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46 The Seven Lost Secrets of Success

of our lives into stories. We gossip in story format. We
don’t see life as a river; we see it as a story with a defi-
nite beginning, middle, and end. Stories make life easier
to understand.”

Practitioners of neurolinguistic programming (NLP)
have discovered that stories are a powerful way to per-
suade people. Milton Erickson, the legendary hypnotist,
was known for his therapeutic stories. Stories are a way
for a message to be delivered indirectly.

As I explained in my book, Hypnotic Writing, a story
with your sales message seeps in under the listener’s or
reader’s awareness. If you tell someone to do something
in a direct, forceful manner, they’ll probably resist. But if
you give the same order as a suggestion within the frame
of story, they’ll probably do exactly what you want.

Let me explain.

HOW TO SELL BAD PRODUCTS

John Caples was a brilliant copywriter who worked
with Bruce Barton. Maxwell Sackheim was another
famous copywriter who probably knew Barton. Both of
these legends had experiences that illustrate the power
of “story selling.”

Both of these advertising giants were assigned the
task of writing ad copy for books that were actually bad.
How do you sell a product that isn’t any good? How
would you do it?

Both Caples and Sackheim, working independently of
each other, wrote letters that are still talked about today,