What Cults Can Teach Us About Persuasion
Author: David Barron

I've really been having some doubts about whether I should write this because I wanted to talk about “mind control”.

What made me decide to write this is that the information I'll tell you about is already out there. I want to add some spin on it that you can use to power up your persuasion skills and help people in the process.

This all started in a discussion group and a thread about cults, mind control and underlying question “How can people be so stupid to fall for that stuff?”

The fact of the matter is ANYONE can fall for that stuff. It's not a weakness of the individual it's a weakness that we as human beings all have.

When you think about cult mind control (this is “bad” persuasion BTW) you can think of Jim Jones, David Koresh or the Om Shirikio cult. They all use techniques that we can apply in our own live to be more affective persuaders, negotiators and sales people.

Here are a few of the techniques used by mind control cults and how you can adapt them for your use.

Deep rapport
Everything happens because of rapport. This is the first thing that is taught in persuasion. It's absolutely vital. It's spoken about so much I won't say anything more than “Always Be Practicing Rapport!”

Transference and Counter Transference
Transference is the process of seeing someone as having powers and traits simply do to their position. In therapeutic settings transference creates the image in clients mind that the therapist is fatherly, wise, loving and able to give the client all that they need emotionally. Most psychoanalytical based therapy however have focus on digging up the past. This will create more transference where the client may develop an attachment to the therapist because you can always dig out more and more problem.
Counter Transference is when the therapist sees the client as week and in need of his/her help.
How this process can be used in a persuasion setting is by setting the mental frame that you are the one who has the answers, that you can help this person with his problem. By focusing on the problem of your prospect and the solution to a problem instead of a product to sell them you help to create some small amount transference.

Sequential Leading
This is SO important and comes from the field of social influence. When you think of the almost unimaginable things that some cults have done (Jim Jones, David Koresh, etc.) you have to keep in mind that none of it happened in a single step. These things occurred by leading people through steps with each step in itself being only a small extension of the last. Cults will often refer to it as “Indoctrinated learning” which mean you can go to the next spiritual teaching until you have done the last one. This is very nicely described in Robert Cialdini's book “Influence” as consistency. How you can use this to increase your persuasion is to the avoid the big sale only until some smaller easier sales have been made.

Cognitive Dissonance
Cognitive Dissonance in short is a state of confusion that comes from things not making complete sense or from new information that seems “true” not matching up with previously “true” information. From a psychological standpoint it creates a drive to move away from confusion to certainty and comfort. Cults use this by creating enemies in the minds of their followers.

You can us Cognitive Dissonance to increase your persuasive power by eliciting the deeper pain of the problem that you can solve. This can be done through the “Hot Button Persuasion” techniques. Keep in mind that your rapport has to be really strong when you use this because you are focusing on your prospects pain. Then must feel comfortable talking about it.

Positive or Negative Anchoring
This is really powerful and subtle stuff. Positive and Negative anchors (or rewards and punishments) don't have to be too huge. Cults use “love bombing” as a reward/positive anchor and shunning as a punishment/negative anchor but you can be even more subtle than that. Giving someone your undivided attention, a smile and nodding your head is often enough to set a positive anchor. Averting your eyes, giving a half hearted agreement to what they say or a should shrug is often enough for most punishments/negative anchors.

Isolation
Simply put that means keeping people away from anyone or anything that can fire off familiar anchors. Combine that with all the above and you have a powerful way of guiding people. In Real life most serious sales happen away from home. You can use this by setting up a closing environment that is comfortable but unattached to any part of your prospects world.

For more information go to http://www.power-persuasion.com






--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

David Barron is hypnotist, NLP specialist and author of "POWER PERSUASION: Using Hypnotic Influence To Win In Life, Love and Business" http://www.power-persuasion.com/book.html

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------