Employing The "Loop D Loop" In Persuasion

Hi Persuader,

As you may have noticed, in the recent posts (“Linguistical Pitfalls”) I told you there were EIGHT dangerous words that you should avoid in your persuasion situations. Then I proceeded to give you just four of those eight. (By the way, there really are eight, and I’ll be writing about the other four in the very near future.)

Now, I did this to demonstrate a very clever point with you that you’ll have great success with in your persuasion…

The point is to teach you a strategy called “Temporal Pattern Loops”.

We’re going to create loops in the mind of the listener. This is a favorite pattern of mine (as you now know, since I just used it on you Wednesday morning).

There are three really powerful things you need to know in order to understand how to use loops:

Number one, people need to have closure.

They can’t stand to have balls up in the air. They need to have the balls land. They need closure, a yes or a no.

An example in sales of the prospect keeping an open loop with the sales person is that dreaded phrase, “I’ll need to think it over.”

You want to either end it or don’t end it. Either say yes, or say no, but don’t tell me you want to think about it.

Number two, when they don’t get closure, their response potential is increased.

That’s all you’ll ever need to know about loops.

But wait a minute… didn’t I say there were three things?

I did. I told you that there are three powerful things you need to know in order to understand loops and I only gave you two. Isn’t that frustrating?

People need closure. And when they don’t get it, their response potential is increased.

What’s the third thing? Let me ask you, how much do you want to know what number three is? Do you really want to know?

Sorry. There is no number three. There are only two things you need to know about loops.

Why would I do that? Same reason I only gave you four of the eight most dangerous words in persuasion. Because by leaving a loop open, by purposefully leaving the third blank, I increased your response potential and piqued your interest.

Don’t close all the loops. In fact, leave most of them open. Use loops all the time.

Think about something you know really well. Just as an example, let’s say you’re pretty sure you know all there is to know about the Civil War. Say you’re a real history buff and there’s nothing you don’t know about that period of time in that section of the world.

What if someone was teaching a class about the Civil War and there was some new information? Well, how could there be? You know everything. All your loops regarding the Civil War are closed.

You can use loops when you want to increase response potential because if you leave a loop open, it makes people want to sit forward and try to figure out what it was that you didn’t tell them.

In other words, they’re missing something. Like when I wrote, “There are three powerful things you need to know to do these loop patterns” and I told you two of the three. For many of you, you just had to know, “Well, what’s the third one?”

Now, if you were just skimming and weren’t paying attention, it may not have had that effect on your conscious mind, but it did have it on your other-than-conscious mind.

When you open loops and don’t close them, people begin to believe that they don’t know all there is to know about the subject. And if people know all there is to know, they go away and don’t come back. After all, there’s no apparent reason for them to stay.

Until Next Time,

Kenrick E. Cleveland