Danny Meyer puts a fine point on the persuasive elements of employee bonding and friendship. Meyer owns thirteen high-end New York restaurants, and states, “A productive day for me is much more about human transactions than it is about technical accomplishments. It’s looking people in the eye and connecting with them in a way they feel seen.”

Do your clients, employees, associates feel connected with you? Do they feel “seen?” Do you know and record relevant information about every one of them? Are you employing the Friendship Trigger to reach their emotional decision and action motivators? Create trust and great relationships by bonding with all your contacts and your productivity will soar.

Giving and getting is a cash preservation tool for today’s business owner and manager. Bartering is a huge business. According to Fortune Small Business magazine, “It can help move unsold inventory, put idle staff to work, it can drive new cash business.”  Bob Meyer, publisher of Barter News, estimates that one million entrepreneurs are involved in barter exchanges totaling $10 billion in value. Many businesses give goods and services in return for internet service. The internet itself is a give-and-get facility. In 1980, there were 40 barter exchanges; on the internet today there are 500.

Can you activate the Reciprocity Trigger in your business? Why not? You can offer anything of value in return for work and goods you want. Reciprocity was once the currency of life, and the concept is as valid today as ever.

How have you used the reciprocity trigger or seen it work for others?

“A prudent question is one half of wisdom.” – Francis Bacon

How much easier would selling be if you could really see things through your customer’s eyes? Here’s how the pros do exactly that. It’s a process called Value Profiling and like many effective techniques, it is not complicated (most salespeople just don’t know it or don’t do it).

SKILL TARGET: Find out what your prospect wants, and emphasize those features and benefits which meet their criteria.

It sounds simple, but the steps in the process are critical:

PRIORITY ONE: Develop in advance the questions you intend to ask.

PRIORITY TWO: Include the following:

1. A Consent Statement: Launch right in to “20 Questions” and you risk putting your prospect on the defensive. Instead, preface your probe with a permission or consent statement: “In order to develop a proposal that best meets the your needs, I’d like to ask a few questions. It’s time well spent, because then I can zero right in on things that are most important to you. Is that okay?”

2. A General Question: “What criteria do you consider most important when purchasing something like this?”

3. The Value Profile: “Which is more important, price or total value?” “Is service a critical issue?” “Do you prefer standard widgets, or custom order?” “How relevant is delivery time?”

TRY THIS: List at least five specific “value” questions you can ask on your next sales call.

Armed with this information, you can develop a highly effective presentation that says to your prospect, “Here’s what you said you wanted.” Then give your customer back their glasses.

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?

Right—nothing!

Lack of persuasive power is a key factor in keeping otherwise outstanding people from achieving the success they deserve. Many great inventions—historical solutions, major medical advances, critical corporate change initiatives—each failed simply because the creator hadn’t acquired easy-to-learn persuasion skills.

Are you smart—maybe flat-out brilliant? Do you have degrees from a top university? Do you have ideas that might change your life… significantly improve your organization’s status… change the world for the better? You’re sure to be a success-right? Well, maybe not. Gifted intelligence, great ideas, and outstanding products by themselves do not persuade. Even the most amazing scientific discoveries didn’t see the light of day until someone persuaded someone else to get the discovery into the marketplace.

A Tiger by the Tail
Chester F. Carlson was a brilliant physicist, lawyer, patent attorney, inventor, and research engineer. He was also a pitiful persuader. His first persuasion job was to sell himself as a newly minted physicist from the prestigious California Institute of Technology, and he failed miserably contacting eighty-one companies without getting a single offer.

Finally, working in Bell Labs’ patent department, Carlson had to manually retype patent descriptions and recreate patent drawings for required copies. He sought a better way to save on the time and boredom. He tinkered on the side, hoping to make his big break. Then, in 1937, in his Jackson Heights, New York-kitchen, using the principles of photoconductivity, Carlson invented and patented the world’s first photocopy process.

Years passed without Carlson persuading interest in his invention. In 1939 he said, “I knew I had a very big tiger by the tail.” But because he wasn’t skilled in persuasion, that tiger remained fast asleep. Comatose! Year after year he tried desperately to persuade companies that he had something of value. He met with IBM, Kodak, GE, and RCA. Twenty companies in all—not a nibble. Then, in 1959, a company known as Haloid introduced the first commercial unit based on Carlson’s design, Copier Model 914.

