‘You Will Soon Feel a Strong Urge to Buy a Big-Ticket Item’ : Behavior: Psychologist Donald Moine claims a technique called indirect hypnosis helps salespeople separate customers from their cash. And for $125, he’ll teach it to you.

After buying that life insurance policy or those stocks you had never heard of, do you ever wonder if the salesperson had hypnotized you?

That could well be the case--if the salesperson was a client of Donald Moine.

Moine is a Rancho Palos Verdes psychologist, author and “certified master hypnotist” who teaches salespeople how to use hypnosis in their sales pitches. Moine’s hypnosis does not involve swinging a shiny object and saying, “You are getting very sleepy.” Rather, it is a more subtle form of hypnosis called indirect or conversational hypnosis.

“Indirect or conversational hypnosis is hypnosis without having people close their eyes,” said Moine, 38. “It lowers resistance and increases suggestibility . . . and people don’t even know you’re doing it. Most top salespeople seem to do it intuitively.”

And not just top salespeople, either. Moine says that most successful people in a variety of fields also use hypnotic techniques, from lawyers to preachers to politicians.

“Some people have an innate ability to do it,” Moine said. “Ronald Reagan, for example, was a master of this. George Bush, on the other hand, has never quite gotten the hang of it.”

Moine says he has taken the unconscious hypnotic techniques used by successful salespeople and others and systematized them so they can be taught to almost anyone. Moine charges $125 to teach the techniques to individual clients, $200 an hour to conduct hypnotic sales training seminars for corporate clients such as AT&T;, Isuzu and Blue Cross.

Moine acknowledges that using hypnosis to sell things may seem manipulative, perhaps even sinister, but insists that it isn’t.

“I don’t believe in manipulating people,” he said, speaking in a voice that is soft, low, reassuring--almost mesmerizing. “I’m very much a believer in ethical selling. The goal of conversational hypnosis is not to trick a person, but to grab the person’s attention and focus it.”

In fact, Moine says there are certain categories of salespeople he won’t accept as clients, such as high-pressure telephone commodities hucksters and used-car salesmen.

Moine, who has an undergraduate degree from UC Santa Cruz and a Ph.D. from the University of Oregon, says he stumbled on the use of conversational hypnosis as a sales tool during a psychological study he conducted in the early 1980s. Analyzing the pitches of dozens of salespeople, Moine found that the most successful salespeople used many of the same hypnosis techniques--usually unconsciously--used by clinical hypnotists for treatment of psychological problems.

From that discovery, Moine developed his hypnotic sales training programs.

Moine and co-author Kenneth Lloyd have written a 269-page book on the subject, “Unlimited Selling Power: How to Master Hypnotic Selling Skills.” He claims that the book is the first of its kind.

The technique, he says, involves “hypnotic pacing” and “hypnotic leading.”

Hypnotic pacing, Moine says, is a method of getting in sync with prospective buyers, making them like and feel comfortable with you--the first step in gaining their trust and, ultimately, their business.

A key challenge is putting the prospect into a “yes set,” or agreeable frame of mind. The hypnotic salesperson does this by throwing out inarguable statements such as “Sure is hot today,” or “Here we are in the showroom.” The customer nods or says, “Yes.” Eventually, the customer gets in the habit of agreeing with the salesperson.

Meanwhile, the salesperson, in effect, puts the customer into a kind of trance by matching the customer’s voice tone, rhythm, speech rate and volume, posture, language and mood--the same techniques a hypnotist uses to make a subject feel comfortable and relaxed, which are necessary for hypnosis to occur. If all goes well, the customer is completely relaxed and in sync with the salesperson.

The next step is hypnotic leading, activating the customer’s desire for the product. The salesperson will start issuing subtle commands during the conversation, often punctuating them by changing his voice inflection and using the customer’s name. An example Moine uses is, “A smart investor knows how to make a quick decision, Robert .”

If the customer has been properly “paced,” Moine says, these subtle commands will carry great weight. He will make a quick decision and buy the product right now, today.

Again, it’s more complicated than that. But Moine insists that the technique works, that any salesperson, with enough instruction and practice, can use hypnosis to increase his or her selling power.

“It’s virtually guaranteed to work,” Moine said in his soft, hypnotic voice. “Sales are a very important part of our economy. But too many salespeople are missing out on a way to increase their sales”--in other words, using Moine’s techniques.

A reporter interviewing Moine may not be completely convinced. But he likes Donald, he feels comfortable with Donald, he trusts Donald. Donald is just like the reporter, in speech patterns, mood, the way he sits in a chair; he never directly tells the reporter to do anything, but there are these little suggestions buried in the things he says. He calls the reporter by his first name a lot.

It’s strange. Suddenly the reporter is ready to buy whatever Donald is selling.