What can you say to paint the picture to your prospects and create the right persuasive emotion in your presentation? Analyze your stories. Are you stores vivid? Can you audience taste, feel, touch, and identify with your story? Do you use silence in your presentations? Should you? Where should you implement a good pregnant pause?

A utilities company, trying to sell customers the advantages of home insulation, sent auditors to visit homeowners and point out the ways they were wasting energy. The auditors provided the homeowners with suggestions on how they could save money if they were willing to improve the energy inefficiencies. In spite of the clear financial benefits over the long term, only 15 percent of the audited homeowners actually went ahead and paid for the corrections. After seeking advice from two psychologists on how they could better sell the advantages of home insulation, the utility company decided to change its tactics (technique) by describing the inefficiencies more vividly. With the next audits, homeowners were told that the seemingly minute cracks here and there were collectively equivalent to a gaping hole the size of a basketball. This time, 61 percent of the homeowners agreed to the improvements!

Complete this imagination exercise with me: Pretend you are standing in a beautiful, sunny kitchen. You reach across the counter and grab a bright, juicy orange. You can feel it is heavy with sweet, ripe juice. You can smell the delicious orange scent as you rub the oil of the skin on your hand. Reaching for a knife, you slice the orange and begin to peel back the skin. The aroma only becomes stronger as you tear the sections apart. One of the sections drips bright, sticky orange juice over your finger. You raise this juicy section to your lips and take a bite. As your teeth sink into the orange, you feel the juice burst out and swish around your teeth and tongue. The juice is incredibly sweet! You savor it a moment, cradling a puddle on your tongue before swallowing.

Did your mouth water? Almost everyone's does. The extraordinary thing is that if I had simply instructed you to produce saliva, you couldn't have done it. The vivid picturing technique works far better than the command because your mind cannot distinguish between what is imagined and what is real.

A Master Persuader has the ability to paint a picture with his words. The prospect will be able to see, hear, feel, and experience exactly what he is talking about. The prospect becomes part of the message and can more fully understand how the product or service will change their life. As a Master Persuader you stimulate your prospects' senses by using words that activate their mind. You present your message through positive emotions because the positive thoughts of the audience will color their perception of what you want them to do.

We can all say, "I walked on the beach," but that's not half as effective as saying, "The sun was up and shining brightly on the warm sand. I took off my shoes and felt the soft sand between my toes. The seagulls floated lazily across the ocean sky. The waves soothed my soul as they rhythmically crashed against the shore. I could taste the salt of the breeze on my tongue." I think you can feel the difference between the two. Words activate all that we do. The words we use can make you physically ill, emotionally drained, hungry, and even salivate. They can especially make you buy!

When you find yourself in a situation where you really need people on your side, use words that are going to create strong mental images. Attorney Gerry Spence once said, "Don't say he suffered pain. Tell me what it felt like to have a broken leg with the bone sticking out through the flesh. Tell me how it was! Make me see it! Make me feel it!" Words are more powerful when they have strong emotional connotations. You want your words to be clear and credible, but they will have greater impact if they also strike an emotional chord within your audience. You can avoid being melodramatic or sensational by being sure that your words truly reflect the circumstances and that they can always be backed up.

Sometimes the right word is no word. On occasion we need to remain silent and let the other person talk. We have heard in sales that the first one to talk after the close loses. After the persuasion process and the final decision is ready to be made, make your proposal and shut up. The silence is nerve-wracking, but it's a critical time to let the prospect make the decision without you rambling on and on about the product or service.

How often have you noticed a sales rep overselling a product? You were ready to make the purchase by handing over your credit card. The sales rep felt you needed to know everything about the product and he started to fill you in. This caused doubt to creep into your mind and you ended up leaving, telling the salesman you would think about it. When someone has been persuaded and convinced, there is no reason to say any more. Strike when the iron is hot!

More communication is not necessarily better persuasion. In fact, the less you talk, the smarter people think you are. The more you say, the more common and less in control you appear. Many individuals try to impress people with what they know by flaunting all their wisdom, but usually this strategy is just a turn-off.