Hey ! Welcome to the August issue of Genius in Leadership and the 21 Immutable laws of persuasion. Ok, so we’ve talked trance breaking and curiosity and now we move on to the third forbidden law of persuasion: hope. Why? Well, because a persuasion is dead without some kind of an action being taken as a result of the persuasion.

So many people attempt to persuade but fail to give their “target” some REASON to be persuaded. This means some kind of benefit. People simply do not make any investment in anything unless they hope to get something out of it. Being persuaded is an investment because persuasion requires permission. You are asking someone to invest their belief into something and if you want them to take action then you are asking them to invest their action as well.

Hope inspires a person to take action because they are expecting something of value. In other words, there is a promised benefit. If you break their trance and make them curious but inspire no hope, you are going to lose their attention. This means that hope is the third law of persuasion which you must initiate effectively in order to move through the other laws to the peak of the persuasion.

Now , here is the key to building hope: Suggest a benefit and be VERY specific about it. However, do not tell your target of HOW they are going to receive the benefit. If you are marketing a product, this means that you are selling a benefit which without telling them anything about what the feature is.

Creating hope is all about the future. If you tell them what they are going to get AND how they are going to get it before engaging the remaining laws, you will have taken them out of the future and into the present. Even if you don’t tell them everything, they may have the idea that they have already heard the entire story and you will lose their attention.

So as you create hope, be sure that the focus of their attention is on the future.

the 21 Immutable Laws of Persuasion