consistent with our respected peers. This powerful trigger governs much of our decision process. The databank we build from birth serves us well for future easy, automatic emotional decisions.

How, perhaps even unknowingly, do the politicians activate our emotional consistency trigger? Overall we tend to go with whatever party we aligned with before. Yet politicians do their best to activate the consistency trigger. And they try hard to activate the consistency we have with respected peers.

The first presidential debate was a study in the consistency trigger. Each participant tried to tie the other into a consistent pattern with negative overtones. Obama, referring to the financial meltdown stated “This is a final verdict on the failed economic policies promoted by George Bush,” constantly implying McCain would be consistent with Bush. No fact, no logic, no rationality explained, just a hope to activate peer consistency trigger.

McCain attempted to show that Obama would be consistent with his failure to back American military interests. By emphasizing Obama’s failure to vote for the Iraq surge, his criticism of the surge, and by not admitting he was wrong about the surge’s effectiveness, Mc Cain connected these issues with future probabilities for Obama’s poor military judgment.

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A front page article in Saturday’s Washington Post starts very simply: “Paulson’s Powers of Persuasion Persuasion Tested.” As Secretary of the Treasury, a former executive at Goldman Sachs, Henry M Paulson Jr. has the credibility, the power, the authority to trigger the requisite emotional response from congress to his request for a $700 billion bailout package. Or does he?

Since credibility and authority are excellent emotional triggers, where did Paulson go wrong? Well, he blew his credibility. How? Two weeks ago he told congressional lawmakers he had no intention of bailing out Freddy Mac and Fannie Mae. A week later he did what he said he would not do. Credibility lost – Authority trigger questionable. The financial bailout delayed.

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Here’s a quick, easy way to learn a bit more about how The 7 Triggers to YES can increase your business and personal success. Tune in to Small Business Trends Radio at 1:30 Eastern time Tuesday 9-16-08 for an interview with Russell Granger, Author of the McGraw-Hill Book, The 7 Triggers to Yes.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/smallbiztrends

photo credit: Duchamp

Why is persuasion the world’s most researched skill? That’s easy—as history shows, it’s the world’s most important skill!

Take a trip back to the Fifth Century B.C., when Athenians were experimenting with a new form of government. The Athenians quickly discovered that to succeed in a democracy, they had to be persuasive. Leaders used persuasion (then called rhetoric) to gain agreement and win support. Everyday citizens used persuasion before a new legal body—the jury.

Recognizing its importance, Athenian scholars, including Plato and Aristotle, began to study the powerful process of persuasion. Circa 435 B.C., they defined three elements of the process of persuasion: Logos, the appeal to logic, reason, and facts; Pathos, the appeal to emotions; and Ethos, the appeal of the speaker’s character and credibility. These scholars found that one or more of these appeals characterize any instance of persuasion.

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Several large surveys show that most people believe a logical discussion, with good data and the right logical supporting facts, is the best way to persuade. Often, they break the persuasion process down to three main steps:

1. Present your proposition clearly, with conviction.
2. Present your supporting data, with the right facts, logic and information.
3. Structure your "deals" and move on to closure.

But according to Dr. Jay Conger, Director of the Leadership Institute at the University of Southern California Business School, "Following this process is one surefire way to fail at persuasion."

Why?

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Want outstanding success in business and in life?  You’ll achieve your goals when you can influence others to agree with you and act on your requests.  Any requests. Successful people get things done with and through others.  They get decisions and results with one skill:  the power of persuasion.  Persuaders rule.  They always have, they always will.  They have enormous power. They accomplish their wildest dreams for wealth, power and influence.  Your challenge:  Become a great persuader.

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You can have anything you want, yes, anything! All you have to do is to persuade someone to decide to do what you want. The most successful people in the world are those who can get things done with and through others. By applying new scientific breakthroughs, it’s now quick and easy to get “Yes!” decisions and actions.

Before persuading others to say “Yes!” let’s take a quick look at our own decision process. Only when we understand how the brain makes decisions can we successfully influence others’ decisions

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History shows that persuasion skills are critical for everyone who wants to succeed—even for the President of the United States. In his book Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents, Richard E. Neustadt states, "There is a widely held belief in the United States that a reasonable President would need no power other than the logic of his argument." That belief is naive, inaccurate.

Dwight D. Eisenhower was one President who could have benefited from better persuasion skills. As a career army officer, he expected people to do as he said—he didn’t need to know how to persuade. But when he reached the Oval Office, things were different. And because he was not a persuader, he amassed a poor record of getting things done.

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Selling is easy—partner with your client, find a need and fill it, right? Sure, this is the antiquated, long standing formula for success in today’s sales arena—but it’s incomplete. The truth is, to sell effectively, we must get clients to make a decision to act—now!

So how do we do that? Simply put, there are three approaches we can use:

• We can force them.
• We can negotiate.
• Or we can persuade.

But which is best?

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Most people think a great idea, a great product coupled with a well reasoned logical presentation will produce the reaction they want. Nothing could be further from the truth!

The world’s most creative and important products, inventions, and solutions were nothing more than ideas until someone persuaded someone else to do something. Great persuaders bring ideas to life. Persuaders make things happen.

The greatest historical achievements ever created are the results of persuasion. The empire builders, the Caesars and Napoleons, won by persuading others to follow. Cities and civilizations were built with persuasion. Columbus persuaded Queen Isabella that he could reach the East, India, by sailing west; then persuaded her to finance his ships. Slave Frederick Douglass wrote, "If I can persuade, I can move the universe." He persuaded Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. JFK persuaded Congress and the American public to support and fund a plan to put an American on the moon.

But what happens when people can’t persuade?

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Is your sales mantra “find a need and fill it?” Is your training, and sales operation built around the Consultative Needs/Benefit approach? That’s a very limiting One Trick Pony!

One trick may be all a pony needs, but why severely limit sales success with just a single approach? Needs/Benefit selling activates only a small part of just one of the 7 internal triggers buyers depend upon to make a buying decision.

Play it!
One-Trick_Pony.mp3
One Trick Pony by Paul Simon

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