How persuasive are you?  How persuasive is your message?  What has to happen for you to improve your persuasion skills?

After spending thousands of hours helping entrepreneurs and CEOS creating “persuasive presentations”, I developed a quick system to help them identify the persuasiveness of their current message and the areas they need to focus on to improve their skills.

If you believe that the “persuasiveness” of your message will help you get more clients to work with you, this exercise is a must.

You can download the PDF before you watch the video. You will use it to do a quick exercise.

Roberto

I was recently speaking with a friend of mine that is really unhappy with his job. As we were talking a common theme kept coming up…”we are not a direct supplier”, “we are not competitive with our prices”, “our support staff is dropping the ball”.

I happen to know he is not having the kind of success or making the kind of money he would like to.

The thing is, he has everything it takes to be a great salesperson. He is not afraid of rejection. He is unbelieveably likeable. He has great sales skills.

So why is he struggling?

Part of the reason he is not being as successful as he could be is because he does not believe in his product. In his heart he thinks he is selling an inferior product and working for an inferior company.

I have spoken for, trained, and coached thousands of super successful sales people and entrepreneurs and I have noticed something they all have in common…

They believe in their product.

They have an unshakeable conviction in what they are selling.

They know all the reasons that a prospect MUST use their product. Remember prospective clients have a need or problem and your job as a sales professionals or service providers is to solve that problem or satisfy that need.

It’s imperative that you develop a belief that your product can and WILL enrich their lives.

For example, one of the services that we offer at InfluenceOlogy is presentation skills training. I know in my heart that these skills are some of the best skills someone can acquire to make more money or to make a bigger impact in the world.

There is zero doubt when I am speaking to a prospective client about the quality of my product. I am absolutely certain that I can help them

We have gone as far as to write them down.

Here they are:

24 Reasons Why Presentation Skills are a MUST!

1. It positions you as an expert
2. It enhances your credibility
3. Your presentation can go viral (if it is good)
4. It differentiates yourself from your peers
5. It gives you a chance to customize your content “live”
6. You create rapport/proximity with your audience (live interaction)
7. Gives you publicity before the presentation (he/she will be presenting…)
8. Gives you publicity during your talk (live streaming, pictures, etc…)
9. Gives you publicity after your talk (here is her/his presentation, etc…)
10. Low cost marketing (if you know what you are doing)
11. Allows you to get new clients
12. Allows your potential clients to “try” before they “buy” you
13. Very easy to get referrals (for others clients and future talks)
14. You end up meeting leaders of organizations and companies
15. You start connecting with other Presenters (outstanding peer group)
16. You can make additional income (getting paid to speak, selling products, etc)
17. It is a lot of fun to develop and communicate your own ideas (increase your passion)
18. Makes you grow as a person and leader (brainstorming, preparing and delivering your talk)
19. Great way to build up your database organically
20. Your presentations can become a book, training manual, digital product, etc
21. You make a lot of new friends…
22. And, most important, allows you to HELP more people
23. Transferability: The structures you learn to create presentations can be use to write copy for emails, websites, etc
24. Working on your business presentation will help you with your one-on-one communication with your family and friends

These are the ‘reasons’ that re-inforce our beliefs.

In addition, I know that we can help someone acquire these skills (solve their problem of not having them) as good as anyone and better than most.

Another example is a guy I used to work with at the Anthony Robbins organization. He was by far one of the most ‘un-polished’ speakers on the team. He didn’t know the finer points of influence or delivery, but what he did have was conviction in his product. His own life had been transformed from attending an event so he knew what it could do for others. He was relentless and never gave up on people. He would go to extremes and do things that most people wouldn’t because ‘he knew’. For this reason, he sold the most tickets anyone has sold in a year. He has gone on to sell another product for the company and continues to set new records — all because he has a deep, unshakeable belief in his product.

It doesn’t matter if you are selling mortgages, mops or pencils… you must believe in your product/service.

If you don’t, you will never be successful. You may have short term success but in the long run you will begin to lose the certainty to motivate you at the times when you aren’t operating at peak performance.

Your customers are looking to you for guidance and advice and most sales people want to do what is right. If don’t believe 100% in you, your company or your product, you will have an unconscious moral conflict between doing what is right for the customer and making the sale.

