When reading yet another book on selling/ inuence I was struck by the fact that each book has

some element of "truth" that appeals to us logically or emotionally.

The story of the blind village and the elephant came to mind. It's lesson is that we never really know the truth. We are always going to be limited by what we can know and experience and the perspectives that present themselves. The fact that people are explanation/understanding/justication machines also comes to mind with the city/country soldiers adaptation study as an example.

Other perspectives come to mind,

Like how people have become experts at deecting sales agents. Customer/buyer-centric perspectives have moved focus from the seller's solution in a problem solving process to natural buying/decision making processes. How relationship selling is about creating a "we", by establishing boundaries in a mutually benecial interaction. Transactional analysis provided a framework within which we could analyze the nature of our interaction/relationship. Trust in examined as a crucial factor in both relationships and transactional outcome prediction. One school of thought is that we need to sell ourselves in order to inuence. SPIN selling attempts to dismiss/minimize the importance of the relationship/emotional component in sales of larger ticket items. Other perspectives also look at the difference with small ticket items. The Quadrant Solution examines the changing landscape of the buyer/seller relationship based on customer needs in the product/service use cycle. NLP brought us rapport building and change supportive language learned from skilled therapists. Anchors and triggers allow us to access and design resources. Persuasion Engineering brought us behavioral models of master persuaders. Criteria and modalities of need, parrot phrasing, representational retrieval, mental workspace and spatial location inuences, we're added to our knowledge. Others brought the concept of integrity to the selling/inuence arena. This focus addressed two elements, relationship building/maintenance and sales recruitment/retention. Priming and conceptual blending emerge as inuences in decision making. Linguistic processing of understanding/meaning, as a priming device. Stephen Denning brings us storytelling and it's power in inuence. Rhetorical devises such as metaphor, analogy and metonymy can all be tools. Neurological research reveals that emotion is key in the decision making process. Research says no to free will and yes to free won't. Neurology tells us that we relate more to what we are familiar with. (dancers) How category and scope structure and function can be used to inuence change. The role of reframing in change and inuence. How meta programs effect decision making and motivation. The role of time frames in decision making.

Insights from combining these ideas include

Metaphors/stories with commonality increase connectedness We know mood affects response and the order in which we present information can effect ongoing mood and as a result the order can inuence the decision. Meta-states.

Emotions are feedback gestalts. The conscious mind as a feedback/feedforward workspace with executive function. Whoever denes the situation controls the interaction. The role adding new perspectives has in exposing value. How new perspectives can precipitate change. How modifying emotional components can affect change. Anything to do with time also involves space. Relationship interactions are like a living entity, they change and evolve, often blurring the original boundaries as elements like trust and friendship morph the landscape. Descriptions are like snapshots, slices of time, but life is a movie, always changing.