In sales and marketing, the most basic strategy is an ability to fulfill a need. How can we use this strategy to persuade affluent clients? After all, they seemingly have no needs? Wrong. Everybody needs something. Determining what that something is and if you're able to fulfill it is the process of criteria elicitation.

If you stop to think about what you are consciously thinking about right now it might be the words that you're reading. You're probably not thinking about peeling a banana, or you weren't until you just read 'peeling a banana'. If your doctor told you to eat a banana every day for potassium, you might think about bananas more than the average person, certainly less than a banana farmer, but more than average.

There's no possible reason for us to be thinking about bananas all day and dreaming about them all night. But when necessity, such as your doctor's advice, intervenes, then bananas become more of a common thought for us.

The part of the brain responsible for consciousness is the Reticular Activating System. It is thought to be the center of motivation and arousal and is involved in most of the central nervous system's activity (including sleep and wakefulness). The reticular activating system is what helps us pay attention to things that we need to pay attention to and put away those things we can afford to disregard.

Our conscious minds can hold seven (plus or minus two) bits of information at a time. the rest is stored in our other-than-conscious minds for retrieval when needed.

Think about the last time you took a long road trip. Maybe you had on the radio, you were singing along to an old song (whose lyrics you still remember from decades ago, but hadn't thought about consciously in years, maybe), and you're maybe thinking about where you're going, who you're going to see when you get there. You probably aren't thinking of having to go to the bathroom. You won't think about that until you need to. And maybe you aren't thinking about water or gas or food, unless you need them.

When you start needing something, however, like gas, or water, or food, all of the sudden that's what you're thinking about consciously. You start really paying attention to the road signs and billboards for restaurants. You calculate whether you're going to be able to make it to the next gas station before running out of gas. Need.

Where were those thoughts before? They were stored in our other than conscious until we had use for them, until they became relevant. And once we have our needs fulfilled, then they can be stored away again until they again become relevant.

By eliciting the criteria of our prospects, we bring their needs to the forefront. As we speak to their values, in relation to our products or services, we are fine tuning the reticular activating system to everyone's advantage--ours and theirs.

Criteria elicitation (finding the very deepest desires of your prospect) is crucial to pointing us in the right direction to satisfy those needs. Once you know the direction to take a person, persuading him/her will come naturally.