Hypnotic Selling Stories are created around their connotations.
In other words, their indirect communications do the selling more
than their direct communications.
I’m sure you’d like an example by now.
One day many years ago I met a woman at a restaurant in
Houston. I was teaching writing classes at the time. She
wanted to meet me to ask questions about my classes, my
books, and so forth. At that time, I didn’t mind meeting
complete strangers for an hour of lively discussion.
I told her about classes and said something along these
lines:
“I love teaching my classes. People always buy my books
and tapes after it ends, too. My first e-book Hypnotic Writ-
ingsells the best. I’m not sure what gets people so excited
about it but they line up to buy it. Several people wrote
books of their own after reading it. I make $40 every time I
sell it, so I’m smiling in class the whole time.”
After a few minutes of my impassioned talk, she smiled
and said, “You do it so well.”
“I do what so well?” I asked.
“You’re selling me on your books without asking me to
buy them,” she explained. “I want all of them.”
That’s when I realized I had created a Hypnotic Selling
Story.
My exact dialogue was simply the denotation of my commu-
nication. But my connotation said things like “My books are
great” and “People use them for quick results” and “Joe’s classes
are popular.”
Do you see what I mean?
Here’s another quick story.
Nerissa came up to my office earlier today and asked for my
help with a classified ad she wanted to run. She owns a
rental unit in Austin and wants a new tenant. So we went
over the various words she could use in her ad. We also went
Your Connotation Is Showing