The Ultimate Guide to Selling Hypnosis to Sceptics

If you’re a hypnotist, you find yourself in a strange position. You possess a skill that can transform lives. It can remove fear and pain, and create happiness and drive.

What it can’t do is a shorter list than what it can do.

Scientific volumes struggle under the weight of paper after paper, each showing exactly how powerful it is.

And yet…

Many folks, perhaps even most of them, scoff and roll their eyes. “Hypnosis isn’t real!”

It’s as real as love and gravity.

But there’s a problem.

It looks fake. People watch a stage hypnosis show and get confused. How could that work – all he did was snap his fingers and that woman is now rapping nursery rhymes. That can’t be real!

These people forget they don’t know what hypnosis looks like. Those 15 minutes of preamble before he snapped his fingers was part of the induction…

Hypnosis also sounds fake. As soon as you start talking about the power of the mind, you start sounding like some unwashed whack job selling snake oil. To some folk, at least. People take mental shortcuts – if it sounds vaguely like crystal healing and tarot cards, they’ll paint you with the same sceptical brush.

Then there’s Hollywood, pumping out ridiculous depiction after ridiculous depiction of hypnosis. People (rightly) doubt the movie versions, so they doubt the real version too.

Which is like deciding since James Bond is nonsense, then spies aren’t real.

The result is a whole lot of needless suffering. Plenty of folk carry pain (physical or mental) that a few short sessions would eradicate. But they never think to try because it’s too strange… or maybe they think only drugs can solve the problem.

Doubt is their prison.

Scepticism keeps their suffering alive.

Maybe you want to crack open their mental shell and help them.

Or maybe you only work with those who are ready to change – who already know, respect and believe in the power of hypnosis.

Either way is fine.

But if you’re part of the latter group, you might think that there’s no need to ease doubts. If you’re only selling to folk who already know hypnosis is real, doesn’t that mean you can skip that part?

Can’t you crack on with your message and not bother convincing anyone it’s real?

Well, you can. There are very few ironclad rules in marketing. The best marketers break the rules all the time, so I won’t say you have to do it this way.

But I would if I were you.

Even if my prospects all know hypnosis is real, I’d still include some proof – and here’s why.

The value of proving hypnosis is real

You can imagine someone stumbling across your sales letters. They’re on the fence about hypnosis. Then they read your compelling argument for why it’s real and, excited about what it can do, they sign up.

If that happens, well done.

But I wouldn’t rely on that as a strategy. Folk don’t often change their minds – not from a simple sales letter, at least. That’s why the best sales letters confirm what the prospect knows – at least in some way.

Even if it doesn’t always win over doubters – even if all your readers know hypnosis works – it’s still worth adding proof for a few reasons.

The first is that, in most countries, hypnosis is unregulated. As it should be, in my opinion. For one thing, it’s impossible to define to a suitable legal standard.

You could define hypnosis based on language patterns, guided visualisations or even putting people into a trance. Regulate all of that and I’d still be able to hypnotise people – as would most skilled hypnotists.

Ban hypnosis and I’ll shrug my shoulders, call myself something like a neuroconsultant and keep doing what I was doing. Unless you outlaw conversations, you can’t stop hypnosis.

(Even then, there’s plenty of non-verbal stuff you could do…)

My point is that because hypnosis is unregulated in most countries, anyone could call themselves a hypnotist. Yes, there are industry groups and bodies and councils and whatnot. To join them, you have to complete certain training. But you don’t have to join them to get started.

So if anyone can call themselves a hypnotist, there’ll be plenty of untrained, unskilled, maybe even unethical folk out there doing just that.

You want to distinguish yourself from them.

You want to make it clear you’re a professional.

A great way of doing that is with a compelling argument defending your profession. As an expert and leader, you know a lot about your craft. This is your chance to prove it. Talking persuasively about the science and effectiveness of hypnosis shows you know the research. You haven’t just chosen this label at random – you are a Hypnotist with a capital H.

The second benefit in proving hypnosis is real is to convince your prospect’s peers. Sure, your would-be client might be keen on hypnosis… but is their spouse? You probably qualify as a ‘major purchase’, so they’ll need to convince them that there’s value in what you do.

And what about your prospects’ friends? Some of them will laugh at your client when they mention hypnosis.

This is your chance to give them value before they even see you – a chance to prove they haven’t lost their mind. They’re open minded enough and brave enough to want to change… and they’ve done their homework.

Don’t expect your prospects to defend hypnosis to their friends and family. They know less about it than you do. As the professional, this is your job.

Anyway, enough of the ‘why’.

Let’s talk about the ‘how’.

Beat prospects with the Science Stick

Folk who doubt hypnosis do so on one of two levels. I know this because all beliefs stem from these two places.

They either question it intellectually or resist it emotionally.

If it’s an intellectual block, then they’ve thought about it and calmly concluded hypnosis isn’t plausible. If so, this is great news – these folk are easy to persuade.

After all, you have science and truth on your side.

What does their intellect need more than that?

When people say “is hypnosis real???” I tell them to spend ten minutes on Google Scholar. Punch in the word ‘hypnosis’ and you find hundreds of journals dedicated to hypnosis. None of them ask if it’s fake because they know it’s not. It’s an answered question.

Scientists spend their time wondering what hypnosis can do, not whether it’s real. They know it works.

You can beat your readers with the Science Stick here. Go to Google Scholar and find ten or more papers in your niche. If you specialise in smoking cessation for example, find the best ten papers saying hypnosis is the best way to quit smoking.

Then summarise each paper on your website – it doesn’t have to be long. “Researchers found hypnosis helped 40% more people stay off cigarettes for 12 months, compared to gum and patches.”