This is why so many people struggle in sales.

In order to develop this certainty, here is what I suggest you do:

Take a pen and piece of paper and write down 10 reasons why your product or service is the best solution for your customers.

If you can’t find 10 reasons, then I’m sorry, and you may need to consider a new product or company.

Once you have this list, print it out and look at right before you speak to a prospective client.

This will serve as a reminder why you are the best choice for your client and will improve your confidence when speaking to them. And this will in turn give the prospect certainty that they are making the right decision by choosing you.

Loving, Living, Giving Large

Jeff Paro

“Few great things are accomplished by one person alone.”

I am sure you have heard this saying before. I would say that the majority of people I have met in my professional life would agree with this statement.

The logic behind it is very simple: any big accomplishment that you want to achieve in life is going to be with the help from other people, directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously.

Think about that for a second.

In any field, I do not care if it is in sports, entertainment, politics, education, business, or spirituality, at some level, someone is going to help you during the process.

In sports, you have coaches, mentors or athletes that inspire you. In business you have your mastermind group, your role models, partners, employees, and associates.

In education you have someone who came before you and wrote books, you have teachers and discussions with other people.

Now, I am not discounting the fact that for one to be able to achieve great results in life, one must have individual characteristics such as goal-orientation, self-determination, leadership, drive and a strong work ethic.

These traits are prerequisites.

Besides those traits, leaders who achieve greatness are masters at creating and cultivating relationships.

What I have found is that people in general are very good at creating relationships, finding something in common with others, finding something they like in other people, caring about their goals, etc.  But most people do not make a conscious effort to keep those relationships alive.

I believe that the primary two reasons people do not keep these relationships alive are:

a) they take these relationships for granted and

b) they do not have a system in place.

When I graduated from high school (Colegio Anchieta in Porto Alegre, Brazil)… I had a conversation with one of my friends that was extremely powerful, although at that time it did not make sense to me at all. (Years later I came to the realization of its accuracy.)

My friend looked around the room and said, “That is it Roberto, look at all of these people here. It will most likely be the last time you will see most of them in your lifetime. In 10 years or so, you will not talk to 99% of these people.

You won’t even remember some of their names. “I thought that my friend was really rude and negative for saying that. Now, over two decades later, I realize that he was somehow accurate with his prediction. I graduated in 1988 (dang, I am getting old…) and I personally kept in touch with only 3 people from my class.

How crazy is that?

Nowadays, I consider myself someone who is very good at creating and keeping relationships alive, but what happened before? I think I took for granted that those people were going to be there forever! The same thing happened when I got my BA in Business and Finance and my MBA in Marketing.

I just expected to be in contact with my classmates forever. Thinking that they are always going to be there, you do not make the effort to keep these relationships alive.

Well, that was the past. With time and experience, I have learned both the importance of cultivating relationships and also how fulfilling it truly is. Back in high school we did not have email, Facebook, Myspace or Linkedin.

Today, it’s very different, and technology makes it extremely easy for someone to keep relationships alive. Of course, these technologies are not a substitute for a face-to-face coffee or lunch, however they facilitate the interaction and the constant communication that any relationship needs in order to stay alive.

I do not consider myself a technology person or a geek, and the truth is you do not have to be one to take advantage of what social media tools have to offer. The key message is that either online or offline, you must make relationship building a part of your marketing strategy (personal and professional marketing).

Here are a couple of things to watch for when crating your relationship-building plan:

1. Care about others: Be genuine and really care about people. You must be really interested in establishing a relationship with a person that you want to help.

2. Technology: Use technology to your advantage, do not become a slave to it. You can use Facebook and Linkedin to keep in touch, but do not overdo it.

3. Value: Find a way to bring value to your relationships. Give ideas, referrals, and genuine compliments to your relationship partners.

4. Keep in touch: Do not expect to contact someone once and think it is enough. Relationships grow with time.

5. Triple Win: Make sure your relationships create triple win scenarios (you win, they win, and society wins).

I promise you that as soon as you devote time to building up your network, strengthen your current relationships and establish new ones; you will see an immediate positive impact in your life and in the lives of others.

To a 2012 full of loving and profit-building relationships!