Two years later, Haloid became the Xerox Corporation and the copier industry was born.

Carlson had created an incredible product—but lacking persuasive skills it took him twenty-two years to get anyone interested! Twenty-two years from patented product to production. Amazing! A brilliant, highly needed, world-changing product—the forerunner of computer printers and fax machines—went absolutely nowhere for more than two decades. Is persuasion important? You bet it is! History is rife with examples of persuaders winning and non-persuaders losing. The secret of success is not merely to have great ideas, products, or solutions; the secret is to learn to persuade others to comply and execute.

The Two-Trillion-Dollar Invention
Jack St. Clair Kilby invented something far more important than Carlson’s copier. While at Texas Instruments Kilby received patent number 3643138 for his invention of the first integrated circuit, the forerunner of today’s computer chip. Impressive, right? No! Kilby couldn’t even persuade his own company to implement the idea. “Don’t you realize,” he was asked by management, “that computers are getting bigger, not smaller?”

Because he was a non-persuader, for years his brilliant invention went undeveloped. In his autobiography, Kilby admits, “I worked hard with Robert Royce at Fairchild Semiconductor to achieve commercial acceptance.” But that didn’t happen. Even his savvy engineering skills could not persuade anyone to put his invention into any commercial application. Instead, Kilby acknowledged wistfully: “The integrated circuit provided much of the ‘entertainment’ at major technical meetings over the next few years.” The most important element in today’s entire electronic field provided merely “technical entertainment”.

A decade after obtaining his patent, Kilby was asked to make a calculator small enough to fit into a pocket. Using his integrated circuit, he invented the digital calculator and the chip had its first commercial application. Others saw the potential and persuaded companies to make new applications. A new electronics era was born. But Kilby’s lack of persuasive ability had kept this major technological breakthrough lying fallow, totally in the dark for more than a decade! Two critical inventions—the copy machine and the integrated circuit chip—went nowhere for many years because their genius creators weren’t persuaders.

Persuasion Naturals
But flip a coin. Try the other side. Let’s look at a situation where a great persuader had no product, only limited experience, and no credibility—not even a college degree. Yet, with persuasion, he would become the world’s richest man.

In 1975 Bill Gates was studying pre-law at Harvard. Meanwhile, his hobby was playing with early computers. Gates and boyhood friend Paul Allen noticed that the Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems Company (MITS) had developed one of the first mini computers—the Altair 8080. Gates contacted MITS and told them he had developed a BASIC program that would make their computer run better. Yes, it was a lie. He had nothing. Yet he persuaded the company to install his program in their computer. Gates had never seen the Altair 8080 and had never written a line of BASIC code. He didn’t even have the computer’s operating chip. Yet—with his persuasive ability—he convinced MITS to purchase a product that didn’t exist. Working around school assignments, for eight weeks Gates wrote code. He then flew to the MITS office and installed the untested program in a computer he had not seen until that day. To even his surprise, it worked perfectly! MITS now owned the newest BASIC program.

What next for Gates? Well, he simply persuaded MITS to sell him its BASIC program! Still a Harvard pre-law student, he realized the software industry was in its birthing stage. He next persuaded his parents to let him drop out of Harvard, and persuaded Paul Allen to join him in a two-man venture. Microsoft was born. And Gates has since been described as the most influential person of the twentieth century and beyond. Persuasion is influence!

By contrast, Carlson and Kilby had everything but persuasive ability. Each had an incredible product, patented and ready to go. Each had impeccable credentials. Yet they were flat-out stymied for years. Gates—with little but an idea, a keen technical mind, and inherent persuasion skills, quickly built the Microsoft empire. He started a company on an idea and persuasion.

The tales of winners are the tales of master persuaders. Jack Welch is designated the most successful business leader of the 20th Century. In his autobiography Jack, Welch states “Nearly everything I’ve done in my life has been accomplished with other people.” With just a single persuasive sentence containing several persuasion triggers, Welch persuaded his staff to turn a stodgy stagnant General Electric into today’s financial juggernaut.

