Couple of days ago, I was chatting with someone who is studying some persuasion techniques. He was talking about matching, mirroring and “swear to god” techniques that work .

I told him, “You cannot persuade anyone who doesn’t want to be persuaded”.

His response was, “No, that’s the beauty of these techniques, you can persuade someone like that”.

Yup, I can see, he is enthusiastic about what he’s learning right now and everything these persuasion experts are saying to him works.

His enthusiasm right now reminded me of the time I spend learning persuasion, NLP and hypnosis. I wasn’t much different from him at that time. Ah, it’s a process everyone goes through.

Young kids (age 4–7) can be great example of the the kind of people who are hard to persuade.

Have you ever faced a kid who has puffed up his cheeks, arms closed and looks away from you when you are telling him why he’ll not get THIS toy?

So far, I’ve not seen any scenario where kids were ever persuaded. They are dead set on getting what they want, and who cares about others…

In persuasion everything comes down to one simple thing, Does the subject want to be persuaded or not?

You cannot make up mind for others. You cannot force your will on others.

In hypnosis, the subject who says “I can’t be hypnotized”, often goes into trance faster. Their refusal is token refusal, it’s like a cry for them “oh yes, pick me, pick me, I want to be hypnotized”.

Now, I can hear people who are into sales grumbling about how often they get rejection and they have to overcome these rejections with ‘persuasive techniques’. So what’s happening there?

Again, the resistance is just a token resistance. Not real at all. If you are in setting with someone trying to sell, the person is interested in one way or another. You just have to over the barriers he/she produce to your sales pitch. People these days have automatic shields against selling. Yet, they are getting sold over things they have interest in.

So how do you go about people who don’t want to be persuaded?

You don’t. There can be many reasons they don’t want to be persuaded, yet.

Notice I said, “YET”. Persuasion changes with Every situation, every person. If they are not ready yet, then you have to wait for them to be open enough to get persuaded.

Like I said earlier, You cannot make decision for others. And it’s true in every walk of life. You don’t have to “attempt” to persuade someone. You just have to be good at Listening, Articulating and Understanding their problem. And the above 3 skills take time to master.

Varun

Desire. Commit. Succeed.