How to Achieve Emotional Elicitation in Persuasion
Most people would agree that emotions play a role in selling and persuasion.
Emotions can be used to create a connection with the customer or client, making them more likely to trust and believe in what you are saying.
Additionally, an emotional appeal can make your message more memorable and influential.
Ultimately, using emotional persuasion effectively to steer your client’s cognitive processes to make an emotional decision can help you close more deals and achieve success in sales.
Qualitative research show that people buy things because of emotional reactions, not logical ones.
They might see something and feel like they need it, even if they don’t really need it.
Or, they might buy something because it makes them feel happy or excited.
Whatever the reason, people usually buy things because of how it makes them feel, not because it’s the most logical choice.
People are persuaded more easily when their emotions are taken into account, as emotional responses are often linked with core values and beliefs.
If a speaker can evoke emotion and tap into those emotions, they are more likely to win over an audience than they will with rational arguments.
When you speak to their emotions or use emotional trigger words, you are speaking to the very core of their being, the things that are most important to them.
You are appealing to their deepest desires and concerns, and they will respond accordingly.
So in this article, let’s talk about how to use the emotions really powerfully in emotional persuasion.
Let’s go together through the step by step process of how to elicit an emotional state directly.
Go Into the Emotional State Yourself
For the first step, you must go into the emotional state yourself and this is the missing piece of the puzzle for most people.
This is where they miss it.
Okay?
You’ve got to go there yourself. You’ve got to really feel it.
And if you don’t, how do you think you’re going to convince anybody else to do it?
If you’re not even willing to feel it, why should they?
Ever think about that?
People respond to what they can see, to what is true in their ongoing experience, so they need to see you in the emotional state yourself.
There are a number of good reasons to go into the emotional state yourself.
First of all, you should be in rapport with them, and if you’re not you don’t deserve to be talking much about emotions anyway, you need to be in rapport.
Pacing and Leading Into an Emotional State
So if you’re in rapport with this person and you’ve been pacing and leading, when you lead what do they do?
Well if you’re truly in rapport, they follow, right? Right.
What does that mean for you?
Well, what it means is if you are in, let’s say, a relatively non-emotional state as you gain rapport with them…
Then you go into an emotional state of being absolutely convinced or into strong belief about something or into real excitement, etc… and they follow you there.
Can you see how that would be an advantage?
You can get there through emotional storytelling as part of your persuasion process, in which you elicit specific emotions within yourself.
Through rapport, these emotions can be engaged in your client through use of emotional triggers which connect with their values which you have elicited.
Getting Good at Going In and Out of Emotional States Quickly
Step two, once you are in the state, and this is why, by the way, you must get good at this – you have to get good at going in and out of emotional states quickly.
You have to learn to be a method actor where you can learn to cry at the snap of your fingers.
Not cry really. I don’t expect you to do that. I don’t do that either.
But I can certainly get happy real quick.
I can certainly get convinced real quick. I can certainly feel passionate real quick.
And one of the ways I’ve learned to do that is to speak that way. So when I’m passionate, I speak with passion.
When I’m excited, I probably speak with a lot of excitement. When I’m serious and I’m committed to something… I speak that way.
So start looking at. . .there we go, here’s synesthesia coming out of my mouth, start figuring out for you what those sound like because maybe by adjusting your sound you can help yourself get in and out of these emotional states when you need to.
And second, practice going in and out of those emotional states.
Ask Your Prospect Questions About the Emotional State
So, you’ve made it there yourself, you’re in the state, now you’re going to ask your prospect questions about the target state.
Such as, “Can you remember a time when you absolutely had to have something and you bought it?
What did it feel like right at the instant when you made the decision to do it?”
Isn’t that a great question?
It elicits a certain emotion from within themselves which is much more powerful than a logical argument.
Now, you can also ask them, “What’s it like when. . . ?”
And then follow up with whatever discrete emotions you want to know about because then they’re going to describe it to you.
Through a storytelling process you can lead them out of negative emotions in the past evoke positive emotions which are connected with doing business with you in the future.
By using emotional triggers to influence their emotional reactions, you can frame yourself as the only possible choice to achieve their goals.
You need to use pacing and leading to read your client correctly throughout, observing their facial expressions, as young adults express their emotions differently than older people.