Persuade or Perish
For 2,441 years the art and science of persuasion has attracted the world’s best minds. Leaders ask: How do I motivate others to act? How do I generate change? How do I make things happen with and through others? These questions have challenged the thinkers and doers since antiquity. History’s winners knew intuitively how to persuade and motivate others. They didn’t know it at the time, but they applied scientific principles we now understand.

It matters little how necessary, creative, innovative, outstanding, or even critical your ideas, solutions, visions, or products are. If you can’t convince someone to execute, you won’t succeed. Persuade, motivate, gain compliance, and your ideas might well catapult you into fame, fortune, and self-fulfillment.

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

Life’s Challenges

Let’s face it, life is a challenge. From the minute our eyes pop open in the morning until they close exhausted at night we deal with an avalanche of decisions. Get out of bed now or snooze? What to wear? What for breakfast – stick to the diet or enjoy? Which route to work? Stop for gas now or on the way home? Listen to the news or some new music? Which music?

At work it’s the same. Get that report out first or answer the emails and voice mail? Take a call or let voice mail pick up? What are the boss’s priorities? What are yours? Whose do you execute first?

All day long, requests and decisions drive activities. The need to decide is incessant; the issues never stop, never let up.

Dealing with this many decisions sounds difficult. It could be. If we had to use logic reason and cognitive thinking, if we had to rationally evaluate and think through each decision, we’d be trapped, locked in place, unable to move in any direction as we analyze, evaluate, contemplate, measure, and critique options. We’d wind up dazed and immobile. We’d go nuts!

Nature’s Triggers to the Rescue

Fortunately, nature, our emotion based limbic system, has provided us with a highly effective, simple solution to enable us to easily get through each decision-making opportunity. That solution is our “internal navigation system” referred to in the book and PBS series “The Secret Life of the Brain.” This system resides in our brain’s emotional center and is activated by our personal databank of emotion based internal triggers. The take away summary from the breakthrough live brain research is this:

“We are not thinking machines. We are feeling machines that think.”

What is a trigger? What is this powerful internal navigation tool that initiates automatic, quick, easy decisions? A trigger is an emotion based gut-feeling shortcut that helps us avoid the pain of rational thinking, of laborious cognitive mental evaluation. We are pre-programmed to comply with other’s requests when the request activates the appropriate triggers.

The secret for persuasion success is to determine which triggers can be activated for each situation. The weird irony of this need for quick, easy emotion based triggers is that the more sophisticated and complex our lives get, the more information we have, the more we need and rely on simple ways to help us make decisions. The smart manager, leader, sales rep understands this need and prepares her requests accordingly.

The exciting new science of live brain imaging documents that one emotion based brain element, the amygdala, receives most outside stimulus, requests for decisions. The amygdala has two choices. It can make an immediate emotion based decision tapping into the life long database we build. Or, if no prior emotion is triggered it can send the request to the pre-frontal cortex for lengthy, rational, time consuming cognitive evaluation. Here’s a newly discovered scientific fact: Reason and logic do not persuade. They might back up an emotional decision, but they do not heavily influence the decision.

To get what you want through others you must activate their emotion based triggers.

How Do You Activate an Emotional Trigger?

One of the 7 primary emotional triggers is the Authority Trigger. When we perceive someone is an authority, we usually act on their requests. What do you do when your doctor, the “authority,” gives you a prescription? Do you search the Internet and research the chemical compounds? Do you check the FDA website to evaluate the documentation for safety and efficacy? No, you get the prescription filled. The doctor’s authority triggered you to make a quick automatic decision.

How about your accountant, the financial “authority”? When he says, “file this way,” do you examine the 16,000 page tax code for logic and reason, or do you follow his advice? Again the authority trigger motivates a quick, non-thinking automatic decision.

How do you persuade with the authority emotional trigger? Be the authority! Know your stuff. Do your homework. We give unthinking automatic compliance to those who have done the hard digging for us. Show the other person you are fully informed about your subject and that you can be trusted to give expert information. Create the right impression and the other person’s amygdala will perceive less risk, feel more assurance, and trust. You’ll get the decision you want.

