Moving Beyond Boxes
Kenrick Cleveland
If you're in the world of sales, it's likely you've gone through traditional sales training and learned that there is 'a way' to sell. Maybe it was the Carnegie method. Maybe you learned 'features and benefits'. Maybe you learned some other easily definable, package-able way to sell to clients or prospects which sort of hammers away at their defenses and attempts to corner them into buying. These techniques are responsible for boxing in many excellent sales professionals. I admit to having been hindered once by these techniques but I had an awakening.
I feel that a lot of what I do in the world exists 'outside the box'. In persuasion, there is a small box which becomes limitless as we learn the basics. Persuasion is ever expanding as is human nature--as limitless as the many ways we interact, combined with what our values are, combined with what we want and need in any particular context. This isn't a subject that can be mastered but is constantly growing and expanding.
Fear not, persuaders. Even if something is vast, even if it's not entirely 'knowable', learning in and of itself is a fantastic process. Think of a specific area of knowledge--say, a new language or a new musical instrument. You do not need to know everything there is to know about the piano or the French language to enjoy the benefits of being able to play or speak with a native speaker passably the first time. I become thrilled by how much my life will be enhanced once this new practice or learning is languaged into my life.
Moving ourselves out of the 'sales box' creates a new paradigm for us enabling us to interact with our affluent prospects and clients and powerfully persuading them.
So 'thinking outside the box' is an invitation to innovation, to creativity, and to freedom. The 'box' is a frame. And if you're at all familiar with my work, you know the importance and power of framing. What the box contains, what the frames contain, are limited to perspective. When we enlarge the frame, when we open the box and let it all out, that is where the real power of persuasion and life and human nature in general, are set free.
One comment in support of boxes: When beginning anything, it's hard to get the basics if you don't know the boundaries. Once the basics are learned, however, that's when it's time to expand and outgrow the imposed limitations. Great musicians learn theory, language students learn grammar. . .And once the foundation is in place, the real magic can happen.
The basics of persuasion is an open box which eventually will not contain you and you'll find yourself expanding beyond the limits.
Kenrick Cleveland teaches techniques to earn the business of wealthy clients using http://www.maxpersuasion.com/ persuasion. He runs public and private seminars and offers home study courses and coaching programs in http://www.maxpersuasion.com/ persuasion techniques. This article is available as a http://www.uberarticles.com/?id=16033&b=79 unique content article with free reprint rights.
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