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John Grinder and Richard Bandler developed the concept of “mirror and matching.” The idea is to align your movements and body image with your prospect’s demeanor. The goal is to mirror or reflect their actions, not to imitate them. If people think you are imitating them, they may feel like you’re mocking them and they may become offended. They will see you as phony and no longer trust you. Instead of directly imitating, just mirror or match the overall tone and demeanor of your prospect. You can safely mirror things such as language, posture, gestures, and mood.

When you mirror your prospects, you build rapport with them. Because of your similar demeanors, your prospects will feel a connection with you. Remember, people are inclined to follow and obey those they perceive as similar to themselves. If they shift in their posture, you should eventually do so, too. If they cross their legs, you should cross your legs as well. If they smile, you smile too. When you do this, your prospects will subconsciously feel that you have much more in common with them than is actually the case.

We often unconsciously mirror others, without even realizing it. It is just a natural thing that we do. Have you ever noticed at social gatherings how people tend to match each other in their body language and their attitudes? For example, when two people greet each other, they typically tend to use the same posture and behave with the same demeanor. When you are a Master Persuader, you will make skillful and conscientious use of mirroring.

Mirroring Language

You will be amazed at the effectiveness of using vocabulary or “lingo” similar to that of your prospect. Pick up on and use some of the words or phrases that your prospect uses. You may also find it helpful to mirror his rate of speech. If he speaks in a slower and more relaxed tone, you can do the same. Nevertheless, be sure to keep the enthusiasm high. If he speaks quickly, feel free to do the same.

Matching Breathing

See if you can adopt the same breathing pattern as your prospect. In doing so, it is helpful to observe the rise and fall of your prospect’s chest or shoulders for cues. Of course, use your peripheral vision to do this so you are always maintaining eye contact. Synchronized breathing between you and your prospect is such a subtle thing, yet people really pick up on it.

Matching Voice

This is different from matching language. It refers to the actual tone or inflection of your prospect’s voice. Be very careful, however, that you do not come across as mimicking. The “mirrored” voice you use should never be so different or foreign from your own that you arouse suspicion. Just minor and subtle adjustments in tone are all that are necessary to get the desired results.

Mirroring Moods

When you reflect your prospect’s mood, you give validation to what he is saying and feeling. We often verbally mirror another’s mood by restating what he or she just said: “So, what I hear you saying is…” or “I think I would feel that way too, if I also experienced….” Be sure when you mirror your prospect’s mood that your tone is very sincere. Your persuasive power increases when you sincerely acknowledge your prospect’s comments, concerns, and feelings.

Matching Energy Level

Some people always seem to be relaxed and mellow. Others seem to be constantly active or vivacious. Seek to mirror your prospect’s energy level. This will be another subtle way you are in sync with your prospect.

As you study persuasion, you must realize that connecting with your audience is critical. Many persuaders don’t know how to maintain that rapport throughout the entire persuasive situation. You see people in sales break the ice, find similarities, build rapport for the first five minutes, and then launch into their presentation. All of a sudden, they get serious and change their demeanor. What is the prospect going to think? The person he has been talking to for the past five minutes has now changed. Which one is the real person? The two were getting along, having fun, and all of a sudden, without warning, the salesperson becomes serious and dives into a sales pitch. This breaks rapport and seems incongruent to the prospect. You both know why you are there and what the ultimate goal will be, so continue to build on that rapport.

Learning how to persuade and influence will make the difference between hoping for a better income and having a better income. Beware of the common mistakes presenters and persuaders commit that cause them to lose the deal. Get your free report 10 Mistakes That Continue Costing You Thousands and explode your income today.

Certainly, there are occasions when you may not want to mirror someone else. For example, a lawyer will often seek to create anxiety or uneasiness in a witness. To accomplish this, the lawyer needs to avoid mirroring. While the witness is slumped back in the seat looking at the ground, the lawyer may hover or stand rigidly and look intensely at the witness’s face. Have you ever experienced the awkwardness of glancing at your watch when you’re in the middle of a conversation with someone and they notice? “Breaking the mirror” breaks the synchronization that makes everyone feel calm and comfortable. If you need to break the mirror, simply stop mirroring and sit, speak, or gesture differently from the person you’re dealing with.

