Way of the Wolf: Straight Line Selling: Master the Art of Persuasion, Influence, and Success

Now, for the most part, we tend to rely on the first three modalities to make sense of the world, with our visual modality being the most dominant, followed by our auditory and kinesthetic modalities, respectively. But, of course, when you’re dealing with the brain, nothing is set in stone. For example, if you’re a chef, then you’ll rely heavily on your gustatory modality, and if you’re a wine taster or perfumer, then you’ll rely heavily on your olfactory modality.

As I explained above, the way to use these modalities in anchoring is to take the picture in your mind’s eye and alter it so it becomes more powerful to you emotionally.

For example, if you focus on the image right now, in your mind’s eye, you can instruct your brain to make the picture bigger, and brighter, and sharper, and you can even move it closer to you; and doing that will tend to amplify whatever feeling the picture gives you, which, in this particular case, is a feeling of absolute certainty. However, as it is in real life, there’s only so far that a still picture can take you, which is why the feelings that we get from watching a movie or a TV show are far more intense than the feelings we get from looking through a stack of pictures or from flipping through a magazine.

In fact, the evolution of the motion picture business serves as a perfect metaphor for the relationship between the size and the quality of the images we see and the emotions that we feel as a result of them. For example, the industry started with silent movies shot in black-and-white, which were replaced by talking pictures shot in black-and-white, which were replaced by movies shot in color, which were replaced by movies shot in Technicolor and stereo, which were replaced by movies shot in wide screen and Technicolor with stereo and Dolby sound reduction, all the way to IMAX theaters, with 3-D and surround sound and so forth.

Notice the obvious trend towards making things bigger and brighter and clearer and more realistic . . . until they hit a certain point and the trend began to reverse itself, with things like super-tall IMAX screens, 3-D, and the shaking seats of Sensurround never really catching on, despite their providing a more “lifelike” experience.

You see, this is exactly how we use the five sensory modalities to intensify our state of certainty—by taking the image you’ve created in your mind’s eye and putting it through the same evolutionary process as the motion picture industry. I’ll guide you through it right now.

PUTTING YOUR BRAIN TO WORK

I want you to start by taking the still picture you created in your mind’s eye and putting it into motion, so you can actually see yourself moving in the picture, and being your best self, as you go about closing this huge sale. If it helps, you can even put a frame around the picture and imagine that it’s a flat-screen TV.

The point is that by turning a still picture into a motion picture, you’ll start feeling more connected to the scene and your state of certainty will start to intensify—especially when we execute our next step, which is to add on dialog from your memory. So, do that right now: add on the appropriate dialog, as best as you can remember, and give yourself that same, perfect tonality and body language. Or, if the dialog you recall doesn’t suit you, you can create new dialog—choosing words that will empower you and help you trigger the exact state you want.

Now it’s time to make your movie bigger and brighter and clearer and move it closer to you, and even add on 3-D or any other change—but, remember, each change should make the movie seem more real to you and, hence, increase your level of certainty; so if you reach a point of diminishing returns with any of your changes (like when you are forced to sit in the front row of a theater or when you turn up the brightness on your TV too much or the volume is too loud), slowly reverse the change until you hit the exact sweet spot with each aspect of the movie.

As you’re making these various “edits” to this internal movie, notice how the feelings associated with this memory continue to intensify and intensify. And then you can intensify those feelings even further by imagining them occupying a certain part of your body, like just over your heart or your solar plexus, and then placing the palm of your hand over that spot and noticing how the feeling tends to spin or tumble in a certain direction. Then allow your hand to move with that feeling, until they merge into one entity. You can use your hand to spin the feeling even faster, and you can even infuse your favorite color into the feeling, or have little explosions of fireworks shooting out if it . . . And, with that, let’s pause for a moment.

I have a quick question for you: