The Core
Dear Persuader,
Spring is an exciting time for me, an exciting time for my continuing students, and an exciting time for MAXpersuasion. Spring is when our new students join us.
For existing students, the early weeks of a new MAXpersuasion year are a chance to review and reflect on all that has been accomplished. For new students, it’s a whole new world opening up, a world resplendent with both breakthrough techniques never before taught, and tried and true strategies and persuasion practices culled from the wisdom of ancient works to modern.
I find when beginning a new journey I like to have a map. I like to know where I’m headed and the many ways I can travel to get there. With this in mind, the first thing I go over with new students is the core philosophy of persuasion, the organizing principles that we’ll be studying as we proceed.
Orienting ourselves to maximize our learning begins with harnessing intention. To the extent our intention is working on our behalf, we will experience an amplification of the learning process, an acceleration of how well we do, and an effortless easing of the negative to positive in our lives.
Think of intention as our compass. It guides our behavior and our words, keeps us on track, and helps us anticipate what we’re going to need to make persuasion happen and create the results we desire. The intention process begins with initiating communication with our Other-Than-Conscious mind. This is a two-way road, allowing us to interact with and guide our Other-Than-Conscious to act within our parameters and by our request.
The next step is to externalize what we’ve begun inside with the process of creating trust and rapport with our prospects and clients. Trust is at the heart of every persuasion. Start with this simple truth and you will go far. There’s a name for (attempted) persuasion without trust: coercion. Trust can be learned as can the process of rapport building, and as we begin to build upon our skill sets of persuasion, these are two of the building blocks.
Once these are established, The Cleveland Method will go on to teaching you how to fully and completely get to the core of what your prospect or client wants, not on a shallow level (i.e. I want a new house), but on a deep core value level (i.e. I want to provide security and comfort for my family). This information is pure gold. With it, you can quickly and adeptly tailor your presentation to fit with exactly what your client wants. Instead of throwing all sorts of useless information at them (as with features and benefits selling), you are zeroing in on EXACTLY what they want.
As we continue on our journey together we’ll learn language strategies to create results the likes of which you’ve never before experienced, we’ll discover how to determine specifically what our prospects are saying and determine their models of the world so that we can better direct our words and actions for results. We will go through suggestion patterns which is all about knowing what to say, but also what NOT to say. (There is a list of words that will muddle up any presentation, discussion or communication and that list will be revealed and explained.)
Another core element of our process is the concept of framing. Is it a miserable gray day outside? Or is it a perfect day to cozy up to the fireplace and watch a movie? The frames we set for ourselves, our families, our clients determine how successful we will be. Frames exist in every human interaction and are really the structure of how we view the world. Knowing and understanding these unlocks tremendous opportunities that will make your skills soar.
After we’ve oriented ourselves to working with this powerful knowledge with the utmost integrity, The Cleveland Method delves into social influence skills. This information is dangerous in the wrong hands and have been used throughout history for evil (Hitler’s mass control techniques, cult indoctrination) and for militaristic benefit (the Chinese stratagems, mind control techniques generated in the U.S. military). We also learn how to eliminate resistance and use social influence always ethically and with integrity (without which, a sales person will never rise above mediocre).
We learn about core drives and how to manipulate (not a bad word) these core drives of our clients to sell. We discuss metaphor and storytelling as a way to deliver a pointed, pertinent message that will first, put our clients into a trance, and then easily drop into their subconscious the things we want them to think, feel, believe. Sound powerful? It absolutely is.
Metaphor can be thought of as the ultimate delivery system. I go through many strategies to make using metaphors easy and powerful. We then learn and apply The Hero’s Journey to our personal stories and craft those stories to become so powerful that they’ll surely sway all those that hear them.
As with any good road trip or sojourn, there is always a fair amount of “soul searching”, that kind of figuring stuff out on a deep level that happens when you have nothing but the open road in front of you. One focus of The Cleveland Method is Universe System.
We use this as a way to re-define the structure of our own selves on a personal, business and public level. The results of taking action with ourselves and using pinpoint precision to identify what’s important in our own lives is so powerful and so extraordinarily important in our businesses. When you become capable of truly defining yourself, you’ll find that it opens more doors than you ever thought possible.
I’m so excited to begin this journey with you now. If you have ever thought for even a moment that you’d want to study with me… now is definitely the time.
I’ve just restructured, repriced and revamped my coaching group for the launch of it’s 7th year to make it a no-brainer for anyone who has a need to increase their income.
Please contact Kim at kim@maxpersuasion.com or (775) 562-4625 for registration and pricing.
To your success!
Kenrick E. Cleveland
@KenrickC