Are you Shoving Your Prospects Down a Rabbit Hole?
Kenrick Cleveland
I'm not naming names here, and it's possible no one has even paid this person much attention. . out there in the world, one of my former students is attempting to teach criteria elicitation. That's it. And while I truly believe criteria elicitation is a phenomenal way to sell, I don't think a body of knowledge as complex as persuasion (human nature), can be distilled and synthesized down to one question especially if you're working with a high end, affluent client base.
This one question, when asked over and over is simply going to annoy people to the point where they won't want to work with you at all. The line of questioning -- 'What's important about money? What's important about that? What's important about that?' -- is not going to work. It is figuratively shoving your prospect down a rabbit hole and it is completely ineffective.
I've noticed when complex material gets watered down for the masses to understand, it becomes next to useless. It is my pleasure and I am grateful that my clients are sophisticated and understand the value of really delving deeply into the heart of persuasion. It's the difference between learning something from an expert, say at a prestigious university to taking a Learning Annex course -- you're not going to get the same quality. Condensing things to this point depletes it of its real value.
The big frame is: what's the point of all of this?
Why do we use criteria?
The reason we use criteria is not because we're trying to get a Band-Aid approach or a short cut, it's because we genuinely need to understand the model of the world of the customer that we're sitting in front of so that we can enter into it with them, not so we can banter about with it. We're figuratively entering into their model of the world with them to get to that state of mind.
Once we're there, we bring our criteria in the back door and we get in there and expand their model. That is where persuasion takes place.
Criteria is our laser like focus on what they need and want.
It's my belief that we have absolutely no business selling things to people who will not find value in them.
Persuading is becoming a master of communication, not just a memorizer of a few patterns.
My goal, for myself and for my students, is to aspire to mastery of persuasion, not to isolate one pattern.
If you are at the top of your field today, it is because you have made a commitment to it.
If you are in a field that deals with selling, you must have a full on commitment to absolute mastery of communication, psychology and how the two interrelate.
Criteria is important. Watered down patterns and techniques will not achieve what true persuasion can achieve. It will work sometimes, but in order to truly persuade with amazing results, there's no comparison.
Asking people questions, the answers to which you don't really care about, is as bad as asking, "So, if I can show you a way to save energy, time, and money today, you would be interested in moving ahead with it, wouldn't you?"
It's ineffectual, but there are still people out there who will do it.
Kenrick Cleveland teaches techniques to earn the business of affluent prospects using (
http://www.maxpersuasion.com/ ) persuasion. He runs public and private seminars and offers home study courses and coaching programs in (
http://www.maxpersuasion.com/ ) persuasion techniques.
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