The movie ‘The Usual Suspects’ has a great interrogation scene.

The detective says to the suspect, “The first thing I learned on the job, know what it was? How to spot a murderer. Let’s say you arrest three guys for the same killing. Put them all in jail overnight. The next morning, whoever is sleeping is your man. If you’re guilty, you know you’re caught, you get some rest – let your guard down, you follow?”

This struck a chord in me about a current event. In the news (you could have hardly avoided it) is the strange story of Senator Larry Craig.

In case you’ve been out of the country (or in case you don’t live the the U.S.), the Republican Senator from Idaho was arrested on June 11th at a Minnesota airport by a plainclothes police officer. The officer was investigating lewd conduct complaints in a men’s public restroom.

On August 8th, he pled guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct. He paid more than $500 in fines and fees, and a 10-day jail sentence was stayed, with one year probation.

A spokesman for Craig said later that it was a “misunderstanding”.

A misunderstanding. And yet, he pled guilty.

Craig later said, “I should have had the advice of counsel in resolving this matter. In hindsight, I should not have pled guilty. I was trying to handle this matter myself quickly and expeditiously.”

This is where the incongruity comes into play:

1. If you’re wrongly accused of a crime, you don’t plead guilty. You just don’t. You put up a fight. (This isn’t to say that criminals don’t use the same strategy, but especially if you’re innocent, you don’t plead guilty.)

2. Senator Craig never called an attorney. That’s absolutely the first thing anyone does when they are arrested.

3. When Craig said, “I am not gay – nor have I ever been gay,” it implies that he believes it’s possible to have once been gay and then to become ungay.

And last, but perhaps the most incongruous action of all:

4. Mr. Craig didn’t go directly home to Mrs. Craig to tell her. Now, if something as allegedly preposterous as this happened to any one of us and had no basis in reality, the first place we’d go is our spouses or significant others.

Then Senator Craig decided that the media was to blame.

He claims that he pled guilty because he had been troubled by the investigations into his alleged homosexuality by the Idaho Statesman and claims that he has “been relentlessly and viciously harassed”.

The media is usually an excellent villain because they do get so much wrong, so it’s a pretty safe bet as far as scapegoats go. Unfortunately, Mr. Craig has a “history” and his anger doesn’t seem very righteous.

As persuaders, how, in either situation – whether the allegations are absolutely false or absolutely true – could we frame the story if we were in his shoes?

Did his incongruity give him away? And what can he do to unframe himself?

Kenrick Cleveland teaches strategies to earn the business of wealthy clients using persuasion. He runs public and private seminars and offers home study courses and coaching programs in persuasion strategies.

“Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.” ~ Ambrose Bierce

Persuading the affluent requires that we dig deeper, into uncharted waters, where most people are afraid to go. The key is appealing to our other than conscious minds and employ the power of emotions to sell.

Our conscious mind can only hold seven (plus or minus two) bits of information at a time. Seven bits of information. . . that’s not a whole lot, is it?

If you think about how many millions of things you could be consciously thinking about, your mind might have a bit of a meltdown. We’ve got a very limited amount of conscious space for a good reason.

Our conscious mind couldn’t possibly absorb and process everything that’s going on around us which is why our unconscious has such a huge job.

What happens to the information we’re unable to contain in our conscious minds? It gets absorbed in our other-than-conscious.

A visual representation of the would have the conscious mind as a tiny crumb with the unconscious mind being the entire rest of the pie.

So how can we take another person’s consciousness and side step it to access the real boss of their unconscious?

We need to realize that people are persuaded based on emotion and not logic. They make their decisions based on what’s emotionally happening inside of them, and then back up these emotional decisions with a logical reason.

Our job as persuaders is to give them a little logic at the end so that our prospects feel good about the decision they’ve made emotionally. This is easy if we appeal directly to their unconscious.

Side stepping logical thought and eliciting the criteria of our prospects and clients gets to the emotional core of what is important to them.

As an example, let’s use ‘freedom’ as a top value. If we put our finger on the ‘freedom’ trigger, this immediately stirs up emotion.

So the way you interact with that emotion of humiliation or frustration or rage (in the ‘away from’ person) or the liberation and feeling of dominion (in the ‘towards’ personality) and make your product or service the antidote (away) or access to more of (towards), then you will have succeeded in navigating the uncharted, murky (emotional) landscape where most business transactions are afraid to go.

Kenrick Cleveland teaches techniques to earn the business of affluent clients using persuasion. He runs public and private seminars and offers home study courses and coaching programs in persuasion techniques.

The key to a successful business is to market your company through well planned strategic sales plans and to showcase these during a carefully rehearsed sales presentation. These two items can be essential for getting your foot in the door at the businesses of numerous potential clients. The strategic sales plan and sales presentation will allow them to see who your company is and why working with you could be such a positive pairing.

Strategic sales plans should be the backbone for every company. This allows you to outline where you see your company heading and the ways you wish for it to get there,

The plans do not have to be dictated to employees. A great way to spark communication and innovation within the company is to put this on the agenda for your next company sales presentation and encourage input from team members.

The second aspect of the strategic sales plan is to locate clients who can use you in their business. Make contacts with these companies, letting them know that you have the goods and services to meet their needs.

Further you must show a buyer how you are going to be competitive with others. If pricing is the same, let them know that you will be more available to them than a sales person with another company.

Again, this could be improved with input from employees. They are the ones in the sales fields each day and they know the needs of the clients out there.

The sales presentation should not only leave them pleased with whom they are about to do business, but should also encourage them to speak highly of you through testimonials and word of mouth. These can be convincing aspects to winning the business of others in the field.

The strategic sales plan and sales presentation can not only bring you to the attention of a future client, but also can be the map that leads you to the cultivation of a successful partnership. Utilize these tools to be a major success in the business world.

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