Conclusion

Persuasion is the missing puzzle piece that will crack the code to dramatically increase your income, improve your relationships, and help you get what you want, when you want, and win friends for life. Ask yourself how much money and income you have lost because of your inability to persuade and influence. Think about it. Sure you’ve seen some success, but think of the times you couldn’t get it done. Has there ever been a time when you did not get your point across? Were you unable to convince someone to do something? Have you reached your full potential? Are you able to motivate yourself and others to achieve more and accomplish their goals? What about your relationships? Imagine being able to overcome objections before they happen, know what your prospect is thinking and feeling, feel more confident in your ability to persuade.

About the Author:

Kurt Mortensen’s trademark is Magnetic Persuasion; rather than convincing others, he teaches that you should attract them, just like a magnet attracts metal filings. He teaches that sales have changed and the consumer has become exponentially more skeptical and cynical within the last five years. Most persuaders are using only 2 or 3 persuasion techniques when there are actually 120 available!

Kurt teaches over a hundred techniques to give you the ability to effectively work with every customer that walks in your door. Professional success, personal happiness, leadership potential, and income depend on the ability to persuade, influence, and motivate others. Learning how to persuade and influence will make the difference between hoping for a better income and having a better income.

If you are ready to claim your success and learn what only the ultra-prosperous know, begin by going to http://www.PreWealth.com and getting my free report “10 Mistakes That Continue Costing You Thousands.” After reading my free report, go to http://www.PreWealth.com/IQ and take the free Persuasion IQ analysis to determine where you rank and what area of the sales cycle you need to improve in order to close every sale!

As I become more successful with my internet business I have become interested in ways to move my business to the next level.

Besides pumping more money into advertising it occured to me that increasing my closing percentage on my websites to the visitors I am getting would be a free way to make more money without spending more money to do it.

Writing better copy in my ads and on my websites itself surely would help me reach this goal.

I know in off-line sales that it is not only what you say, but how you say it. To achieve the same results without the benefit of voice inflection will require getting my prospective customer into an almost hypnotic state of mind.

First let’s define what an hypnotic state of mind is.

“A trance like state in which a person responds readily to suggestions. Attracting and holding an interest as if by a spell.”

O.K. But how do I do that?

If you can tell your readers what they are probably thinking, feeling or doing as they read your ad copy their thoughts will usually trigger their own subconscious mind to bring out these feelings or actions.

O.K. How do you do that?

One way is to add hypnotic sentences into any ad copy. You may have to change one or two words so it relates more to the product or service you’re selling.

Here are 10 hypnotic like sentences that you can use to get your prospect more into a buying mood.

If after reading these you feel the urge to go and buy something check out my make money at home website Team-Schuman.Com here:

http://www.team-schuman.com

Just kidding. O.K. here are the 10 hypnotic sentences.

1. As you’re scanning over this ad copy, you are beginning to imagine using our product and enjoying all the benefits it brings.

2. After you read this short ad you will feel like your problems are almost completely solved, all you will have to do is order.

3. As you’re skimming through this, you’re beginning to think you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by trying out our product.

4. The more you understand just how valuable our product could be to your life, the less you think about delaying this important purchase.

5. As you keep reading this ad copy you are feeling more and more compelled to experience all the benefits of our product.

6. As every word you read on our website you start to understand just how much our product could benefit your life.

7. The more you keep reading the more you feel it would be a waste to let this opportunity slip by.

8. You don’t know it yet but, at the conclusion of this ad, you will feel driven to order and experience all the benefits of our product.

9. The more you review our website the more you begin to find yourself getting very excited about our product and starting to feel the urge to buy now.

10. You don’t realize it yet but, in a few short minutes you’ll realize that you can’t put off this vital purchase and then you’ll be yanking out your credit card.

Does this stuff actually work? The only way to know for sure is to give it a try in your ad copy and on your website pages.

If people really do start breaking out their credit card more often or even a few extra times then it is worth the effort to learn how to use hypnotic sentences to sell more of your products.

Copyright 2004 Jeff Schuman

About The Author

Jeff Schuman is a 20 year veteran of sales and marketing and has made over $35 million dollars in sales in that time. He has several websites dedicated to helping people make money, make money at home, and make money online.

http://www.team-schuman.com

http://www.make-money-bay.com

How to write headlines that sell

Are headlines very important? You can bet they are! Ninety
percent of the success or failure of your easy home business
will be thanks to them. It doesn’t matter if you’re writting an
ad or a sales letter…

SAVE MONEY AND TIME THE SUCCESS IS IN THE HEADLINE!

