"Do not worry about holding high position; worry rather about playing your proper role." ~Confucius
In this exercise, you'll learn to explore your affluent prospect's mindsets through their values and beliefs.
It has to do with the idea of social positions - of being "one up", "one down", or "equal" in social levels to another. Because there are so many variants to social position, these are just generalizations, but if you just think of them as one up, one down, and equal, you'll get it and you'll see amazing results with your affluent prospects.
When I was nineteen, I decided I wanted to be the manager of a health club. And so I, with youthful zeal, made an appointment with the VP of the company. We sat down and he said, 'Okay, Kenrick. What can I do for you today?'
I replied, "Well, it's not what you can do for me, it's what I can do for you. You're probably going to think I'm a smart ass, but here's what the deal. I am your top salesman, in the whole company. I hold every single record there is to hold in terms of sales. It's time you made me a manager."
He responded, "Yeah. Sure I am."
To which I responded, "If you don't make me the manager, I'm going to go to your competitor, the one next door to your strongest club, and I will run your club into the ground."
He looked at me and asked, "Are you serious?"
I said, "I'm dead serious."
"You can't do that," he said.
"What's to stop me?"
"You're not good enough to do that," he said.
"Okay. Goodbye."
That was it. I got up and left. Subsequently, I recruited all of the sales staff who I had originally hired and trained, and brought them to the competitor's place at which time the old company had a fit and attempted to get me back.
What do these social positions mean?
Whoever has the most power in a situation is the person who is 'one up'. There's absolutely no judgment involved. One person is not better than the other.
This is also present in logical levels of though. If I'm eliciting your criteria about what it means to sell your house and get to the highest level of 'freedom', for you, freedom equals having your house sold.
If you want to move someone off of a particular position, get a higher value of what they're talking about already and use that value to move them. That's the way you can move people from one thing to another. To do that you have to learn how to jump up and jump down effectively.
Are you approaching everyone as a sales person?
Are you working from a lower level and supplicating yourself, saying, "I'm so lucky that you're even listening to me. Thank you so much for just a few minutes of your time"?
Stop it. That's crap!
The goal is that you want your affluent prospects to immediately understand your value. To do this, you've got to come in as equals and quickly, flawlessly, move to a higher level.
This isn't about being an arrogant jerk. It's about learning to maneuver these levels as the situation dictates. Realize that these positions are completely in your head and they are entirely about your intention in the interaction.
Learning how to maneuver societal position will really help you to do better in your life because you're not just locking yourself into whatever feels right for you today, you're actually thinking about it. In turn, you become a more effective persuader.
Kenrick Cleveland teaches strategies to earn the business of affluent prospects using persuasion. He runs public and private seminars and offers home study courses and coaching programs in persuasion strategies. Click here to get your own unique version of this article.
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