Roberto

Back in the 80′s, public speaking and presentation training were skills that only a few were committed to invest resources to master.

Why?

Because, a professional, after learning the skills of presenting effectively, had to find an audience to speak to.

So, if you wanted to speak to groups you had to:

a) Promote your own event (that requires time and money to put people in a room)

b) Sell yourself to speak at OPE (other people’s events) or trade associations or
c) you already had a captive audience (you worked for a big corporation where you can speak to your coworkers or you were a lawyer speaking to a jury, etc)

Traditionally, people who searched for public speaking and presentation training in the past were:

• CEOs and business executives that had to present to their employees, customers, media, and coworkers
• Lawyers that had to present in from of the jury
• Media professionals that had to speak in front of the camera
• Seminar leaders and speakers who speak full time
• Trainers and teachers who communicate to students.
• Few professional salespeople that conducted group presentations

For the majority of small business owners and professionals in the service industry (financial planners, chiropractors, doctors, insurance professionals, veterinarians, consultants, etc) the idea of reaching out to current and new customers through group presentations was not very attractive.

Well, as you may be aware of, that is old news, because both the internet and the declining cost of new technology has changed the business landscape dramatically.

The message here is simple: If you breathe, you must use presentations to grow your business or to enhance your personal brand!

Here are the facts:

• You can create persuasive videos and presentations very fast once you understand the presentation structures
• Videos are a great way to leverage your time and to capture leads
• You do not need to invest a lot of resources to record videos
• By using social media site (facebook, twitter, youtube, viddler, etc), you can reach a lot of people really fast, specially if your videos are viral
• A lot of people prefer videos over written text (why people watch TV or go to movies so much)
• Great videos position you as an expert
• The only thing that is stopping your message to reach thousands (if not millions of people) is YOU
• Building your personal brand is one of the most important business strategies you can to focus on (ask best seller author and entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk from Winelibrary.com)

What you MUST understand is that the technology (internet, video cameras, screen capture software, social media sites) are an “equalizer platform” so that everybody has the same opportunity to spread their message in the same way (and that is the wave of the future).

Of course it helps if you are famous, have brand-recognition or have a lot of resources to drive online traffic to your site, but the message here it that if you are committed to learning some simple skills, you can compete with the biggest names in your industry, and, in many cases, win the game.

For example,

Ray William Johnson has virtually 10x the reach as Apple a multi-national company!

For the most part, most of the videos that we see in social media are entertainment videos, yet, the shift to commercial and marketing-driven videos have started to catch on.

In the near feature, video presentations from small businesses and professional services will be like websites are today.

If you are in business you MUST have one.

If you have a great site you may gain extra business; if you do have a site, but it sucks, it will end up hurting you.

Video presentations are like that. You see, by the end of this year, I believe that we will see a lot of professionals in the service industry and small business owners creating and recording videos because the technology is the same for everybody, but what will make the difference will be:

a) the content

b) the delivery

We encourage you to be ready for one the biggest shifts in marketing and sales this year. Just analyze and study the leaders in your industry.

I guarantee they are already unleashing videos on the Internet.

Now it is your turn!

Loving, Living, Giving Large,

Jeff

Your business is a series of presentations.

Most of your day is presenting to clients, prospective clients, team members, buyers, sellers, referral partners, etc.

The professionals who have been in the same industry for many years, sometimes are “trapped” by the Law of Familiarity, and when that happens, their presentation suffers.

In this quick video, you will learn the 4 questions that I ask myself before I present my message. When you ask this question yourself, I guarantee you will present your ideas with passion, energy and enthusiasm every single time!

Roberto

I have been wanting to write about today’s subject for some time. The reason I haven’t is because I, myself, couldn’t come up with an answer. But today I’m going to give it a shot and I would love to hear what your thoughts are.

Here’s the question: “what are the 10 most important skills in life?”

Wow! That is a BIG question.

It’s one I have been pondering for some time and I keep finding new and better reasons for the new answers.

It was not easy to narrow it down to just ten. But here are mine:

#10 Versatility/Flexible:

In our new world of instant connectivity and the speed of change approaching mach 1 it’s vital to be able to be flexible and adapt in many situations – when communicating with people, re-inventing yourself and in your competitive business environment.