Some books that sell few copies become best sellers with
exactly the same content and a new title!

So you need to ignite your sales by creating headlines with
amazing power, and I will show you how to do it

What advertising gurus say . . .

“Advice to copywriters: When you are assigned to write an ad,
write a lot of headlines first. Spend hours writing headlines or
days if necessary. If you happen to think of a headline while
walking down the street or while riding the bus, take out pencil
and paper and write it down.”

John Caples

“On the average, five times as many people read the headlines as
read the body copy. It follows that, unless your headline sells
your product, you have wasted 90 percent of your money.”

David Oglivy

It doesn’t matter if you are a professional copywriter or a
newbie, anyone can be stronger in headlines writting..

You can read about good headlines in many places, but most of
them talk about mythology that doesn’t work, so lets see some
FACTS..

WHAT DOES A HEADLINE DO?

It grabs attention Communicates benefits Appeals to the reader’s
self-interest It answers the question, “What’s in it for me?”,
“Who cares”, “So what” Sets the offer’s tone And acts like a
movie or theatre marquee: Selects the right audience.

Of course you need a good body copy, but with any body copy, or
with the same body copy, a good headline can be as much as 17
times more effective than a so-so headline!

HOW TO WRITE HEADLINES

Write a believable promise Don’t use more than 17 words. Use
quotation marks and index text, because it is more memorable.
Use reverse type sparingly, because it is hard to read. Don’t
use all caps. Use upper and lower case letters for reading ease.
If you use a photograph, place the headline below it. Use the
same type size in all the headline.

HOW TO CHOOSE THE HEADLINE’S CONTENT

Step back from the product and review it, element by element.
Look at the product with a marketers eye (don’t use the
producer’s cap, if you are the one who have written or created
it). Use strong action verbs (like slash, chop, stagger, etc).
For example “Multiply your income by three!” The word multiply
is a strong action one. Identify all the benefits and feature of
the product from the buyer’s point of view.

Benefits are the real hot buttons Benefits are those elements of
the product that answers the question “What’s in it for me?”

A feature is a fact about the product that builds credibility:
“It’s ll x l7 inches, 244 pages and has 13 illustrations.”

You need both, features and benefits in your copy. But benefits
are where to place the emphasis. A powerful headline must scream
the product’s benefits!

Benefits will help you close the sale. Why? Because people act
90 percent on their emotions, and benefits help bring out
emotions. Once a person is motivated, then that person will
justify his decisions by using logic.

For each headline write 10 before choosing the best one!

HOW TO EXTRACT THE PRODUCT’S BENEFITS

Buy some 3 x 5 cards, Review the whole product Write one benefit
or feature on each card. Once you finish, review your 3 x 5
cards.

You might end with tens or hundreds cards, and sometimes the
strongest benefit you can find on a card is also the best
headline. Or it can just pop out at you sometimes!

Some people call this strongest benefit your “unique selling
proposition” what you can offer that no one else can.

Once you

isolate the obvious benefits, you will start building wealth.
And you know what? Many marketers miss ilolating the obvious
benefit of their product. And this es what will make you
immediately start earning a great deal of money as a marketer.

Generally you will have many headline choices, adn those
benefits that you have isolated, will be used to write the rest
of the body copy.

YOUR ENTIRE MESSAGE NEEDS TO BE FILLED WITH BENEFITS!

THE HIDDEN BENEFITS

This is a very creative and interesting concept: Many

headlines do not arise from studying the product itself.

And how will you find them? Just answer the following
question:…

If you had unlimited, god-like powers and could grant your
prospective customer the biggest benefit you can possibly
imagine he or she would ideally want from your product, what
would that be?” Write down your answer.

Here is a specific example. While Ted Nicholas (one of
Internet’s marketing gurus) was writing “The Complete Book of
Corporate Forms”, to sell it he naturally wanted to dramatize
the book and excite his prospects about its benefits. How could
he possibly do that?

Numerous publishers sold legal form books. Not as good as his,
but still form books. (His was, and still is, the easiest to
use.) What could he do to differentiate his product? How could
he make a book of forms exciting!?

He stood back and asked himself that question. And he quickly
realized that entrepreneurs don’t care a whit about forms. Most
abhor paperwork. What they want is the benefit from using the
forms.

