What if you could walk into a meeting, start your presentation and in less than three minutes have everybody riveted to your every word, following along and doing whatever you want from them -- would you feel great about learning these skills?

But... no matter what you think, once you know how it's done, you'll realize it's really easy. All you need is to follow three simple rules and you'll become at least 40 times more persuasive then you are right now...

Rule #1: Establish rapport

The first thing you should do is establish rapport with your audience (whether you're talking to one or five thousand people). This means you have to put them at ease, make them feel comfortable and establish a feeling of connection between you and them.

This can be fairly easily achieved. One important thing you can do is to come on stage, or wherever, completely confident, as if you know every single part of that place (note: don't make it look like you own the place -- it could be perceived as arrogant!). The more at ease you are, the more your audience will pick it up and start feeling that way.

You can establish a sense of connection by saying something like "Dear friends, we came here today to ...". The important thing is that you make it seem as if you and them are together in this and are essentially the same. You can also quickly quote some things you know for a fact that your audience agrees with wholeheartedly -- this will give them a sense that you think like them and they will unconsciously lower their defences.

You should always project that you're there as a part of the like-minded group on some level.

Rule #2: Captivation

After you've established rapport, you have to captivate your audience. This will induce a trance-like state where they will be much more inclined to follow along and to use their imagination -- an important part of the hypnotic experience.

You can captivate your audience by playing on their curiosity or by telling and interesting story. Be very detailed in your descriptions. Ask questions like "What if I told you we found a way to (add a beneficial end result)" or "Have you ever (describe a feeling you want them to feel". You can also start with a sentence like "What you're about to hear is top secret. Only a handful of people have this information...".

These will all make them much more responsive.

Rule #3: Leading

Once you have rapport and you've captivated your listeners, you can begin to lead their imagination. People will almost never do something that they haven't previously "played" in their mind and felt good about it.

So... your job is to paint a clear picture of what you want them to do (the end result!) and suggest what good feelings accompany it. If you can somehow contrast what it would be like if they haven't done what you said and suggest negative feelings with it, you have an almost guaranteed success. You must have an end result in your mind from the beginning and focus on achieving it.

Time distortion is a great tool to use here. If you can get your audience to imagine having already done what you want them to do and feel good about it, you'll almost certainly get a favorable result!

Make sure that at the end of your presentation, you give a call to action. If you forget this, you'll get far worse results than you could have. This could be as simple as asking them to do what you want right now.

Hope that this short article gave you an idea of how powerful covert hypnosis, as we like to call this art, is and got you imagining all sorts of things you can do with such powerful knowledge, from getting a date or persuading your friends to do what you want, to achieving a higher level at selling and charisma.

Covert hypnosis is a collection of techniques and strategies to change people's minds in a completely unconscious way. It's a powerful tool to have.