Imagine you had the power to influence people’s subconscious. Imagine you could do it by using simple trigger words to activate involuntary hypnotic “reflexes” in their brains.

Now, imagine you could do it in writing as well as in speech.

Well, you can—because over time we’ve ALL been subtly hypnotized to accept certain “trigger” words- the process started before we could even talk!

And what’s crazy about it all is that you would never suspect these simple words of holding this kind of power. They’re simple but when you use them consciously and correctly, they can dramatically improve your persuasive power.

I already used six of them to get you this far. But- to KEEP you here, stay tuned for bonus “66 words that sell”

Now, you’d never guess all of them—let alone understand why they work. So I’m going to go through a few and tell you why they’re so potent. And I’ll include examples to help you put them to use.

But before I do that:

What Hypnosis Actually Is
Almost no entrepreneur you meet knows anything about hypnosis. That sucks because hypnosis is extremely powerful as a psychological tool—and entrepreneurship is all numerical, philosophical & psychological.

Here are some things you may think you know about hypnosis that are actually pure myth:

Hypnosis is mumbo-jumbo. Actually, it is a century-old psychological tool used by many doctors, dentists, psychiatrists and therapists to achieve everything from anesthesia without anesthetics, to stomach stapling without staples.
When you’re hypnotized you’re asleep. Actually, you are simply relaxed. Your subconscious mind is more active than your conscious (critical) mind.
I can’t be hypnotized. Actually, we all go into varying states of hypnosis many times each day. When driving, when watching TV, when reading—you may even be in a state of mild hypnosis right now!

OWS 164 covers all kinds of hypnotic language…definitely one to check out if you’re interested in this subject…

 

Here are 3 words to start off your junior hypnotist training…

1. “IMAGINE”

Why it’s hypnotic

Two factors are at work:

First, you may have noticed that if you ask a stranger to buy something—the critical mind throws up objections. That’s it’s job- to question.

What’s interesting, though, is this never happens when you ask someone to imagine. Ask them to imagine the outcome of the sale, rather than making the purchase itself because we don’t see imagining as a “real” job. It’s just a mind-game; a distraction from life—like all fantasies.

So, by asking your prospect to imagine something, you bypass that critical part that throws up objections, and you “sneak in” their mind through the back door of their imagination. That’s one of the three crucial steps to achieving hypnosis:

1.attract the person’s attention.

2.bypass critical mind.

3.stimulate the unconscious mind.

Thats  what imagining something does. As strange as it sounds, the brain literally cannot tell the difference between imagination and experience. As far as your brain, there’s no difference between visualizing a yacht, and seeing a yacht.

This makes your prospect’s imagination a deceptively, INCREDIBLY powerful ally to you. Remember—’fear of loss’ is always WAY stronger than ‘desire for gain’. So getting your prospect to feel a sense of ownership for your offering in ADVANCE creates a much stronger desire than just describing benefits. By getting them to imagine owning it, it becomes as if they already have it. And the natural thing to do then is to keep it…which means making the purchase.

People have the money. So making money is psychological. Simple right? Well consumer psychologist Daniel Levin made a study of the psychology of persuasion. Here, he asks us not just to imagine the outcome of buying, but to ‘picture‘ it. Different words—same idea (repeating the concept in different ways makes it even harder to resist).

2. “YOU”
Why it’s hypnotic

You is a placeholder for your name.

I know it’s an obvious one. After all: they say the three most powerful words in sales are you, free and guaranteed- but free and guaranteed aren’t hypnotic words. “You” is. And that’s because its not actually the word you that has hypnotic power— its the name it represents- your own.

