Sales people owe a lot to Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, the Russian scientist....

It's true. In the early 20th century, Pavlov tried an experiment. He had several dogs. In his experiment, he would only feed them while he was ringing a bell.

Every time those dogs ate, they heard a bell ring. Every time they heard a bell ring, they were eating.

One would not happen without the other.

After a few days of doing this, Pavlov tried something. He rang the bell by itself. The dogs salivated! They associated hearing the bell with food.

It was an automatic, unthinking response from the dogs.

By ringing the bell, Pavlov could make the dogs react the way they did when they were expecting food.

He had locked the normal reaction from one stimulus to a completely different stimulus.

Nowadays, people have given the results of Pavlov's experiment a different "buzzword." In all the NLP books, they call it "anchoring."

In reality, it's pretty much the same thing Pavlov discovered with his dogs.

Here's how anchoring works. They associate a positive feeling with something they want to sell.

Let me give you an example in advertising. Think of the soft drink / soda / pop ads you've seen on TV. Let's take Pepsi or Coke.

What do you see? Usually it's a whole bunch of people having fun - WHILE DRINKING A CAN OF PEPSI OR COKE.

You see the people having fun. You start to feel good too. Then you notice, they are drinking Pepsi or Coke.

If you've seen an ad like this several times, here's what's happening.

You are being treated like one of Pavlov's dogs.

Here's how you will react. It will be totally subconscious.

You'll go to buy yourself a Pepsi or Coke. Then you'll start to feel good. You've associated good feelings and having FUN with drinking Pepsi or Coke, from seeing all those people having fun and drinking Pepsi or Coke in the ads.

Just like Pavlov's dogs which would salivate whenever Pavlov rang his bell, you'd start to feel good whenever you drank a Pepsi or Coke.

It can mean a great deal for sales of Pepsi or Coke.

Sales people can do something like this too. They can "anchor" you to a kind of expression or a touch or a word, or even to a meal.

Let's say you have a business meeting over a meal. You can bring up important points at the positive times in the meal, while you are both eating delicious food. Then the other person will associate what you are saying with their good feelings from eating the food.

Now, if it's done effectively, when they think about those points you brought up later, they will subconsciously remember the pleasure they had of eating that great food at the time you brought up that point. They will have good feelings about it. The source is all at the subconscious level.

Why does this work? It's because your memory works by ASSOCIATION. Each memory is linked to other memories. If you have two memories associated with each other, remembering one thing will often cause you to recall the other thing as well.

That's how anchoring really works. You create the association you want between two things in someone else's memory.

For example, the association between Pepsi or Coke and FUN. Or between your latest proposal and the delicious taste of a good meal.

Anchoring can also be done by words or by touch. You could compliment someone, to make them feel good, while you touch them on the shoulder or elbow. Then, touching them in that way on the shoulder or elbow will be likely to cause them to remember those good feelings they had from your compliment.

You can associate a special word you make up with certain feelings. Coke and Pepsi ads do this too, since they associate the words "Coke" and "Pepsi" with a certain reaction in you. That's a way how anchoring can happen through words.

Subliminal techniques DO exist, and they DO work. Many people are using them, and it's like a Pandora's box, it's impossible to put these techniques back in once they've been let out. So the best thing to do is to teach yourself about them for your own awareness.

We had an expert of these techniques, Kenrick Cleveland, post on the Sowpub board recently.... Go to his web site, www.maxpersuasion.com , and read his articles to find out more....

Dien Rice

P.S. You can also find out more about persuasion in society from Gordon Alexander's Remote Hypnosis....