"Our value is the sum of our values." --Joe Batten
I believe that in order to make advancements in our capacity to persuade, it's absolutely necessary to make personal advancements and growth and to develop a deeper personal understanding of ourselves.
I love this exercise because it really gets results and I hope that you find it quite interesting. We are going to rank our values, put them in order to determine what ultimately drives us. In future articles I'll get deeper into how understanding the importance of core values can be used to persuade and influence our affluent prospects.
the following list is a sampling of very common core values. If what is at your core, or at your client's core, is not on the list, simply add it. This is by no means a complete list, just a start. . .
* Honesty * Freedom * Security * Passion * Freedom * Recognition * Integrity * Health * Family * Spouse * Knowledge * Self actualization * Wisdom * Accomplishment * Power * Friends * Spirituality * Money * Love * Success * Recognition * Education * Self improvement * Adventure * Fun * Financial independence * Variety *
If you noticed that 'happiness' is missing. . . it's not. Happiness is not actually a value, but what will come as a result of having your core value actualized.
Now all we need to do is put these values in order.
Start with the top ten of the list above. Here's how we'll determine the top five:
For example, your list may start out with health, love, money, passion, freedom, knowledge, wisdom, friends, accomplishment, recognition.
What you'll want to do is start at the top of the list with health. Which would you choose: perfect health and no love, or perfect love and poor health? In this example, we'll choose health.
If you had to choose between health and money, which is more important to you?
How about perfect health with no freedom, or freedom with poor health? What's your choice?
Continue going through the list to determine your top five values.
This exercise is valuable in illustrating how despite our wildly varying values in life, we can learn to interweave our client's values into our conversations about our product or service and how that equals their value.
This information isn't something that we give out to everyone. And we're not asking our clients for their core values. But we are eliciting their criteria. And criteria is a specific value as it relates to a specific situation (i.e. in the context of our product or service) and in this way, we are making it relevant to them.
As you become aware of the value of this information, you'll want to check out www.maxpersuasion.com/blog for more articles on how criteria and values can help you sell more effectively.
Kenrick Cleveland teaches techniques to sell to affluent clients using
persuasion strategies. He runs unique public and private seminars and offers home study courses, audio/visual learning tools, and coaching programs in
persuasion techniques. Find more free articles at
www.MAXpersuasion.com/blog. Be sure to sign up for his free report entitled "Yes! Persuasion."