I’m willing to bet you have no idea just how hypnotic your name actually is. Turns out the “cocktail party effect” (where you can instantly and involuntarily pick your name out even across really loud rooms) is just the beginning. Did you know, according to the journal of consumer research, you’re much more likely to buy from someone who has the same sounding letter in their first or last name as you? You’re also more likely to marry someone with the same initial. You knew this partially though didn’t you? Don’t you automatically want to like people who have the same first or last name as you (an opportunity I don’t get much with my first name😩)? Don’t you feel like they deserve more of a chance than other people? Ive always loved Muhammad Ali. I’m sure some of you do too, but I just can’t help feeling I should like him.

The caveat about using someone’s name though is that it can start to feel manipulative. Just using the word ‘you’ doesn’t have that effect though. It leverages the same basic self-obsessiveness that makes your own name so powerful.

MailChimp homepage: The 3rd word of copy is ‘you’. It’s used twice more in the same sentence (yes, ‘your’ counts). Then again as 3rd word of the second sentence. And to top it off, they also use the word “personal” to emphasize how much this service is for ‘you’😩.

Obviously this particular bit of copy is short— I’m trying to stay away from blogs that feel like novels- but trust us, the effect is only larger in longer copy.

3. “BECAUSE”
Why it’s hypnotic

Once again, it’s all about bypassing the criticaL so we can stimulate the unconscious.

Whenever teaching, (and what is sales but education), it’s always important to express what, WHY and how. We want to know why something is the way it is, what caused something to happen. And we crave it- particularly in our own lives.

These kinds of reasons, these relationships of cause and effect, are all in the word ‘because’. When our mind’s gatekeeper—the “critical factor”—hears that word, it treats it as a cue to let the speaker (or writer) through to the unconscious mind.

We’ve done whole trainings on persuasion so we won’t belabor the point …but this is expertly illustrated by Robert Cialdini in Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, which presented a now famous study where the participant asked to push in line at the library to xerox some papers:

“Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I’m in a rush?”

The number of people who agreed: 94%.

“Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine?”

The number of people who agreed: 60%.

You’d think the difference was because of the reason she gave. But further experiment indicated otherwise…

“Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I have to make some copies?”

The number of people who agreed: 93%. Notice that no real reason was given this time—obviously, everyone waiting for the Xerox machine had to make copies. Yet nearly as many people agreed as when a real reason was given.

“But mom, why?”

“Because I said so.”

Is that a real reason? No, it ain’t! It’s just a reiteration of what the kid already knows, right? But at this point, most children accept that it’s time to give up. And that’s something “programmed” into us, even as adults. It makes the word “because” very powerful.

However…

This is NOT some ‘magic bullet’. Harvard conducted a further study where they upped the number of pages to be Xeroxed from 5 to 20. And in that situation, the times a nonsensical reason was given for pushing in line got no more people to agree than the times when no reason was given. On the flip side, when the reason of being in a hurry was given, it doubled the number of people who agreed.

In other words, using the word “because” satisfies the brain’s natural search for reasons. For small requests, you can actually short-circuit the process and trick the mind into moving to the next stage of the sequence as if a real reason had been given, because it’s simply not important enough to devote brainpower to analyzing the reason. But for larger requests—even going from 5-20 pages at the Xerox machine (nevermind asking for a sale!) that critical factor doesn’t turn off so easily.

Nonetheless, using because still triggers the reason-why reflex. Give a good reason, and “you’re in”, so to speak. Judging from Langer’s experiment, it could as much as double your response rate.

‘🎵…somehow your words just hypnotize me🎶’

This company offers great benefits—then backs them up with solid reasons. Without the word ‘because’ though, the “reason why” reflex wouldn’t kick in automatically, and so the overall effect of the copy would be much weaker. Including ‘because’ simply makes the mind accept the benefits easier.

These clearly aren’t the only hypnotic words. But these three are particularly powerful, and we hope you find them useful as marketers and salespeople.

Imagine. You. Because. And here are some bonuses:

Study. Apply. Enjoy.

Not just for one-on-one presentations but try to work them into copy, videos, and even into your videos. Why not try it NOW since your “first is always your worst” anyway? Report your results ⬇️below…

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