"Our value is the sum of our values." --Joe Batten
In order to make an advancement in your ability to persuade, I believe it's necessary to advance yourself. Personal advancement. Personal understanding. Personal growth. These are all incredibly powerful ways to increase every aspect of your life--business, personal and public.
This article is about an amazing process that will help begin to accelerate your skills with my material. The goal is to rank our values. It's fairly painless, and will take you to new levels of understanding and give you a little more insight into persuading your affluent clientèle. Future articles will get deeper into this, but feel free to check out other articles on criteria and values as they relate to influencing the affluent.
The following is a list, albeit an incomplete list which you should feel free to add to, of some examples of core values. Please, add your own should they not appear. As you practice this with your clients, you'll see this list grow.
* Honesty * Freedom * Security * Passion * Freedom * Recognition * Integrity * Health * Family * Spouse * Friends * Spirituality * Money * Love * Success * Recognition * Education * Self improvement * Adventure * Fun * Financial independence * Variety * Knowledge * Self actualization * Wisdom * Accomplishment * Power
You might notice that 'happiness' is not on the list. The reason for this omission is, 'happiness' is not a value. Happiness is what will occur once your core value is actualized.
The next step is to put them in order.
Start with your top ten from the above list. And this is how to determine your top five:
As an example, your list may, in no particular order, start out with health, love, money, passion, freedom, knowledge, wisdom, friends, accomplishment, recognition.
Start with health and make your way down the list. If you had to choose between perfect health and no love, or a perfect love, but poor health. . .which would you choose? For sake of this example, we'll choose health.
What if you could have amazing health OR all the money you wanted? Which would you choose?
Perfect health and no freedom, or absolute freedom and poor health? Choose which better describes what you want.
We go through the entire list this same way to determine the top five values.
Why is this a valuable exercise? Well, I'll answer that with another question. If a sales professional had the top values of security, wealth and family, do you think they might be able to effectively interweave security, wealth and family into a conversation about their product or service?
We can't elicit our prospect's values in this way, but we are eliciting their criteria (which is really more of a context based value. . . i.e. their value about the given situation that we're asking about). We need to make it relevant to them.
As you begin to understand the value of this information, you may also want to check out www.maxpersuasion.com/blog for more articles on how values and criteria can affect the way you sell.
Got a Question? Ask.
Ask the community a question about this article:
Frequently Asked Questions
Gobbledygook
By: Amanda Deckeer | 22-09-2008
what is a gobbledygook for haste makes waste
Identify the major components of health ...
By: brai | 17-09-2008
identify the major components of health communication
Telepathy
By: anonymus | 12-09-2008
Hi Abhishek, do u often communicate with anyone through ur mind (like wireless communication ...just like talking on mobile but without actual mobile phone) for eg. with ur partner.
Hearing impaired phones
By: Joanne Robosky | 29-08-2008
Where can you request a hearing impaired phone from a government agency in ohio?
Is any problem occer to the humman body by using ...
By: Jhansi | 28-08-2008
Is any problem occer to the humman body by using this?
Anybody that could give me information were I ...
By: ivette | 26-08-2008
Anybody that could give me information were I could look up for a school paper on Verbal and Non verbal communication in interpersonal interaction.
any information will be greatly appreciated, thanks.
Q&A Powered by:
More from Kenrick Cleveland
Motivation Through Adversity
By: Kenrick Cleveland | 14/02/2008 | Self Help
I've struggled with my weight my whole life. As far back as I can remember, I've felt bad about it. I was stuck in a body that wasn't what I wanted, that didn't fit with how I really saw myself and to me, it represented a weakness. Andrew Carnegie once...
Ways We Learn: Small Pieces Of Persuasion
By: Kenrick Cleveland | 14/02/2008 | Self Help
A student recently asked me, "Kenrick, how the heck do you keep track of all of the persuasion strategies you know? Each time we have a coaching call, it seems like you pull out some new strategy. I can't even remember the basics like using the unconscious hello. How can...
Ulterior Motives Are Not Always Sneaky
By: Kenrick Cleveland | 14/02/2008 | Self Help
A student of mine recently posted a comment on my blog after having read an article. She noticed I used an example of a presupposition with the relationship in question being between a teacher and student and she suggested that maybe I was being sneaky using the example, as if...
Kicking Negativity
By: Kenrick Cleveland | 13/02/2008 | Self Help
"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." --Seneca, Roman philosopher, mid-1st century AD
Whoa! Things seem to be in a state of flux at this moment in history, don't they? Just turn on CNN and you'll see how topsy turvy things are with doomsday and apocalypse on the horizon. It's...
Rapid Rapport With Storytelling
By: Kenrick Cleveland | 13/02/2008 | Management
So say you're face to face with a brand new prospect. They've heard a little bit about you, know of your reputation, maybe they even have an idea what kind of a person you are and yet, they still may have some defenses, defenses which you are going to need...
The Benefits Of Organization
By: Kenrick Cleveland | 11/02/2008 | Self Help
"Three Rules of Work: Out of clutter find simplicity; From discord find harmony; In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity." -Albert Einstein
I did something very interesting and almost enjoyable over the weekend. It's enjoyable for me today, but in retrospect, it was kind of a difficult process. I did a...
Persuading Through Personality Segmentation
By: Kenrick Cleveland | 11/02/2008 | Self Help
'A part of me really wants to buy your product.' What does 'a part of me' mean? When someone says, 'well, part of me wants this, but another part wants that', what is that person talking about? Well, for one, this is a way for us to talk about our...
The Process Of Change
By: Kenrick Cleveland | 08/02/2008 | Self Help
'Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.' --Albert Einstein
Change is hard to define. Some changes, such as significant weight loss or selling a house in the current market, seem to take a very long time (or at least that's what it feels like). Other changes...
Self Improvement 