Each of the triggers can be activated to produce easy, automatic decisions and actions. In the most simplistic form these triggers are:

• The Friendship Trigger
  • Activates trust and agreement through bonding
• The Authority Trigger
  • Activates acceptance through expertise
• The Consistency Trigger
  • Motivates consistency with past actions
• The Reciprocity Trigger
  • When you give, you get
• The Contrast Trigger
  • Structures contrasts to make one approach better than another
• The Reason Why Trigger
  • Emotional reasons to make decisions and actions
• The Hope Trigger
  • Instills positive expectations that persuade agreement

Activate a combination of these triggers and you will get anything you want.

2,500 years ago Aristotle wrote, “The best route to persuasion is with reason and logic.” It took science 2,500 years to learn he was wrong. The brain just doesn’t work that way. We finally know how the brain really works in the decision process. Your simple approach: Work with the brain rather than against it. Activate the brain’s emotional triggers and achieve the results you seek.

What do we know today about persuasion that we didn’t know before? What can you learn that will change your life for the better? What’s new and different?

What’s New And Different?

The difference is simple, dramatic and exciting. With new, live, real time brain-imaging technology, we know definitively how the brain really processes information. We finally know how to influence others’ decisions and actions. And we’ve been doing it wrong for 2,500 years, since Aristotle wrote that the best route to persuasion is through reason, logic and rational input.

Top neurologist, Dr. Richard Restak, author of the book and PBS series “The Secret Life of the Brain” put the lie to that long-held belief stating: “We are not thinking machines; we are feeling machines that think.” Restak adds, “Your brain is not a logic machine. Emotions and feelings about something occur before you’ve made any attempt at conscious evaluation.”

Logic And Reason Do Not Persuade

Logic and reason do not persuade! Why not? Because we react more effectively to emotional input rather than logic and reason. From birth we each build a database, an internal self-guidance system triggered by emotions. To successfully, easily persuade you simply activate the other person’s emotional triggers, his or her internal self-guidance system.

With live brain technology we can pinpoint seven triggers others universally employ to help them make quick, automatic decisions. Decisions that are right for them.

The Friendship Trigger

Of the seven key triggers, the Friendship Trigger is both critical and a prerequisite for activating the other triggers. Since birth, the emotional part of our brain has stored data for the friendship trigger. Infants bond with whomever cares for them. Bonding creates trust and liking. We are emotionally hard wired to respond quickly and favorably to those we like, trust and are similar to us.

The secret to successfully activating the other person’s friendship decision trigger is, well, to be a friend. How do we do that? We must share common interests, common feelings and common bonds. When we share common interests, we become friends, we activate the trigger. The great news is that activating the friendship trigger is easy – very easy.

Does the friendship trigger work? Bill, a sales rep, needed a critical operation and wanted the world’s best surgeon. Problem: The surgeon took few new patients and would only operate on perfect candidates. Bill didn’t fit his mold. The doctor was a real curmudgeon, and as Chairman of the College of Physicians and Surgeons at one of the worlds top hospitals, a very busy guy. Bill was told to be brief, quick and deal only with the data and facts – no small talk.

Bill violated all he was told. Entering the office Bill asked, “So doc, what do you like to do when you are not working so hard?” The rather surprised doctor glared at Bill for a long minute, and then motioned him around to his side of his desk. He said, “I love blue water sailboat racing.” He logged into his yacht club’s Web site where his 65-foot ocean racer was featured with all his racing credits.

Now Bill is not a sail enthusiast, but he is a boater. They talked about the pleasures of boating. They bonded. They became friends. At each meeting Bill asked, “What’s new for the yacht? He regaled Bill with new GPS equipment, new Kevlar sails and racing stories. Wow! They’re friends.

By activating just one internal trigger, Bill persuaded the world’s top surgeon to operate on him. And thanks to that trigger, Bill is alive today. Is the friendship trigger powerful? Bet on it!

How do you activate this incredible trigger? How can you make it produce the decisions and actions you want? Let’s check out seven elements of one trigger. Ask about any of the following:

• Leisure Time: How Do You Spend It?: “What do you like to do when you’re not working so hard? An easy way to get her talking about what interests her. Tie in anything you can to match, or at least show interest in that subject. Anyone who shares the same interests is a friend.
• Business: How did you get started in this business? How did you become so good at what you do? Any questions relating to his or her business background will delight your persuasion partner
• Background: “Where are you from originally?” What brought you here? Simple questions can open a dialogue that goes on and on.
• Sports: If they’re into it, go for it! Fans love talking about their teams and heroes. Ask questions and let them roll!
• Kids: If they have them, they love to talk about them. You are a friend for asking.
• Friends-Acquaintances: Friends of friends are friends. Mutual acquaintances are great topics for friendly discussions.
• Thanks, Approval, Appreciation, Praise: Appreciation and praise from others is a key human motivator. Find something you can give thanks or appreciation for, and then do it! Show approval for any action or deed.