And he also knew entrepreneurs, more than anyone else, hate to
pay taxes. And what every entrepreneur desperately wants is to
preserve the corporation’s tax shelter status. No one wants to
lose that precious benefit.

So it came to him. And he wrote the headline, “What Will You Do
When the IRS Suddenly Wipes Out Your Corporation’s Tax Shelter
Benefits?” Of course, the book has narrative information about
the importance of keeping good records to maintain the corporate
protection.

But, while it happens all the time, there is nothing whatsoever
in the book about the IRS taking away benefits. That is why it
is a hidden benefit.

The rest of the copy for the ad is easy to do once you have the
lead. You will find that your copywriting task will be simpler.

Did that title work! You say: Since 1979, 350,000 copies of the
book have been sold at $70 per copy. That’s 24.5 million dollars
worth of product sales. And it is still selling just as well
today! Selling a million copies of this book in the next few
years is easily within reach!

HIDDEN BENEFIT CAVEAT:

Make sure your product actually delivers on the headline’s
promise.

Other examples of headlines that have nothing whatsoever to do
directly with the product, but nonetheless have set sales
records:

“The Eighth Wonder of the World” “Wage Your Own Personal Tax
Revolt” “Only Way Left For Little Guy to Get Rich” “The Ultimate
Tax Shelter”. “What Will You Do When Your Personal Assets Are
Seized to Satisfy a Judgment Against Your Corporation?”

TEST, TEST, TEST

Even after you discover your ideal headline, it is imperative to
keep running new headline tests for two reasons:

To see if you can make a better one, and most of all. . . Every
headline has a life time and you need to change it.

When do you need to change a good headline?

Not too soon! If it is working never change (you’ll be tired of
it before your customers) Change it if you beat the results with
a new headline.

POWERFUL HEADLINE WORDS

Ok, by now you know how to write the headline, and which should
be its content. Now lets see how to state it.

The safest headline begins with “How To”, because iIt
immediately appeals to the reader’s self-interest. It piques
curiosity. If the benefit is powerful, the reader will move on
to the body copy.

The “how to” phrase cannot be overdone (there are over 7,000
books with titles that start with “How To”), and here are some
other powerful words and phrases you can use:

Announcing Advice to Yes Secrets of The truth of Love New
Protect How much Now Life How would Amazing Here This Facts you
Discover Only Breakthrough Do you Sale At last Bargains Hate

And finally, the two most powerful headline words:

Free You

Power words are already implanted in the minds of all your
readers, because of what the words mean. You’ll get the
attention of the maximum number of readers with the first two
words of your headline.

OTHER IMPORTANT HEADLINE POINTS

The headline must motivate. It doesn’t really matter if the
headline get the reader excited of fearful or protective, but is
must stir an emotion.

Headlines must be in present tense, not the future tense,
because a headline in present tense makes the promise more
credible and believable. The present tense headlines are also
far more emphatic.

Headlines must be created using the first or second person.

Headlines must use colorful, vital and strong verbs.

Headlines must use short words that create images or pictures in
the mind of the reader.

You must eliminate most adverbs and adjectives in your
headlines, use them in the body copy.

Do not write headlines tryinbg to to be “catchy” or “cute”. You
must dramatize the product’s benefits not call attention to the
copy itself.

Avoid headlines that merely create curiosity. Your headline must
be strongly related with your product and its benefits, or the
reader will feel deceived and will stop reading.

A good headline must prompt an action on the part of a reader.

Headlines on ads are like headlines on news items. Nobody reads
a whole newspaper, you just pick out the headlines that catch
your atention.

People do not read ads for amusement. They just don’t read what
doesn’t seem interesting through its headline..

Finally, use a wide variety of headlines. Each form of approach
will attract different people. You are presenting your product
to millions and among them there is a percentage that’s
interested in some benefits and a percentage that is interested
in other benefits. Do not expect to attract every kind of people
with just one single headline.

Go after your different customers with different headlines, but
don’t think those millions will read your ads to see if your
product interests them, they will decide at a glance,

THEY WILL DECIDE BY YOUR HEADLINE!

