Mentalism and Mental Magic increases your sales by communicating your message
Mentalism and Mental Magic are both commonly used sales boosting techniques in the business world. Nowhere is the use of mentalism tricks more common than in the business conventions. The highest paid mentalists in the business all work the lucrative corporate trade. Why so lucrative? Because the best businesses know that employing these people to present their goods means sales.
To communicate to potential customers what it is your company actually does – so you can gather leads and make sales you need to do two things:
- Attract customers to your stand
- Keep them listening to your sales pitch
You can have the best product in the world but if you can’t communicate what it is you’re offering – you’re not going to gather those all-important leads and make the sales your business needs to make it. Mentalists rely 100% on selling their audience an idea. If a mentalist doesn’t capture the audience’s attention and get them to focus on what he’s presenting then his magic will be lost on them. In mentalism there are only two things that are important – the idea and the convincer. For example, a mentalist may raise the idea that he can read people’s minds – he then convinces them with his pitch. Of course, he can not actually read minds (no-one can) so he must sell the idea so hard that in the end his audience buys it. To better understand how mentalists work in the corporate world, let’s take a brief look at the difference between mentalism and mental magic.
How a mentalism means increased sales
The mentalist uses psychological trickery to achieve his effects. In the perfection of his art, he has learned to use body language and use social conformity to make his audience comply with his wishes. For example, he can draw a crowd (known in the mentalism world as the reel) and get the potential buyers to the front. The methods can be simple but extremely effective.
For example, the first thing he will do is engage the crowd in a group activity – something they all do together that makes them different to the rest of the people milling around. A mentalist may ask the audience to put up their hands if they “are genuinely interested in the product”. Everyone does and a group is formed. The pressure of social conformity comes into play: individuals recognize that they are now part of a group and since they have made a sign of being ‘genuine’ they will be reluctant to make a liar of themselves by walking away before the end of the presentation.
The mentalist will then add “put your hand down if you are not going to buy today”. This command causes an ideomotor effect. That is people will act before they think and put down their hands if they have no intention of buying anything. In practice the mentalist will see hands go halfway down and freeze before going back up (when the thinking brain starts to work). Laughing good-naturedly the mentalist will then draw all the “serious people” to the front. It is now harder for these people to leave (they will have to push their way back through the crowd) and social conformity comes into play again as these members of the audience are now under the spotlight. During the rest of the pitch these customers will be subtly flattered by the mentalist and, in front of the audience, be allowed to become the ’stars’ of the show. This is similar to the stage hypnosis phenomenon whereby the mentalist can get people on stage to do what he likes if he allows them to become the focus of the audience’s appreciation.
The result is that of the large crowd drawn, the mentalist manages to drawn out the pool the people most likely to become customers. He then creates a positive situation for these potential customers in which they are made to feel important a positive feeling they associate with the product on sale. Anyone from the company the mentalist is representing who calls one of these people later can be sure of a warm welcome.
How mental magic leads to increased sales
Whereas the mentalist hides his mentalism techniques behind his pitch presentation (he comes across as an engaging personality) mental magic is designed to be noticed. Crowds are drawn because the conventions are largely boring and the mental magic brings a lot of word of mouth traffic. How does it work? The feats of mental magic are entertaining and drawn in the crowds but they also pass on the sales pitch. One successful mental magician working today will work his magic with numbers, inviting the crowd to work along with him using the calculators on their cell phones.
He has the audience shout out random numbers to do with the company such as “can anyone guess how many people in America today are still looking for cheaper car insurance? Shout out a number?” adding up the numbers as he goes. At the end he opens a prediction that successfully matches the final number in the crowd’s cell phones. “This number,” he adds, “is the personal phone number of our marketing manager Craig, who will be happy to let anyone who rings it in on a very special deal”. Everyone walks away from a memorable sales pitch, with a story to tell and the your company’s phone number in their cell phones!
Most mentalists working for companies at conventions will act like they are just another member of the team, not a specially hired professional. This ruse increases sales by making the members of your workforce seem like intelligent, creative and engaging people – which they probably are – but does this show through in your current sales presentations?
The author is a expert on mentalism and mental magic. Read more about mentalism and mental magic at Mental-Magic.com
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