These are but seven of the infinite ways to be a friend, to activate the friendship trigger. Liking is a prerequisite for emotional triggers to be activated. We all prefer to deal with people we believe to be like us.

We all crave the power to get things done. The power to get the decisions and actions we want. Power is nothing without the power to influence. That power is in your hands. Wisely apply that power and you will achieve your destiny, wealth, power, influence, and a successful, happy life.

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?

Neuroscientists have recently discovered that the brain waves we emit when we engage in logical thinking (for example, when we solve a math problem) are virtually identical to those we emit when we are forced to plunge our hands and arms into ice water. It’s painful! Further, these researchers have determined that our brains require 300 percent more effort—measured in calories burned—for heavy thinking, compared with “mental cruising.”

No wonder people hate a logical, reasoned approach!

Luckily for us, our brains are hard-wired with mechanisms that help us make good decisions without painstaking analysis and reasoning. These mechanisms are known as triggers, but you can also think of them as “instincts” or “gut reactions.” Essentially, they are the decision-making shortcuts we easily and naturally employ all day long. They are our automatic self-guidance systems. We often don’t even realize we’re using them!

Put simply triggers are our navigational aids. They help us make easy, non-analytical, yet correct decisions. There are seven major triggers we all depend on to help us easily make quick, automatic and right decisions. One example is the consistency trigger. Here’s how it works. We all have a kind of database in our brains that records past thoughts and actions. This database provides a roadmap for future decisions. When faced with a decision, our brain does an instantaneous search, and we are oriented to act in a way that is consistent with our past actions.

In short, we do what we’ve done before. A citizen who’s voted for the conservative slate in the past will usually do so again, without bothering to seriously analyze the rhetoric of all the candidates running. Spenders make decisions to keep spending, savers tend to decide again and again to save. Cautious people take careful actions, risk tolerant people do not.

That’s not to say that logic has no place in decision-making. But logic tends to come later, after the decision-maker has responded to his or her internal triggers. For example, when people are in the market for a house, they’re often attracted to one that “feels right.” (Maybe it reminds them of a place where they used to live?) Later, when they’re discussing the house with others, they’ll talk about more logical aspects—the great neighborhood, easy access to the highway, a good school system, etc.

Now, what does this mean for you, the persuader?

Knowledgeable persuaders don’t force persuasion partners into icy water! Skilled people don’t demand 300% more energy for decisions. They help their partners make good decisions by learning what they want, doing the heavy thinking, then determining how to position the discussion.

Skilled persuaders evaluate which of the seven triggers that will apply to another person. Then they carefully frame and deliver a presentation based on those triggers. They use facts and figures, only when needed, to support a triggers-based decision.

An example: We have a client who boasted that his company was successful because he was able to make and implement decisions quickly. An astute sales rep wrapped up her presentation to this CEO by saying, “Charlie, you mentioned that you like to make quick decisions—will that be the case here?” Essentially, the rep set up a prime situation for the consistency trigger to operate. The CEO had to be consistent with his prior statement, and the consistency trigger resulted in a handshake, and a $50,000 profit!

The formula is fundamental: Employ the seven triggers, the client’s navigation system for making correct decisions. Use facts, figures, and logic only when needed to reinforce a triggers-based decision. It may be the opposite of what you’re used to—but it’s a surefire way to win at persuasion.

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!

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.

Aristotle wrote three books about persuasion. Among his conclusions, he stated that logic is the most reliable appeal, and that it is a “human failing” that people sometimes tend to be persuaded less by logic and more by emotion. Scientists are now learning precisely why appeals to logic can be so unproductive. And they’ve learned that Aristotle had it all backward when he defined logic as the most reliable appeal to persuasion.

