Issue #2239
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Issue #2238
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After hearing a news report about the Beatles phenomenon in England, 15-year-old Marsha Albert wrote to her local Washington, D.C. radio station and asked, "Why can’t we have music like that here in America?"
Inspired by Marsha’s question, disk jockey Carroll James managed to get a copy of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" from a British flight attendant and introduced the song to his WWDC radio audience on December 17, 1963.
Within minutes, requests for the record flooded the station. Within days, radio stations all across the United States were playing the song. And Capital Records was forced to release it on December 26, three weeks earlier than scheduled.
According to Bruce Spizer, author of The Beatles Are Coming! The Birth of Beatlemania in America, when the band appeared on Ed Sullivan’s TV show on February 9, 1964, 73 million people – an unprecedented 40 percent of the U.S. population at the time – watched.
"There’s no doubt whatsoever that the Beatles would have conquered America anyway," Beatles historian Martin Lewis told USA Today. "But the speed and magnitude of that stratospheric kick-off could not have happened without Marsha Albert. If the record had been released on January 13th, as planned, kids wouldn’t have heard it 20 times a day, as they did during the school break. It would never have sold 1 million copies in three weeks. There wouldn’t have been 10,000 kids at JFK to greet the Beatles. Marsha didn’t start Beatlemania. She jump-started it."
That’s what a single, simple question can do.
Think about the couples who might never have met and gotten married had it not been for that old, reliable question: "Is someone sitting here?"
Think about the chances you might have missed in your own life by failing to ask "Can I?" Or "Would you?" Or "Is he?"
In 1982, I was working at a dead-end journalism job for a small Washington, D.C. publishing house. I knew it was time to get a move on if I didn’t want to end up bored silly and making a meager living for the rest of my life. But I wasn’t sure what to do.
As it happened, K had planned a week’s vacation for us in Key Largo, where her brother worked for a Jet Ski rental business. Since we were going to be in Florida anyway, I figured I’d schedule a few job interviews. Not because I was hopeful of finding a good job there, but because I wanted to write off the travel expenses as a tax deduction.
I had two possible leads. One was a colleague, a high-ranking editor at the Washington Post who, I figured, might know someone in Florida. The other was the name and address of a publisher in Boca Raton, FL who had been sending me promotions for his newsletters.
But to pursue these leads, I would have to ask questions – which is something I’ve always been reluctant to do, especially if the answer could be something I didn’t want to hear.
But I did it.
I asked the Washington Post editor, "Do you know anybody in Florida who might give me a job interview?" And I wrote to the Boca Raton publisher and asked, "Do you have a place in your organization for a person like me?"
As a result, by the time K and I left for our vacation, I had three job interviews lined up. One was with the editor-in-chief of The St. Petersburg Times. Another was with a news editor for the Miami Herald. And the third one was with JSN, the newsletter publisher in Boca Raton.
I met with each one of these guys en route. And by the time we reached Key Largo, I had three job offers. Getting three offers out of three interviews was an astonishing thing. And it left me with a dilemma.
Should I take the high road that might lead to a Pulitzer Prize and everlasting fame as a respected journalist? Or the low road – journalistic obscurity but with the implied promise of a Big Bag of Gold for my efforts?
Which one should I choose?
The only person who could really answer that question was me. But that didn’t stop me from soliciting opinions from even the most unlikely sources, including a 17-year-old pothead whose job in life was to refill the Jet Skis with gasoline.
After I told him my long story, he paused, took a toke on his joint, and said, "Go Boca."
Turns out that, after much soul-searching, I came to the same conclusion. And that decision was the trigger for all of the good things I have since accomplished.
But it all started when I forced myself to ask a few influential people the right questions at the right time.
[Ed. Note: Get Michael Masterson's insights into becoming successful in your business and personal life, achieving financial independence, and accomplishing all your goals on his new website. You'll find updates on all of Michael's books, news on upcoming ETR events, Michael's blog, and room to send in your comments and questions. Check it out today.]
Issue #2237
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You’ve got a big meeting with a potential client. If you can reel in this one for the company, you’ve been promised a corner office and the bump in salary and perks that go with it.
You’ve done your research. You know that this client sees himself as a "Donald Trump." So, during your meeting, you don’t spend much time on the "nuts and bolts" of his project. Instead, you help him imagine what it will be like for him if he chooses your firm to help him bring it to fruition. He’ll be a major player in the industry… possibly even a household name. He’s no fool, so he asks a lot of questions. But you’ve got the right answers. Everyone is smiling and shaking hands as you close the deal.