Be sure to include references to these papers.  Below your summaries, include:

·        The title of the paper,

·        The authors,

·        The year of publication,

·        The journal it was published in, including volume and issue numbers.

Scientific papers include this information towards the top. Some even let you copy and paste the paper’s citation with a click… though you probably want to edit it so they’re all the same format.

The great thing is whenever you find another paper, you can add it to the list. Your body of evidence is only going to grow stronger over time.

Bypass doubt using Testimonials

On some level, people won’t believe what you have to say. It’s one thing to know hypnosis works, another to know that you work.

If you can prove what you say, your prospects won’t resist.

And a great way to do that is through Testimonials.

On some level, there’s a divide between you and your reader. You’re the business professional and they’re the prospect. Great marketing collapses that divide, but it’s tough to eliminate it.

People say Testimonials are great because they prove your skills. Others say it’s because they’re in the prospect’s language. There’s truth to that. But there’s a subtler psychology at play too.

Your clients might respect, trust and even adore you. Even then, they’ll identify more with other clients than with you. They’re on the same side of the you-them divide. Of course they’ll pay more attention to them than you.

That’s the real power of a Testimonial.

The best Testimonials follow a format like:

“I used to have Problem. Then I used the Offer. Now I have Dream Outcome.”

This could be one of your clients saying how they struggle with their weight all their life. Then they tried your hypnotic gastric band procedure, and now they’re easily losing weight. All their friends are complimenting them and they feel much happier now.

If that’s something they want, coming from someone like them, it’s incredibly persuasive.

Testimonials on steroids: Case Studies

A Case Study is like a Testimonial except for two things:

1)     It’s you writing it, not the client,

2)     It goes into much more depth.

Now, a point before we continue. If you’re going to share someone else’s personal experiences, deepest secrets and even psychological issues, please get their permission first. In writing.

Case Studies let you really lay it on thick. You can describe the problem in detail. You can pick apart the pain this problem caused them. Make it vivid.

Then offer them a way out of the pain – your services. Describe, in broad terms, what they did. And what happened.

They came to see you and after a few sessions, they started seeing results.

Then you can talk about how everything changed for them. Make it juicy and dramatic – but believable. There’s a difference between incredible and not credible.

Same rules as the Testimonial apply. Case Studies work best when you start with the problem, explain how they used your offer, then describe the outcome.

Overcome doubt by proving they’re already hypnotised

A lot of folk doubt hypnosis is real.

Then there’s the crowd who’ll admit it’s real… but it won’t work on them. They’re too “strong-willed” to be hypnotised (which doesn’t even make sense).

This approach handles both groups.

As a hypnotist, you know everyone enters and exits trances all the time. So prove it.

Talk about how it’s like driving a familiar commute. You hop into the car, turn the ignition, then… find yourself in the driveway at work. It’s like you blacked out… only you didn’t crash. So it’s more like something else inside your mind did the driving for you.

Or you could talk about comedy. Have you even been to see a great stage comedy show? You could spend an hour laughing your face off. Then when someone asks what your favourite joke was, you struggle to remember any of them. All you know is it was great.

These are common trance experiences. Point out that this is hypnosis. It’s not “scary” and it’s not “mind control” – simply a common, pleasant mental state.

A rose by any other name…

A handy way to bypass scepticism is to never use the word ‘hypnosis’. You could easily use hypnotic techniques and call it Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP).

Or neurocoaching.

Or consciousness engineering.

Internal reality restructuring.

Thought-based energy healing.

Really, you could rebrand it a thousand ways it. Some work better for some clients than others. And some will work better for you. Just know you’ll need to explain what you do to people, so make sure you have a snappy and compelling explanation.

Show, don’t tell the power of hypnosis

You could spend all day talking about it.

But, for certain prospects, that won’t be enough.

They know that words are just words. They need to see it to believe it.

So give them what they want through demonstrations. Take a client who trusts you, get them to sign a release form, then film you as you work through a simple piece of changework.

When people see what you can do – and how quickly you can do it – it’s a powerful blow to whatever doubt remains.

It doesn’t have to be fancy. All it needs is to be clear what’s happening. A client has a problem, you do something, then they don’t.

The George W Bush approach to persuasion

A simple trick to get people to believe a lie is repetition. George Bush Jr told the world that Saddam had WMDs so many times, people started believing it.

That’s all it takes sometimes.

While I don’t recommend lying, (if nothing else, it’s unprofessional,) you can use this to convince people of the truth.

Repeat your message often and people will come round to it.

Lies can be more seductive and appealing than the truth. But truth is more durable than lies. It can withstand more scrutiny and greater repetitions.

Imagine writing about something specific each day. If it’s true, that’s easy. If you’re making it up, that’s a lot of work.

And the truth of Saddam’s WMDs came out eventually.

That’s why a flood of content is persuasive. Sure, it could be a flood of lies… but it’s easier to tell a lot of truth. Every time someone hears your message, they become a little less doubtful, a little more convinced.

But there’s a caveat here…

This flood of content you create?

It has to be good.

In the tradeoff between quality and quantity, choose both.

This is why I write thousands of words a week across two websites. Every time I hit publish, I strengthen the truth.

And I invite you to do the same.

Not a writer? Why not speak your message. Create a podcast or use live video as your flood.

However you do it, do it often and do it well.

Or if that’s not your thing, you could always outsource it. You could hire a writer who does all that for you. Someone who can write well, write a lot and loves your industry.

And that someone is me.

For your communication needs – from learning & development to email marketing, and everything in between, reach out to me here:

https://battenandking.com/