Paul Sloane explains how "just imagine" transports people into a future where a decision is already made. He shows the technique working on a backlog problem and a teenager refusing to study, using imagined outcomes to make people see benefits and agree.
Chapters
The magic phrase I have for you today will significantly improve your powers of persuasion. Let's say you're trying to persuade somebody to take some course of action, and they're seeing all the difficulties, all the problems, all the things in the short term which are why they don't want to go ahead. What you do is you use this phrase, just imagine, and then you transport them into the future where they can imagine the decision having been made. So you might say, just imagine that this system is installed, it's working properly, the backlog is reduced, and you've got all the reports and analysis that you need. How would that be? What would that be like? And they will then imagine that, and it will help them see the benefits. Or say you're trying to persuade your teenage child to study for their exams. You might say, I know it's difficult, but just imagine how you will feel if you get the grades you predicted, if you get into the university you want, and you're with their— they're with your friends. How would you feel? And they'll say, I would feel proud, I'd feel good. And you want them to feel that way. It can even work the other way. Just imagine how you'd feel if you missed out on these exams, you didn't get the grades you predicted, and you missed out on the university, and all your friends went and you didn't. How would you feel then? So the just imagine takes them past the immediate thing that's in front of them, any difficulty or obstacle, takes them into the future and gets them thinking about about the benefits of your proposal, and therefore they're more likely to agree to it.