If you would like to have this kind of influence over the decisions people make, read on. Because I’m going to share the details of a persuasion technique that can make it happen.
Before we dive in, keep in mind that people aren’t always open to being persuaded.
Think about yourself when you go car shopping. You may have an idea of what model you want. You may (in fact, you should) also have an idea of what the car will cost and how much you can afford to pay for it. You might even know what color you want it to be. But despite your genuine interest in buying that car, you are probably wary of being pushed into it. So if the salesman is too aggressive, you’re likely to leave without making the purchase.
The point is, people are leery of being manipulated. If you want to persuade someone to do something, you need to remember just how easy it is to scare them away. That’s why one of the most effective persuasion techniques isn’t at all aggressive.
Salespeople often use this technique. It’s called "visualization."
Take a car salesman, for example. Once he has determined that you are a serious and qualified buyer, he’s going to want to get you into a car for a test drive. You see, an emotional change takes place when you’re behind the wheel of a car you like. An even bigger change occurs when you drive it. You start to imagine what it would be like if you owned that car. You see yourself driving it to work. You picture other people admiring it. And if the salesman is any good, he’ll give the visualization process a nudge. ("Wouldn’t it be fun to run into an old friend when you pull up to the gas pump in this baby?")
Marketers use visualization all the time. Think about the "big promise" of a good direct-mail piece. Quite often, the headline will evoke an image of how the reader’s life can change. ("Feel Like You Did When You Were 21 in Only 30 Minutes a Day!") Or it could be even subtler: showing a photo of a well-muscled middle-aged man with his arms around an attractive woman, for example.
A good salesperson or marketer doesn’t rely only on visualization to make the sale. They want to make sure you know all about their product’s benefits. For instance, our car salesman would tell you about the technical superiority of the car’s fuel injection system. He’d explain that with this fuel injection system, you’ll be able to tap the gas and be going 60 miles an hour in four seconds. And, as he’d point out, that speed will allow for safer entry onto the highway. That’s a major benefit – and a good, logical reason to buy the car.
But visualization draws out a powerful, primitive emotional response – a desire for the car that’s not based on reason. And you can use it in your personal life as well as in business. If, for example, you want to talk your spouse into going out for dinner, you might say something like, "Fifteen minutes from now, we could be sitting in our favorite booth, sipping wine and waiting for a piping hot steak." While a logic-based argument might work ("We’re both really tired and deserve a break"), visualization is more likely to get an instant, "Let’s do it!"
Here are the basic steps:
This first step is all about knowing your prospect.
Let’s say you want to convince your supervisor to let you buy some new equipment for your office. In this case, you almost certainly understand what makes him tick, so you should have no trouble coming up with an effective image. (Maybe picturing you churning out more work, and, as a result, him posting incredible productivity numbers for his department.)
But let’s say you’re a car salesperson. In this case, you don’t know your prospective buyer at all – and you have only a few minutes to strike up a conversation that will give you some clues. Is she conservative or adventurous? Does she have a large discretionary income or is money tight? Is she concerned about the environment or does she care more about power?
The more accurately you assess the kind of image that will motivate your prospect, the more powerful the visualization tool will be.
If, for example, your prospective car buyer is a "stay at home mom" with three children, asking her to visualize beating a sports car at a stoplight won’t work. Instead, you’d want her to picture her twin babies sitting securely in their car seats, while her nine-year-old enjoys the factory-installed DVD player.
Visualization won’t work if the person you are trying to persuade can’t picture himself in the image you are creating.
If, for example, you’re trying to sell a fitness program to a middle-aged man, you wouldn’t ask him to imagine himself being dropped from a military fighter plane by parachute behind enemy lines and taking out a brigade of combat troops in a hand-to-hand battle. Instead, you would want him to see himself ripping off his shirt at a summer barbecue, and picture his buddies scowl with jealousy as their wives eye him with admiration.
When you know how to create the kind of image that will get an emotional response from your prospect… and you get that prospect to accept the image as a potential reality… you will have no trouble at all persuading him to do what you want.
Visualization is an extraordinary persuasion tool to have in your arsenal.
[Ed. Note: Larry Fredericks is an entrepreneur with a history of successful business dealings in retail, direct mail, the Internet, and real estate. He is also the creator of the Master of Persuasion program.]
Issue #2236
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