Criteria Elicitation
This is without a doubt the most important persuasion skill that you can learn. If you’ll learn to apply this to every situation in which you find yourself you’ll be amazed at the positive results! Many of the hypnotic skills I’ll be sharing with you have a parallel in old sales training techniques. This one is no exception! Lets say that you are needing to convince someone to do something, accept something, or behave in a certain way. You will need to communicate with their powerful subconscious to get your desired agreement. Once a person’s subconscious “buys in” to what you are proposing they will just naturally seem to come over to your way of thinking. The question then becomes “how do I get my message to the person’s subconscious?” Here’s your answer-elicit their true criteria. Simply put, ask. Try this one SALESMAN John what’s important to you when shopping for a new car? JOHN Well I like to know that the person I’m dealing with is honest.” SALESMAN Yes honesty is the best policy. What else is valuable to you when you are making the decision about a car? JOHN I like to know the car has a high reliability rating from Consumer Reports SALESMAN an unreliable car is not an acceptable situation. What else is important john? JOHN I want to know that I got a really good price.
In the above can you put John’s criteria in order of importance? If you chose 3, 2, 1 you were right! Our hypnotically trained sales man knew to ask at least three times what was really important or valuable. He agreed and parroted each answer so that John’s SC would react to him as a friend (rapport) John’s SC would give increasingly important info each time he was asked what’s important. So our salesman needs to focus on showing John that he is getting a good price on a reliable car from a trusted advisor. When you need to convince someone first you should establish rapport. The easiest way to do that is to ask some questions about things important to that person. Some people go after rapport by starting with stuff like “how do you like this weather?” A great way to establish rapport is to share some detail from your own life first. “John you should have been with me last week at the golf range! I was hitting them long and straight! Or “my daughter just got the lead in the school play!” People usually respond with instant liking for you when you share a detail from your life. Once you have conversed for awhile (small talk?) then you can get to the elicitation stage. “Boss—what’s important to you about how my sales job is performed?” What else? What else?
Surveys are formalized attempts at criteria elicitation.
Once you know someone’s criteria then you have the roadmap to structure your persuasion attempts. By focusing on their criteria you will be seen as perceptive, insightful and caring! “Honey what’s valuable to you in a relationship” What else? What else?
Structure your communication to take advantage of the criteria that you have elicited and you’ll always come out a winner!

Any Questions?

John Satterfield C.Ht (Certified Hypnotherapist)
hypnosisucanuse@getresponse.com

About the Author

John M. Satterfield is a certified hypnotherapist and self-hypnosis trainer. Heis also an NLP practitioner
and a Marketing professional/consultant
He is married to Mary Gale and lives at Mountain View Arkansas
His "little blond psychiatrist" is a Cocker Spaniel named Sir Lancelot or Lancey