lfant aYES decision fiom anyone? Tilgger it!

VOU can have anything you want, yes, anythingl All I you have to do is to persuade someone to decide to do what you want. By applying new scientific breakthroughs, it's now quick and easy to get "Yes!" decisions and actions.

Before persuading others to say '6yes," let's take a quick look at our own decision process. Only when we understand how the brain makes decisions can we successfully influence others' decisions.

Let's face it, life is a challenge. From the minute our eyes pop open in the morning until they close exhausted at night, we deal with an avalanche of decisions. Get out of bed now or snooze? What to wear? What for breakfast? Which route to work? Stop for gas now or on the way home? Listen to the news or a CD? Which CD?

At work, it's the same. Get that report out first or answer the emails and voicemail? Take a call or let voicemail pick up? What are the boss's priorities? What are yours? Whose do you execute first?

All day long, requests and decisions drive activities. The need to decide is incessant. Dealing with so many decisions sounds difficult. It could be. If we had to use logic reason and cognitive thinking, if we had to rationally evaluate and think through each decision, we'd be trapped, locked in

By Russell Granger

place, unable to move as we analyzed, evaluated, contemplated, measured and critiqued options. We'd wind up dazed and immobile.

Fortunately, nature has provided a simple, highly effective solution to enable us to easily get through each decision-making opportunity. That solution is our "internal navigation system," which resides in our brain's emotional center and is activated by our personal databank of emotion-based internal triggers.

A trigger is an emotion-based gut-feeling shortcut that helps us avoid the pain of laborious cognitive mental evaluation. We are pre-programmed to comply with other's requests when the request activates the appropriate triggers.

The secret for persuasion is to leam which triggers can be activated for each situation. The irony of this need for quick, easy, emotion-based triggers is that the more sophisticated and complex our lives get, the more data we have, the more we need and rely on simple ways to help us make decisions. The smart manager, leader and sales rep understand this need and prepare their requests accordingly.

The exciting new science of live brain imaging documents that one emotion-based brain element, the amygdala, receives the most requests for decisions. The amygdala has two choices. It can make an immediate emotion-based decision, tapping into the life-long database we build. Or, if no prior emotion is triggered, it can send the request to the prefrontal cortex for lengthy, rational, time-consuming cognitive evaluation. Reason and logic do not persuade. They might back up an emotional decision, but they do not heavily influence the decision.

To get what you want through others you must activate their emotion-based triggers.

One of the seven primary emotional triggers is the Authority Trigger. When we perceive someone is an authority, we usually act on their requests. What do you do when your doctor, the "authority," gives you a prescription? Do you search the Internet and research the chemical compounds? Do you check the FDA website to evaluate the documentation for safety and efficacy? No, you get the prescription filled. The doctor's authority triggered you to make a quick automatic decision.

When your accountant, the financial "authority," directs you to "file this way," do you examine the 16,000-page tax code for logic and reason, or do you follow his advice? Again, the trigger motivates an automatic decision.

How do you persuade with the authority emotional trigger? Be the authority! Know your stuff. Do your homework. We give unthinking automatic compliance to those who have done the hard digging for us. Show the other person you are fully informed about your subject and that you can be trusted to give expert information. Create the right impression and the other person's amygdala will perceive less risk and feel more assurance and trust. You'll set the decision you want.

Other primary triggers are:

. The Friendship Trigger, which activates trust and agreement through bonding;

. The Consistency Trigger, which motivates consistency with past actions;

The Reciprocity Trigger-when you give, you get; The Contrast Trigger, which structures contrasts to make one approach better than another;

The Reason Why Trigger, which uses emotional reasons to make decisions and actions, and

The Hope Trigger, which instills positive expectations that persuade agreement.

Activate a combination of these triggers and you will get anything you want.

- Russ Granger is the founder of ProEd, an international training consultancy specializing in management, sales and personal productivity courses, and author ofTheT Triggers to Yes. He can be reached via www.seventriggers.com.