In ancient Greece, persuasion proved to be enormously effective in politics, commerce, jurisprudence and everyday life—so much so, that when the Romans conquered Greece, they continued to study and apply the skill of persuasion. Caesar Augustus became a master persuader. He magnificently used the Ethos appeal, starting every speech with the phrase “Vini, Vidi, Vici.” I came, I saw, I conquered. By establishing who he was and why people should listen to him, he was able to quickly win their support.

Fast forward to the U.S.A. in 1940s and ’50s. Explosive post-war economic growth led to more research into how people could make good things happen through others. Writers produced a spate of books based on the groundbreaking research of Carl I. Hovland of Yale University. Many other prestigious universities and business schools also initiated research into the science, art and skill of persuasion. The race for knowledge on how to gain agreement, compliance, to get to YES was on in earnest!

Politicians of that era also realized that the greatest power in the world was the power to persuade. Even President Harry Truman understood how central persuasion was to his ability to lead. “I sit here all day trying to persuade people,” he said. “That’s all the powers of the President amount to.” Condoleezza Rice added to this from her own position of power, “Power is nothing unless you can turn it into influence.”

In time, new and exciting facts about persuasion continued to appear. In the 1980s, Dr. Robert Cialdini, Arizona State University’s Regents Professor of Psychology, conducted extensive research into the emotional “triggers” of persuasion. By the late 90s, his book, Influence – the Psychology of Persuasion, had become Amazon.com’s best-selling business book. Soon, Harvard Business School and other leading institutions were offering executive courses in persuasion skills.

Today the quest for persuasion knowledge continues at warp speed. While some scientists are unraveling the human genome, defining how our chromosomes and DNA affect our physical bodies, others are unraveling the secrets of the brain, exploring how it processes decision-making information.

In this vein, Jay Conger, Director of the Leadership Institute at the University of Southern California School of Business, tells us why research into the “how to” of persuasion is so critical: “Today’s business contingencies make persuasion more necessary than ever,” he says. “Many businesspeople misunderstand persuasion and more still underutilize it.”

The art and science of persuasion continues to attract the world’s best minds. Why? Because today’s leaders need to know:

• How do I motivate others to act?
• ­­­How do I produce agreement, compliance, and results?
• How do I generate change?
• How do I make important things happen with and through others?
• How do I sell my ideas, my products, and my services?
• How do I trigger YES?

The brilliant minds of antiquity had many answers, and today’s scientists have even more. According to New York University Neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux, “The amygdala [the emotional part of the brain] has a greater influence on the cortex [the thinking part] than the cortex has on the amygdala, allowing emotion to dominate and control thinking.”

Similarly, the book and the PBS series “The Secret Life of the Brain” (funded principally by the National Science Foundation) distills the entire 2,500 years of persuasion research into a single sentence:

“We are not thinking machines. We are feeling machines that think.”

History and modern science agree. To persuade successfully, we must appeal to the listener’s inborn, hard-wired need to satisfy emotional needs and wants. We must frame our presentations to appeal to specific shortcuts, the triggers embedded in each of our brains. We must learn to work with the other person’s brain rather than against it as we have been doing for 2,500 years.

The brilliant minds of Greece and Rome recognized the need for persuasion, and set forth fundamental guidelines. Today’s scientists and researchers have defined the specific process that our brains use to make decisions. For the first time, we understand how to work with, not against, the brain’s decision-making process to help others make easy, non-analytical, yet correct decisions.

Today persuasion is more critical than ever. And for the first time we are learning how to persuade efficiently. For the first time we can see, in vivo, in real time, the brain’s blood, oxygen and neuron flows as it responds to decision stimuli. We can see distinct brain elements “light up” as they are brought into play. The exciting news is that we finally understand the persuasion process, a process we’ve been doing poorly for 2,500 years. And that understanding enables us to produce YES, agreement, action and results with and through others.

For the first time in history, we have the scientifically documented breakthrough to quickly, easily produce YES, and the results we want and need from others.

In the Managing for Success column of Investors.com and its print edition, Investors Business Daily, Morey Stettner profiles The 7 Triggers to Yes, helping to explode the myth that logic wins business, and that emotions have no place in decision-making. Stettner summarizes three emotional triggers we all employ – Authority, Hope and Reciprocity. The original article can be found here.