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.” ~ Robert A. Heinlein

#9 Self-insight

This skill helps us know who we are, our strengths and needs for improvement, as well as assists us in understanding how we’re perceived by others. Those without self-insight very often see their careers derail regardless of the level of their other skills. As your ability to ‘know thy self’ increases, you will start to trust yourself and your instincts more. As self insight becomes greater so does intuition. You will make less mistakes and the time required to change will become less and less. Without self-awareness, most change on the personal level CAN NOT happen. The first step to creating a change in any area of life or business is to become consciously aware of your incompetence.

#8 Imagination:

I feel one of the biggest problems entrepreneurs face today is their lack of imagination and creativity. I recently saw a special on television that interviewed a student from China that had no imagination. He had spent most of his life memorizing and regurgitating information. He had lost the ability to be creative

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” –Albert Einstein

#7 Stress Management

There are stacks of research that prove the negative impact of stress. Stress literally kills you. Usually stress is caused by problems. And if you don’t have problems…well then, you’re probably dead. So the ability to manage and eliminate stress from your life is not only relevant to your health but it also effects your relationships and your performance at work.

#6 Math

I know some of you are cringing when I say math, but I’m not talking about calculus or even algebra. I’m talking about basic arithmetic and a basic understanding of accounting. This skill is what will allow to quickly make estimates, figure out if something is a deal (or not), manage your finances (personally and professionally), make sure you aren’t getting ripped of when taking a cab .

#5 Time Management

As I have gotten older this skill has become CRITICAL to my success. It’s a skill I was never ever taught growing up or anywhere in my formal education. It is something I began to master out of necessity and I can tell you it impacts my life every single day.

#4 Critical Thinking/ Decision Making

I think these two go hand in hand. The amount of information we are exposed to versus our great grandparents may not even be calculable. Our ability to quickly sort, assimilate, interpret, categorize and make a decisive decision is a skill that is found in most successful people. They tend to make “better decisions” and rarely get stuck in the paralysis of analysis. This skill is what separates those that talk about something and those that take action.

#3 Inner-Fluence/Self-Management

Your ability to influence yourself in ways that benefit you and move your closer to your goals, usually when you don’t want to, when it’s not comfortable or convenient is the difference that makes the difference in result. Daily rituals, productivity habits, and a strong sense of discipline are needed to keep yourself progressing.

#2 One to Many Communication (Public Speaking/Writing)

Influencing from the front: Public Speaking

The ability to speak concisely, influentially, and powerfully in front of an audience – whether an audience of 1 or of thousands – is one of the most important skills anyone can develop. People who are effective speakers appear to be more confident, more authoritative and more attractive to be around. Being able to speak influentially means you can impact people to buy products, buy-in to your ideas, ideologies, worldviews, and sell yourself.

Influential Writing

Writing well offers many of the same advantages that speaking well offers: good writers are better at selling products, ideas, and themselves than poor writers. Learning to write well involves less about mastery of grammar but the development of the ability to organize one’s thoughts into a coherent form and target it to an audience in the most effective way possible. Given the massive amounts of writing required today from a cover letter to a brief in the legal field to emails to the people you can write persuasively and influentially will always make a living.

I can remember John Jantsch telling me that the key to his success has been his writing.

Jeffrey Gitomer said his best advice he could give to anyone is to write an hour a day.

I concur, a great deal of my success can be contributed to my writing.

#1 Emotional Mastery:

Mastering meaning is hands down the most critical skill one can develop. The ability to consciously decide what something means to you is the key to happiness, success, fulfillment. There is a saying that say’s you can’t control what happens to you, but you can control how you react. I believe that how your ‘react’ is based solely on the meaning you attach to the event.

That was a tough list to compile, but if had to choose just ten skills required to live my best life possible, those are the 10 I would choose.

What are yours?

Loving, Giving, Living Large,

Jeff

I recently sat at breakfast with a good friend of mine who also helps small business owners and self employed individuals succeed. (Combined we’ve
worked with thousands of entrepreneurs, organizations, and individuals.) As we talked about our lives, we discovered that we both work with people and
companies who are struggling right now as well as those who are experiencing higher levels of growth and success than ever.