Keeping keyed in to their responses will help you steer their decision making process.
Emotion Has the Power
Now I want to stop and do sort of an aside for a second because there are some of you that are thinking…
“Ah, we’re going to talk about anchoring finally.”
Nope. Not going there. And you say,…
“But why not? It sounds like you’re headed towards anchoring.”
I’ll tell you why not.
When you try to learn this emotional state usage and anchoring all at once, what you end up learning is not much of either.
And over many years I’ve figured out that it’s really the emotion that has the power. The anchor is the special sauce.
We’re going to teach you how to do anchoring but it will be in later articles. Okay?
In other words, if you have the meat, you’ve still got a good dinner.
If you can add the special sauce down the road, hey great, add it. I’ll teach you how to have it, but I want you to master the emotional state material first and foremost because here’s what I found happens.
Anchoring Only Comes After the Emotions
Unless you know how to do this, when people start talking about the anchoring, those learning end up instead tricking themselves into believing that they’re using an anchor when in reality…
They’re not doing squat. They’re not doing anything.
So they’re going, “Oh yeah, I’m anchoring this, I’m anchoring that.”
And in actuality, they’re not doing anything. They’re getting no results from it whatsoever.
But because they think they’re making some tricky little movement or some tricky little sound, they’re going to do something, they are simply led astray and so on the one hand they’re questioning…
“Hey, why aren’t my results better? Because I’m using anchoring and all these other things?”
But in reality they’re not using them well at all.
And so for all practical purposes, they might as well not be using them.
Really, anchoring is largely the effect and so if the results are what you can see and hear and you’re not seeing any results from it… then you’re not using it.
It’s that simple.
I want to make sure that when we do this together, you’re going to get results from it and I’ll tell you, 80%, 90% really of the results you’re going to get will come from this.
If you were to lump emotional states and anchoring together, it’s just logical to teach them together, but it’s not practical.
So I’m going to go for practicality as I always do and make certain that you can do the emotional state part first, because that is way more powerful and important.
So even if you’ve been exposed to anchoring at some time in your life, please disregard everything you know about it right now.
I want you just to put it out of your head.
Just focus on what I’m teaching you with emotional states for now.
Use this and only this and when we’re ready I will proceed to talk with you about how to do the anchoring portion of it as well.
You’ll have far more success by learning to make emotional appeals and watching your client’s facial expressions to monitor their response.
Remain Congruent Throughout
Step number three, be congruent.
If it’s an excited state you want them to go into, you have to be excited yourself.
Now I said the first step is to go into the state yourself, but you’ve really got to stay there, don’t you, if you’re to make a successful emotional appeal?
And that’s another mistake people make with emotional persuasion.
They go…
“Okay, I’m going to go into excited so. . .I’m getting excited, I’m getting excited. Okay. Now I’m going to get them to be excited, so let’s just talk about, “So if you were excited right now, how would you be feeling?”
What does that do? You just blew it.
So go there and stay there.
- Number One: Go Into state yourself.
- Number Two: Ask questions about the target state to elicit in them and stay there yourself.
- Number Three: It’s really important that you have the person you’re persuading associate into the experience of whatever you’re talking about in Step Two.
Putting It All Together
So if you’re talking about excitement, you’ve got to put them into excitement.
If you’re talking about desire, you’ve got to put them into desire.
Try not to evoke sadness, because you really don’t want to get them in a negative state, so watch your own negative emotions and don’t go there.
Negative appeals don’t work.
Talking about buying?
You’ve got to put them into a time when they’ve bought.
So notice that in the second question I asked…
“What did you feel. . .?”
So I said, “What did you feel like right at the instant that you made the decision to do it?”
By asking them to remember a time they felt a certain way and then asking them how it feels, you’re making them feel it right now in the present time (because you only feel things in the present.)
So they are now feeling and experiencing the emotion you wanted to elicit.
You can now leverage that emotion in your persuasion.
This is used in political campaigns all the time, evoking a past ‘golden age’ and trying to connect it and its perceived values to a current campaign.
A similar process is used when using emotional persuasion to convince people to say yes to you, with little significant difference.
Keep checking back for future articles, updated daily, so that you can build your persuasion skill set.
