By: Shlomo Vaknin, C.Ht

Of Course Everyone Should Learn Sales Psychology!

This is one of the few books I read this year that have met my criteria for a 5 stars non-fiction: short chapters, straight to the point language (less fluff or fiction), down-to-earth, based on real life experience and learning, definitely not a copy/rewrite/paste of other books, thorough enough and exciting to read. Yes, I’m hard to please! After spending a fortune in the past decade on non-fiction books, I’m quite a tough customer. However, this book delivers…

Persuasion Mastery starts off where a lot of other books are neglecting – the state of mind of the persuader. Fixing the philosophy, establishing the right beliefs and state of mind, understanding your needs and the motivational powers behind them, facing the fear of rejection, learning to welcome objections, looking at a sales-meeting (or a persuasion opportunity) as a chance to improve yourself, not just to get something out of someone – and so much more.

There are about 510 mini-chapters in this book. Each is full of practical advice, and it seems to me that the author (or his editor) have made a very careful choice of words – the language is clean, engaging and most importantly – he shows you how HE is using it while writing the book… on you! This is the kind of approach I love in books.

I’m reading the book now for the 2nd time, marking unique ideas and techniques and re-learning others I’ve been experimenting with for a while. There are “workouts” in the book, giving you ideas and exercises that will help you utilize the techniques and concepts taught.

There’s a lengthy section on rapport, but in here the author avoids from repeating the same old stuff (NLP people know what I’m referring to) – instead, he’s taking us through the psychology behind the subject’s (or client’s) mind. He’s bringing to light some aspects of rapport which trainers usually avoid talking about (lack of experience on their part, though) – being dominant, using disgust, staying in balance, avoiding the bias and one that have opened my eyes – earning trust. Of course, in every chance he gets the author shows you the other side – how you could recognize when someone else is using X or Y to get you to agree with them. That is rare in sales books.

Instead of just “matching behavior”, the author talks about becoming attractive to the client and using authority and physical warmth to persuade.

The book then continues with a thorough hands-on course on influential language, mainly on how to interact with a person’s unconscious thought patterns and decision making strategies. How to re-frame (in so many ways) not only objections but also what they agree with you about. There are a lot of examples given throughout the book, but in this section they are the most appreciated, imo.

The next section deals with decisions and buyer motivation. He’s taking everything you learned so far and builds on it. There are some advanced concepts on values and beliefs change, on suggestive directions and closers.

Then comes a big section that is worth 100x the price of the book; it is titled “Activating Core Needs and Values”. This is the kind of stuff being used by talented advertisers and PR, by the media and of course by less favorable entities such as cult leaders and scam artists. Learning this, though, can be helpful in recognizing those influence triggers and making a conscious decision to accept or avoid it.

The things you learn in this section are persuasion drivers such as Significance, Uncertainty, Loneliness, Hierarchy of Needs, Certainty vs. Uncertainty, Stuckness, Love and Contribution… and how to use each, or combine a few, to achieve the outcome.

Next comes the section that puts together sales and therapy in the same pot. How true it is, that a competent therapist is a very persuasive person – if you can get through to your client, establish trust and get them to take action or change their mind about a limiting belief – you’ve done your job. That’s persuasion. This book goes a step further and gives us a few “strictly therapeutic” techniques (from Motivational Interviewing and the Motivational Sculpting researches) to work even harder on beliefs, on closing a sale using skepticism, on choice paralysis (that’s an essential read!) and on capturing a “rebound” close.

Believe it or not, this is still only half-way through the book! Next comes a great step-by-step explanation of the persuasion process Stephan has been using for the past 3 decades. He gives a lot of example on how to use what and when. You’ll read about the phases of his sales process, such as Contact, Momentum, Agreement, Nailing Down and Closing. There are a few chapters on objections and on how to ask questions that take you places.

There’s an Advanced Skills section, with a lengthy part on Automatic Behavior. If you ever wanted to have a resource that lists every possible trigger, that’s the one. You’ll nod your head a lot in these pages, as I did; it exposes our “unique” ticks in such a way that I can’t imagine not seeing it years ago. He talks here also about pressures and their generators, about “efficiency” and opposing efficiency, a value meter, setting up the conditions for automatic buying behavior, inner pressure-outer pressure and identity shifting.

And then he takes all that you learned and puts it to use while categorizing plenty of potential prospects. How about the “mild brain damage” client? or the “Crazy” man? the “too obsessed to buy”? He calls this section “Neurodiversity”, and it is loaded with great advice.

Group Persuasion is the next section, and I found it to be very helpful and informing. Again, the author starts by setting the base frame first, and then builds on it with more advanced concepts. You’ll read about creating a suspended state, about identity of a group, about enhancing interest, the friend factor, the 4mat system, audience response cues and triggers, stories and metaphors (and how to use them effectively), and of course on developing charisma and recovering from “mistakes”. Public speaking phobia is dealt with as well.

The last section is on negotiation strategies, which lists some more advanced social psychology principles and techniques, and gives a handful of advice on how to recognize manipulations (and types of manipulators), how to deal with them and you’ll get to know the Decoy Duck.

I recommend this book to you, period. If you’re interested in becoming more persuasive (but not manipulative), buy this book, read it more than once, use it and make some good out there.