Persuading the affluent requires that we dig deeper, into uncharted waters, where most people are afraid to go. The key is appealing to our other than conscious minds and employ the power of emotions to sell.

Researchers have determined that our conscious minds can only hold an average of seven bits of information at a time. Considering how many things we could be thinking about, that's quite an insignificant number.

There are so many things to think about. . .what we see, what we hear, what we feel, what we need to remember, what we are trying to forget. . . All of these things take up space somewhere. . . but we're only able to consciously think about seven of them at a time.

So while we're thinking of our seven little things, we've got a gigantic internal hard drive to hold the things we need to be able to access when necessary.

Our other-than-conscious holds on to all of the information we are not currently using, and absorbs the information that is occurring around us that we couldn't possibly consciously perceive.

I'm a huge fan of the unconscious. Logic and rationality are hugely overrated in my book. Not that there's no use for them, but the emphasis has overshadowed the power of our unconscious. And really, we've prioritized them incorrectly. Our unconscious is a gigantic iceberg and our conscious minds are just the tip.

So how can we take another person's consciousness and side step it to access the real boss of their unconscious?

Most people are persuaded based on emotions, feelings that are going on inside of them, not with rational, logical things that are going on inside them. People make their decisions emotionally and then back up these decisions with logic.

Our job as persuaders is to give them a little logic at the end so that our prospects feel good about the decision they've made emotionally. This is easy if we appeal directly to their unconscious.

By eliciting criteria we are getting to the emotional core of what is important to our prospects and clients.

As an example, let's use 'freedom' as a top value. If we put our finger on the 'freedom' trigger, this immediately stirs up emotion.

In reacting to the emotional trigger of freedom, this can manifest as rage or frustration in a person with an 'away from' orientation and as a feeling of dominion over all things in a person with a 'towards' orientation. If you are successful in maneuvering your product or service as the cure for the away person or access to more for the towards person, you will have navigated the emotional landscape where business and industry has been afraid to go.