As we continued to talk, we both noted that the economy’s current volatility truly highlights the behaviors and patterns that people tend to have
within themselves – even in good economic conditions. From that perspective, we found that the current economic strains which the economy is feeling
can actually be healthy, because it causes each of us to reexamine our unsustainable, unproductive, or non value-producing behaviors.

Further, we discovered that we were in agreement on several key distinctions which separated the successful group from those that were struggling, and
we found a set of traits and behaviors that were clearly common in both sets of people.

The first thing we identified was the difference in each group’s focus. In our struggling group, as you might guess, the focus is on the never ending
barrage of bad news and negativity.

For starters, we identified people spending unproductive hours watching the stock market, checking the Internet, worrying about things beyond one’s
control, or watching the news to confirm their already entrenched belief of how bad things are currently. Add to that, the time spent in unproductive
conversations and discussions that conjure up feelings of fear and helplessness.

As these people project that fear and negative outlook on everyone else, it’s no wonder that they experience others as being fearful too. We guessed
that if we could listen in on their conversations we might hear comments like “Nobody is buying houses right now.” “There’s no money available for
credit.” Or “Our clients have completely stopped spending money”. Ironically, none of these statements are even remotely true.

Our thriving clients, on the other hand, are taking a different approach. They certainly aren’t sticking their head in the sand or pretending that none
of the financial catastrophes are real. In fact, they are often watching the same news programs and reading the same articles as the struggling people;
however, they see the information with a completely different focus. This group realizes that if they can clearly identify and understand the changes
that are occurring in other people’s values and priorities, then they can capitalize on an incredible opportunity to realign with what people want and
value right now.

Below are a few more traits and ideas that we agreed will help with applying this focus in order to put you in the later, more successful, group:

First, it is imperative to understand that everyone is an entrepreneur. It is commonplace to think that entrepreneurs are only those that own their own
business, but let’s examine that idea deeper.

Obviously, when you own a business you are an entrepreneur, but what happens if you work for someone else? How do you view that relationship? To me, it
means that you own your own business, and your boss is your customer.

Perhaps your spouse, your children, or your parents are your customers in too. In viewing the world this way, we each have that same entrepreneurial
responsibility of maximizing the value we create with our customers – whoever our customers may be. If you adopt this attitude, then the question at
hand becomes: What can you do to be productive, proactive, and to lend your abilities in a way that creates maximum value for others?

In this approach it becomes critical to create more value for your customer than you ask from them in return, and therefore increase your bottom line.
This is important because increasing your “bottom line value contribution” causes your “personal stock price” to go up (even if the overall economy is
going the other direction).

You see, each of us has our own personal economy that we have an immense amount of control over, and our personal economy is determined more by our
personal bottom line and balance sheet than it is by the external economy.

Another key that we saw with our successful clients in this turbulent market was that they spent a lot of time developing their “capital”. Most people
focus on financial capital, however, these clients realize that financial capital is the least important form of capital to gain success. In fact,
there are three important types of capital that each person should be working on to insure thriving in this economy:

Mental Capital
is our ideas, knowledge, and human ingenuity. It is especially critical to increase one’s capacity, leadership, and skill sets in order to increase
productive output. While many people tend to get bogged down with the doom and gloom, refusing to spend money on improvement, training, and education-
my most successful clients take advantage of those lapses to accelerate their ability to create value. Increases in mental capital contribute to job
security and career options.

For some, this may mean examining their career path and deciding it’s time to take it in a different direction, or even pick a new path altogether.

Relationship Capital
is simply people that you have a connection with, create value for, or that know and trust you. Investing in these important relationships is paramount
to stabilizing your personal economy. When someone refuses to invest in personal relationships, they often find themselves in difficult and lonely
situations when adversity strikes.

The different ways one might invest in a relationship can be to find out what they value and use your Mental Capital to provide it for them. It might
include just keeping in touch and having meaningful conversations. Ultimately, it is helping them solve problems, being of service and therefore
building value or relationship equity (otherwise known as goodwill).

Those who are willing to extend themselves in relationships, and expand their circle of relationships, will fare far better during marketplace
downturns. Important relationships should include mentors, teachers, and others who are contributing to increasing your Mental Capital.

