Here is another excerpt from a great (and quite thick) book titled Persuasion Mastery.

Using Anchors Strategically

By: Stephan Thieme

(republished here with permission of the author)

The power of the anchor does not just lie in creating a positive connection to the product. You can activate an anchor at a strategic moment. You can goose the sales process with it, help process an objection with it, and do your closes with it. This is called “triggering” the anchor. You trigger the anchor by doing whatever it was that you did each time the prospect was in that positive state of mind. You might anchor for any positive state, or a particular kind of positive state.

So let’s say every time your prospect shows a positive feeling or thought, you work in a word and gesture combination into your immediate response. It could be as simple a saying “yes” in a warm voice with a gently positive emotional feel to it. At the same time, make a little thumbs-up gesture. Not a big one, just one that is almost unconscious-looking. Work that in as many times as you can. Then, when you need to activate a positive sense, do that same word/emotion/gesture combination.

When you’re close to closing, work your trigger into the test close. Considering everything we’ve talked about, wouldn’t you say, yes (do your emotion/gesture with that, that’s your anchor), this is the right model? When you get a positive response, hand them the contract.

By the way, you are getting yourself positive and focused as you anchor your prospects. This creates the double whammy of your own positive alignment moving the sales process forward, fueled by charisma.

Anchoring Workout

You have learned that you can anchor a state by providing the anchor each time the person experiences the desired state. Once you have anchored that state, you can quickly activate it by triggering it with the anchor.

Here, I have broken the process into steps to help you practice. You can practice on yourself by anchoring confidence.

Step #1. Pick the state.

Based on your sales process, pick a state that would promote the buying decision in a typical prospect.

Step #2. When and how will you elicit the state?

Think of various ways that you get your prospect in touch with that quality during a typical sales process. For example, if quality is a key selling point, think of ways that you get the prospect in touch with quality. At those points, you would probably be using words like quality, top notch, excellence, fine workmanship, and so forth.

Step #3. Decide on the trigger.

As you’ll recall, this can be a gesture, sound, key word, or any number of other things. I like to combine the first three. It might be straightening your posture just a bit, with a flash of pride on your face, and making a little smack sound with your hand on the desk or your thigh. I’m still surprise at how much anchoring I can do with no one noticing. I caught myself doing it during a sales training and explained what I was doing. Then the students pointed out that the person I was working with changed their own posture for the better when I fired the anchor.

Step #4. Anchor the state in a prospect.

Get with a prospect, and apply the trigger each time you believe that the prospect is responding with the desired state. For example, any time they give you a look that they are in touch with having quality in their life, apply the trigger. Remember, it doesn’t have to be the quality of the product. It good be any experience of owning or being in contact with quality. Make the state as strong as you can. Remember not to use the trigger when the prospect is in any other state so that you will not dilute the power of the trigger.

Step #5. Elicit the state during the close.

When you feel that the prospect can respond to a close, make firing that trigger a part of the close. For example, “Having this fine workmanship (fire trigger) in your home is an excellent (fire trigger) choice, this form will get our people over to your home to install it perfectly (fire trigger) within 48 hours. By the way, to add to the effect, hand the customer a very high-quality pen for completing the form.

Buy Persuasion Mastery Here.