Books and publishing are very competitive environments. Learning a few hypnotic language patterns will help you to deal more effectively with a variety of objections, and help boost your career as an author. These patterns are not necessarily about sending people into a hypnotic trance but just a way to move your prospect from the objection to a benefit statement. Let us look at a typical pattern in the context of getting a book deal and how you can quickly start using it to deal with objections from a potential publisher.

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If you want to become a best selling author then, as “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” author Robert Kiyosaki has said that clue is in the world “selling”!

As an author you have to take responsibility for selling and promoting your book at every available opportunity.  You need to become good at persuading and influencing people.

One of the books I strongly recommend to people who want to become masters of persuasion is Robert Cialdini’s “Influence”.

Cialdini is a Professor at Arizona State University who has conducted extensive research into the factors that trigger people into automatically complying with another person’s request.

I am going to give a brief summary of each of these six factors in a series of six articles, that will show you how, as an author, you can apply them to sell more of your books.

Key 1: RECIPROCITY

According to sociologists and anthropologists, one of the most widespread and basic norms of human culture is the rule of reciprocation.

The rule is that if someone does something for you, you will want to do something in return.  This is commonly know as “you scratch my back I’ll scratch your back”.

This sense of future obligation ensures that relationships continue, and that transactions and/or exchanges that are beneficial to society continue.

A favourite and profitable use of reciprocity is to give something before asking for something in return. You can see this being used with direct mail letters from charities when they include the gift of a pen/address labels etc.

Although the “gift” is relatively cheap it plays upon the inbuilt human tendency to reciprocate – in this instance by making a donation!

There are many ways that you can use this concept as an author.  The use of free copies of your book as gifts to people to encourage them to give you positive testimonials, to journalists to encourage them to give you reviews and features are just one example.

Now that you are aware of this principle I am sure you will be able to think of lots of ways to use it to enhance your book sales.

Its official – subliminal advertising really does work!

Controversial research by James Vicary in the 1950s (Vicary admitted to fabricating some of his results) led to subliminal advertising (such as flashing messages onto a cinema screen for such a short time that viewers are only unconsciously aware of the message) being banned in many countries.

Now, fifty years on, British scientists using sophisticated scanning techniques have shown that subliminal messages that we are not consciously aware of can leave a mark on our brain.

The findings strongly suggest that subliminal advertising does have the power to affect our decisions.

One powerful way that you can incorporate subliminal suggestions is to use a technique called embedded commands.  These can be used in any form of interaction, for example, when presenting a book proposal to an agent or publisher, or selling your books to an audience when speaking.

I use them a lot when I am speaking at conferences as a way of encouraging the audience to buy my books and other products at the back of the room after my speech.

Embedded commands are a technique that is utilised by hypnotists.  It is a common misconception that people need to have their eyes closed or to be sleepy to be influenced by hypnotic language. Nothing could be further from the truth!  Specific hypnotic language patterns exert a powerful effect on people whatever state of mind they are in.

Because they are beyond conscious perception, embedded commands exert a powerful unconscious influence on people.  So let’s take a look at how they work and how I use them to increase my back of room book sales.

Embedded commands work as follows:

It is possible to embed a suggestion or command within a larger sentence. For example:

“As you are looking over the proposal, I’m hoping that you want to go ahead now, so that we can get the show on the road.”

“Now that you have had chance to understand the benefits, I’m hoping that you want to say yes to the proposal.”

I have embedded the suggestion (highlighted in italics) “go ahead now” and “say yes” within the larger sentences above.

And I have placed the suggestion buy my books within this sentence! Indeed if you read this article carefully you will notice a lot of suggestions to buy my books!

You make embedded commands work by marking them out with some slightly different and subtle form of behaviour that is not noticed consciously.  However, the difference is registered at an unconscious (or subliminal) level and that is how the embedded command makes its mark.

For example, you can:

• Shift your voice tone when saying the embedded command e.g. slightly lower tonality, deeper tonality than the rest if the sentence within which they are embedded
• Pause slightly before and after saying the embedded suggestion
• Raise your eyebrows or make a physical gesture when making the embedded suggestion
• or indeed use all of the above in combination

I will also stack embedded suggestions one after the other to maximise their impact.