Financial Capital
is just as it sounds- money you have access to. While financial capital is important for thriving in these times, I have purposely listed it third
because it is not as important as mental and relationship capital. Financial capital will expand based on creating more value than you consume and is a
byproduct of how effective you utilize your mental capital to create value for people. The higher the gap that exists between the value you create and
what you consume, the more financial capital you will have. One approach (that we don’t recommend) for accumulating financial capital during economic
downturn is to reduce consumption. However, that approach ultimately fuels system wide economic distress.

The second (and recommended) solution is to increase output, production, or value creation. This doesn’t mean work longer hours, but rather to be aware
of what others value more highly, and focus on delivering that particular type of value.

As you are able to increase your 3 forms of capital simultaneously, they will have an exponential effect on one another. This will enable your capacity
to create value and therefore bolster your reserves and capabilities even further.

Simply put, the more you have to offer, the more you are able to receive in return. If you follow this principle and always increase your capital reserves
- prosperity is an inevitability.

[Ed. Note: Garrett Gunderson is a financial advocate to professionals. Through the value of Soul Purpose, he empowers people to build sustainable wealth consistent with their passion, purpose and knowledge. Garrett is a winner of the SBA's Young Entrepreneur of the Year award. He founded Freedom FastTrack, as an expression of his Soul Purpose, which has been the fuel for a growing message that took the company to the Inc 500 in 2007. Garrett is the author of the revolutionary financial book Killing Sacred Cows, a New York Times bestseller and the New Rules to Get Rich with Nightingale Conant. Garrett lives in Salt Lake City with his wife and two crazy boys!]

I think so.  Marcus Tullius Cicero, the lawyer, philosopher and politician considered by many one of the Rome’s greatest orators once said “To teach is a necessity, to please is a sweetness, to persuade is a victory.”

I want to give credit to Marcus Tullius Cicero for his ingenuity and genius in creating this formula. Cicero invented this formula to organize his ideas when preparing speeches. The strategy of organizing a presentation, as he called “arrangement”, is one of his 5 canons of persuasion (invention, arrangement, style, memory and delivery)

But before we go over his formula, I want to address the scholars and students of Rhetoric reading this article. By any means  I am trying to teach or cover all the facets of Cicero’s teaching and rhetoric here. This article is just my own adaptation and interpretation of Cicero’s formula and how someone can use this strategy to create a presentation (video, webinar, live presentation) fast.

So here we go… Cicero’s formulas has 6 steps:

Introduction, Narration, Division, Proof, Refutation, Conclusion

Introduction: is where you grab your audiences’ attention, create interest in your message and positions you as a trusted expert.

Narration: is where you tell the history of the facts that you are going to use to build up your case and you create an overall frame for your message. We want to use market data here.

Division: is where you point out where you agree and disagree with your opponents, and ultimately where you stand. Your opponents could be competitors, governments, audience members, etc.

Proof: Is the presentation of your argument with illustrations, stories, examples.

Refutation: Is where you overcome any objections that your audience may have

Conclusion: You do a call to action to the next step.

So let me give you an example.

Let’s say I am doing a presentation to a company that is considering hiring a consult to help with marketing.

They are considering: a) Doing Radio ads or B) YouTube video marketing. Let’s say I am pitching the benefits of Marketing their business on Youtube and I have just a few minutes, how would I use this formula?

Introduction:
“If you could own your TV channel, broadcast your message to thousands of people with virtual zero cost, would you do it?” (pause). If you said “yes”, than I am confident you will love marketing your business on You Tube, because it has the same benefits of having your own TV channel… My name is Roberto Monaco, co-founder of InfluenceOlogy (I would also tell a little story of how I got involved with Video Marketing here…)

Narration:
“If you are not familiar with Youtube, it is a great free site to market your business using videos. Just to have an idea of the rapid growth of Video consumption, Youtube founders registered the site in February 2005. In December 2005 they had 8 million video views a day. Six months later, in July 2006 they had 100 million views a day, and in October 2006 Google acquired them for $1.65 billion. Today, Youtube has  4 billion videos views a day with more than 800 million users every month. While Youtube marketing can be overwhelming for some entrepreneurs, it offers unlimited opportunities for you to reach new clients, increase your brand awareness, and create a community. (depending on how much time I have, I would use more market data about video marketing here..)

Division:

“I understand that you are also considering radio as an option. While radio is an established media and it can get your name in front of a lot of people, I believe it is expensive, its effectiveness is declining and there is no marketing longevity for you ad. While you pay handsomely for radio, Video Marketing on YouTube is free and even if you decide to buy traffic, it is still cheaper than most radio campaigns.

When do you listen to radio? Most people do when they are driving. Now, what do you do when the music stops and you have a commercial? You change the station, right? Now, how often do you pull over your car, pull your cell phone out to check the advertiser’s site or write down their website address?

On the other hand, when you use “educational content” in your videos, people WANT to hear your message because it helps them. Plus, they are just a click away to your website. Another point to consider is that once radio commercials run, they are worthless. People tend to forget about them.

Video is different.

First, your clients can share your video with their friends (how do you share an ad spot on radio? You can’t).

Second, you embed the video on your site, social media outlets even in a PowerPoint presentation, plus you can TRACK how many people were exposed to your message (how can you track how many people listened to your radio? You can’t).

Another aspect to consider is that your clients and potential clients can “subscribe to your channel”, so when you have another video, they get notified (radio can’t do that). Basically, you are building a network for FREE.

Proof:

Now, let me give you an example.

One of our clients created a series of Educational Marketing Videos (show the video). Because this video creates value for the prospective clients, it has over 50,000 views and is still being shared. This company got 251 new leads from this video alone plus 140 new subscribers. Our client is maximizing the value of the video by:

a) sending this video to their current database of prospective clients

b) sharing  this video on social media sites (Facebook, twitter, linkedin, google plus, etc)

c)  embedding on their site so it helps with SEO as well

d) creating email dripping campaigns for future prospective clients.

As you can see, Video Marketing allows you to explore the message in many different ways, ways that Radio just can’t.

Refutation:

One of the concerns that people have is that Video takes too much time to record and it is too hard to create cool “educational marketing” content.

I do agree that Video can be frustrating and time-consuming for the entrepreneurs that are too busy running their businesses; it is not time-consuming for Companies like us that have a time-tested process in place.

We will get the job done fast.

What we also found is that the “educational content” that most companies struggle with is probably the easiest part for us during our process. Your business already has stories, case studies and history, it is only a matter of extracting and organizing these ideas in a persuasive case, which is what we do best.

Conclusion:

If you would like to incorporate Video Marketing into your business to experience some of benefits that major TV networks have like influence, leverage, more clients and money, while additionally benefiting from other elements that Youtube marketing provides like subscribers, social media capabilities and low cost of entry, I suggest an exploratory meeting next week. The best selling author Jeffrey Gittomer said that “video is the new black”. Let’s use video as a foundation for your marketing.

I know this post was a long one, but I wanted to show how I would Cicero’s formula in a real life situation. Now depending on how I am delivering this presentation and how much time I have, I would explore each section more with stories and examples. However, I would follow the same structure.

As Cicero put it: “Great is our admiration of the orator who speaks with fluency and discretion”

…and how this will affect you…or…how you will use it to affect others…

There are two types of people who can shut down parts of your brain without you ever knowing it! One type are beautiful women
(no big surprise!).

The more surprising type are Christian speakers that Christian audience members believe have the ability to heal.

We’ve known for sometime that when humans attribute uniquely special “powers” to certain other people, that those attributing are more likely to blindly follow the charismatic leader.

The reason, of course, is simple. You believe.

Gail Hurt was nice enough to send me the multi-departmental study done at Aarhaus University in Denmark.

Specifically, in this study, if Christians in an audience believed the speaker to have healing abilities, two areas in the front of their brain were pretty much turned to the “off” position.

Equally as interesting as the fMRI results were the after-the-fact reports that those whose executive functioning had been affected reported as being “in God’s presence”.

Why is This Important in the Persuasion Arena?

KEYPOINT:
This is important to you because if people have a negative perception of you, it will be much more difficult to influence them.

And, if they have a positive perception of you, influence and communication in general become more free flowing.