Would you like to receive some more guides about writing
headlines? Well, you can find free headlines guide in MYSS!
“Make Your Site Sell!” the Bible of Internet Marketers!.
http://newsletter.easy-home-business.com/tryMYSS!2002.exe

Written by Dr. Roberto A. Bonomi

Let’s talk about how to recruit top sales & marketing talent. There are lots of people who get into sales and marketing for the wrong reasons. So there are a lot of people out there who actually don’t have what it takes in order to be successful at sales and marketing.

Some of the most important things when it comes to finding good sales and marketing talent are, first of all, having a good system and process for recruiting. Second of all, knowing what to look for in good sales and marketing talent. Third, knowing how to get the word out to broadcast and promote your company to people who have the talent that you need. And fourth, how to actually make them a part of your team.

So we’re going to talk a little bit about the recruiting process first. Recruiting sales and marketing talent is both a combination of art and science. It requires a lot of commitment to process in order to get the right people. There are a lot of companies that hire the first person that comes through the door thinking that they’re going to be a good sales person for their company when in fact the only thing they’re good at is selling their way through the interview process. Now a person who comes in and sells you through an interview process doesn’t necessarily have what it takes to be able to sell for your company so part of your challenge is weeding out the right people through the interviewing process to make sure that the person has more than an ability to convince you that they are the right candidate but actually can use their persuasion skills in order to be a good sales person for you company. So what you’re really looking for is somebody who has the ability and the willingness to sell. And that doesn’t come easy.

Being a good sales person is a lot more than just the power of persuasion. There are a number of key skills and traits that are required in order to be a good sales person. When I speak of skills, we’re talking about learned abilities, something that can be trained or taught. When we talk about traits, we’re talking about innate characteristics of the person’s personality or behavior. It is possible through a rigorous process to uncover a person’s traits and skills through the interviewing process and by going through a rigorous set of homework assignments, aptitude testing, sales performance history recording and also behavioral interviewing.

If you’re going to hire good sales and marketing people you have to have a rigorous process and that means defining all of the steps that are necessary in order to understand whether or not a person’s skills and talents are actually a fit with what your company is trying to accomplish and whether or not that person can actually become part of your team, integrate themselves and be successful.

So there are a number of different steps that are required in order to recruit good sales and marketing talent. That includes starting by doing a good job of defining the job description, developing an attractive job posting to promote the position. Actually getting the word out by using career databases, the internet, as well as sending job postings out to your friends and network colleagues so that you can get referrals. Most of the best sales people come through referrals and not through mass advertising.

Additional process steps that are extremely important are having a multistage interviewing process that uncover a person’s skills and talents through a series of interviews, using a team-based process to be able to have different perspectives from different members of your team and uncover those talents by using those different perspectives and also uncovering the weaknesses of an individual candidates.

In addition to the actual multi-team process, it’s really important to develop a good behavioral interviewing questionnaire that allows you to get to the heart of whether or not a person has actually demonstrated their skills. Behavioral interviewing is based upon the concept of having a person telling you stories about their past successes, their past challenges and helping you to uncover the keys to whether or not a person has been able to perform in previous jobs. Past experience and past achievement history is an extremely important indicator of whether or not a person actually is going to be able to perform for your company.

Another aspect of a solid process is establishing strong hiring criteria up front and that means defining exactly through your job description what it is that you’re looking for in a candidate and setting out that criteria so that you can build in an interviewing process to uncover how well individual candidates meet with that criteria. We typically don’t hire a good sales person without going through at least four interviews and that requires time, energy and a commitment to the process.
Many companies that we do work for try to short cut this because they really want to believe that a strong sales person, when they come in to sell, is actually going to be able to sell for their company and so they tend to cut corners and in sales almost 53% of all hires are mishires for this reason.

Another reason why people make mistakes in hiring sales people is, particularly if they don’t have the same skills set themselves, they can misjudge what a persons true aptitudes and abilities are in this area. So, one of the things to do is to be careful if you’re a finance operations or engineering executive and you’re put in the position of hiring sales people, is to know your limitations with respect to your ability to judge, make those judgments and make the right hires. Hiring good sales people is a difficult and challenging process but if it’s done right, it can be very successful for your company.

About Cube Management

Cube Management (http://www.cubemanagement.com) provides sales acceleration services to emerging growth and mid-market companies in the technology, manufacturing, healthcare and business service sectors. The experts at Cube Management work across the entire spectrum of marketing, sales and business development to provide customized solutions that drive revenue and profit growth. Cube Management combines Strategy, Process & People to produce winning results. Read the Cube Sales Blog