For example I could say:

“At this stage most people just want to buy, buy, buy! Why don’t we go ahead right now? If you say yes right now you can start enjoying the benefits sooner rather than later, can’t you?”

When I’m speaking I frequently embed subliminal suggestions (such as buy my books) into my speeches. And I’m always delighted with how many people want to buy my books when I’ve finished speaking.

As I frequently speak on the subject of sales, I often include material on hypnotic influence as audiences absolutely love hearing about it.  And I tell them that as a sales speaker I am a going to demonstrate techniques such as embedded commands by getting them to buy my books!

People generally laugh at this stage as they are in on the joke and are interested to see how I am going to do it.  This in no way detracts from the impact of the embedded commands and indeed I suspect that because people are enjoying themselves, they are more relaxed and therefore even more susceptible!

I then run through a range of hypnotic techniques littering them with suggestions to buy my books.  For example, I may say “It is entirely your choice whether you want to buy my books or you don’t want to buy my books.  If you choose to buy my books now then it will be your choice.  And the sooner you choose to buy my books the faster you will benefit, won’t you?”

Or I tell them a story about when I was speaking in Monte Carlo and a long line of people were queuing up to buy my books and a gentlemen, who had seen me speak before and had already decided to buy all my books, said to another person in the queue, “Simon Hazeldine’s books are fantastic you want to buy them all!”

And at the end of my speech I walk off stage, sit behind my table with my books in front of my as people queue up to buy my books! Just imagine people eagerly queuing up to thrust money into your hands! It’s amazing!

Now you may have spotted several suggestions to buy my books embedded in this article and if you find yourself wanting to buy my books then why don’t you buy your copy of ‘Bare Knuckle Selling’ right now, turn to page 80 and read about a whole range of powerful hypnotic persuasion techniques including presuppositions, tag questions, embedded suggestions and quotes.

I was recently featured in the Nat West Bank’s business magazine “Business Sense.” This publication is distributed to all of their business customers.

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As an author it is important to be visible to your target market so attending (and preferably being a guest speaker at) a relevant event on a regular basis (e.g. networking meetings, seminars, conferences etc) is a good thing to do.

These are book selling opportunities and if you want a best selling book you need to remember that the clue is in the word “selling”!

Master salespeople are adept at utilising powerful psychological strategies to influence people and here are three from my personal top ten that can be easily applied by authors to improve their book sales.

1. People will buy from people they like

Extensive psychological research demonstrates the importance of ‘liking’ in persuading people.  Master salesman Joe Girrard (In the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s “greatest car salesman”) credits liking as one of the most important factors in closing sales.  The fastest and most effective way to encourage people to like you is to use the rapport building strategies from Neuro Linguistic Programming.  People like people who are like them.  Matching the behaviour of people when you meet them will enable you to establish deep levels of liking.   When they like you they will assume that they will like your book.

2. People will buy if other people are buying

The impact of other people’s behaviour on our own is powerful.  We will view a specific behaviour as correct to the degree that we see other people doing it. It is possible to encourage someone to take a specific action (such as buying your books) by demonstrating how other people are taking that action.  Utilise this persuasion strategy by making frequent use of testimonials from existing readers/customers, and by using stories about how existing readers made the decisions you want your prospective reader to make.  This strategy is particularly effective when people are feeling uncertain.  When people are feeling uncertain they are more likely to use the actions of others as guidance.

3. People will buy if the decision is consistent with previous commitments

The drive to be and look consistent is a powerful motivator of human behaviour.  Utilise this strategy by getting your prospective reader to commit to something during your conversation and then use it to leverage a decision later in the sale.

So for example I may ask (as an author of a number of sales related books), “So improving your sales ability is important to you, isn’t it?”

At an appropriate time in the conversation I remind them of their earlier commitment and ask them for a decision.

“So as you said earlier improving your sales ability is something that is important to you, so you will benefit from the closing methods outlined in “Bare Knuckle Selling”.  Did you want a copy of “Bare Knuckle Negotiating” to go with it?”

Good luck and good book selling!