Research by Richeson and Shelton in 2003 revealed that some white people have activation in certain frontal portions of the brain when viewing pictures of black people. This is interesting because when humans view images of friends and family, they tend to have these regions de-activated. (also Bartels and Zeki in 2004)

Further, Wrega in 2006 showed that women primed with positive stereotypes did better in a task.

KEYPOINT:
“Establishing negative assumptions about a person or group seems to impair communication even at the level of executive processing, whereas positive assumptions by contrast may facilitate communication.” (Schjoedt, et al 2010)

Hundreds of studies reveal that first impressions and even nonconscious priming can change people’s feelings and decision-making in reference to another person or group of people.

In hypnosis, a goal of the practitioner is to bypass the anti-suggestive barrier (this same executive functioning region of the brain). It appears that belief is what flips the switch. If you believe in the person, you flip the switch off. If you don’t, the executive function continues to carry on.

The reason that specific words and phrases are, in general, not extremely important to persuading someone is likely connected with this newly studied phenomenon.

The trust/belief/certainty connection is about the person, not about the technique.

Once a person believes, the technique can expedite a result. Until a person believes in you, you can beat them with a hammer and nothing will change their thinking.

How the Study Worked

The study utilized an audience of mostly Pentecostal Christians who would observe and pray with three different speakers. There was a speaker identified as non-Christian, a Christian and a Christian identified as having a reputation for healing.

About half of the participants in the audience were placed in there because they were secular in nature and didn’t believe in God (or had a low confidence of God’s existence).

As you might now expect, those who believed the one speaker to have healing gifts felt God’s presence more than the other speaker who was not thought to have healing gifts.

And, as you might gather, those secular participants experienced no presence of God where those who were Christians did.

The participants who did were chosen because they tended to partake in Intercessory Prayer for people afar daily. (They believe that their prayers can impact the health, life of someone far away.)

The difference between the two Christian speakers was remarkable as well, both in the fMRI scans as well as in reporting after the experience.

The Christian speaker identified as having a reputation as being a healer had a much greater impact on shutting down the executive functioning of the brain.

The study revealed the greater the deactivation in the executive functioning region of the brain, the higher the rating of the speaker’s charisma (which has two meanings: the greek, spiritual gifts; and the more broad sense of a charismatic speaker).

The entire study can be read here: oxfordjournals.org

Beautiful Women and Persuasion

We now return to beautiful women. They are the second group of people you find out about this week.

Beautiful women captivate fascination and attention wherever they go. One thing you didn’t know until now – if you’re a man – they can change your
body’s functioning, as well!

I’ve written often about the impact of beautiful women in the presence of men. Women…cause men…to be impulsive, act irrationally, and, well…to
just BE stupid. (That would be a non- scientific term.)

Now it turns out beautiful women “do” more than that, by “doing” absolutely NOTHING.

Three people are placed in a room together to solve a Sudoku puzzle for five minutes.

One of them is a beautiful woman, the other is a man…any man. The third is the unwitting participant.

What happens?

Cortisol, a stress hormone, gushes forth in the body of the unwitting male participant consistently in this setting.

This can occur when a man believes he “has a chance for _____” with a beautiful woman.

After the five minutes, if the man leaves and the participant has his level of cortisol checked, it is off the scales when the woman remains seated next to him.

However, if the woman leaves the room, leaving the two men alone, cortisol levels return to normal.

The University of Valencia reports that the cortisol level is heightened when the man believes the woman is “out of his league.”

Being around women who are out of one’s league for an extended period will potentially cause chronic cortisol elevation and lead to significant risk for high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes.

Sigh. Some things in life, of course, have a price that might be worth paying….

[Ed. Note: Kevin Hogan, Psy.D. is the author of 20 books and dozens of programs about persuasion and influence. If you like this article you can sample Kevin's weekly newsletter, Coffee with Kevin Hogan and get two books about the brain and persuasion at http://www.kevinhogan.com]

During a coaching session last week, one of our clients ask me “What is one of your most important life lessons?” I had to stop to think about for a second. Like any other person, I had several great life lessons, but one in particular stood out.

I decided to record this video to shared with you what I told our client.

I believe that striving to become a “master of meaning” is one of the most important lessons I have learned.

Here is what I share with him…