You have been persuaded a thousand times, and the best of those times you never noticed. Someone listened to you, understood what you wanted, showed you a thing in a way that let you imagine yourself with it — and you decided, freely, that you wanted it. That is persuasion, and selling is only one of its applications: the same laws govern a job interview, a negotiation, a proposal to a partner, a speech to a room. Prof. Dr. Marco Paret has written two books on it, with Matt Traverso — a technical course in 2007 and I pilastri della persuasione in 2009^[1][2] — and in the Mesmerismus® he adds to those laws a further, powerful level: fascination, the non-verbal presence that acts before any argument. Anyone can learn it easily when guided. Here is the map: the first objection, the law of desire, rapport, the senses, the bridge to the future, the five pillars, fascination, objections and the close.

Is persuading the same as manipulating?

This is the objection every honest reader raises first, so it comes first. Manipulation pushes a person towards a decision that serves you and harms him; persuasion accompanies a person towards a decision that satisfies a real need of his. The first presupposition of the good seller, Dr. Paret writes, is not to consider himself a seller at all, but a consultant to the purchase^[2]: someone who knows himself, understands the person in front of him, and offers something that really answers what that person wants. The rest — freedom of the other, respect, the long-term relationship — follows from this. And the sentence that holds the whole philosophy is four words long: you sell person to person^[1][2].

Why does the customer buy only if he desires?

The customer buys only if he desires. One short rule, and everything that follows hangs on it^[2]. Nobody has ever been argued into a purchase; people are argued into agreeing, and then they leave without buying. Desire is not created by the seller: it is found, listened to, and addressed. The car buyer who says he wants “something reliable” may desire safety for his children, or the feeling of the first day at work in a car that says who he is; the insurance client may desire peace, not a policy; the customer in the shop may desire to be treated as someone. The product is the same in every case. What changes is the desire it is allowed to satisfy — and the seller’s first work is to hear which one it is. It is like tuning a radio: the station is already broadcasting; the skill is in finding the frequency.

What is rapport, and why does E.T. make you cry?

Think of a film that moved you. You knew the character was invented; you knew the actor was paid to play him. And yet, when E.T. seemed to die, you felt the loss — for an electronic puppet^[2]. For a moment you had suspended what the tradition calls the critical factor, the guard that checks every idea before letting it in, and you had accepted the story’s ideas as if they were yours. That suspension has a name: rapport. Directors call it “building the character”; in communication it is the state of trust and affinity in which two people can really talk, and it comes before any argument^[2].

Rapport is built with the body more than with words: the same rhythm of breathing, the same posture, the same pace of speech — modelling, in the technical vocabulary — so that the other person’s system recognises something familiar and lowers its guard^[1][2]. And here is what to do when it does not work: if the person does not follow your modelling, you pass to mirroring, and let him lead while you follow, until the rhythm is shared^[2]. Technique is a procedure with a next step, never a formula that either works or fails.

How do you present through the senses?

Each person perceives and measures the world mainly through one channel — sight, hearing and reasoning, or feeling — and the same product must be shown three ways^[2]. A car seller, in the book’s example, says to the visual customer «Look at the line of this car!»; to the auditory one «Let me explain logically why this car is interesting»; to the kinaesthetic one «Sit in it, try it!»^[2]. And the best presentation of all is the material demonstration through every channel at once: the person sees, hears and feels the product, and the seller stops explaining. When the customer has understood the law, let him act.

What is the bridge to the future?

Nothing is bought that has not first been imagined^[2]. The bridge to the future is the technique that lets the person see himself already there — driving the car, living in the house, using the service — so that the purchase becomes the way back to a picture he already has. It is like a travel brochure: nobody buys the plane ticket; they buy the beach they have already walked on in their mind. The seller’s job is to build that picture with the person’s own images, in his own channel, and then to step aside.

What are the five pillars of unconscious persuasion?

Beneath the techniques there are general laws of human psychology, and the 2009 book devotes a whole lesson to them, following Robert Cialdini’s research^[2][3]: reciprocity (we feel bound to return what we receive), commitment and consistency, social proof, authority and scarcity. The second pillar is worth telling as the story it is. In 1955 Morton Deutsch and Harold Gerard asked people to estimate the length of lines, then to face a group that gave a wrong answer. Those who had written their first estimate down and signed it held to it far more often than those who had kept it in their heads: a commitment made public binds us, and we defend it even against the evidence^[4]. Four years later Aronson and Mills showed that the harder the initiation into a group, the more its members valued it^[5]. These are not sales tricks; they are how the human mind keeps itself consistent — in the laboratory, in society, in a family, and, as one case among many, in a shop.

What does fascination add to persuasion?

Everything above can be learned from a book. What the Mesmerismus® adds cannot: the state of the person who persuades. The book already says it in its own terms — the fear of the seller at the moment of closing, the need to manage one’s own psychophysical state^[1][2]. The School says it in the terms of the magnetic tradition: in the Mesmerismus® the central principle is that the operator first learns to produce and maintain a quality of state in himself, and only afterwards guides the other person towards a corresponding change. A hesitant seller is felt as hesitant before he opens his mouth; a present one is felt as present, and the customer’s system relaxes and listens. That is fascination: the gaze that does not block but attracts, the presence that is read in the eyes and in the hands before any word^[6]. Two people in love know it; so does any animal trainer, and animals cannot be talked into anything.

There are two levels here. The neurological one: face, eyes and voice belong to a system that signals safety or danger below any conscious decision, and the seller’s state regulates the customer’s state — the reading polyvagal theory gives of every encounter^[7][8]; and the measurable synchrony between two people who look at each other live^[9]. And the energetic one, which the tradition has always described through what is felt — warmth, current, presence — and which the fluidist current, that is, the researchers who hold that a real energy passes between people, has never stopped investigating^[10]. The first exercise, from Dr. Paret’s books, is not about the customer at all: stand in front of a mirror and look at yourself between the eyes, without blinking, noticing what changes in your sensations. What you find there is what the customer will feel.

How do you handle objections, and when do you close?

An objection is information, not an obstacle^[2]. Before answering it, read it: it may be a request for information, a need for reassurance, a way of asserting oneself, a test. First understand what the objection means; only then choose how to answer — and the answer is almost always a question that lets the person say more. As for the close, the book says something most manuals do not: a fixed “moment of closing” does not exist^[2]. You read the signals — the posture that opens, the questions that become practical, the silence that changes quality — and you help the decision that is already forming. Sometimes the strongest closing technique is to stop talking. And after the sale the story continues: reassurance, follow-up, references — because the relationship, not the transaction, is what was sold^[2].

How to learn persuasion and fascination?

Like swimming: by doing it, next to someone who already knows how. The laws can be read; the state that carries them passes from the master’s eyes and hands to the student’s, through a precise, live teaching, in the Mesmerismus® training. Alone you can practise the mirror and study the pillars; with another person you must hold your presence while reading his answers, work with gaze, body and distance, and not lose the state during the exchange — and that is learned only in the room, with someone correcting you. What the training builds with it is a powerful triad — unstoppable confidence, self-esteem, security — because it works on the essence, and you will change intimately, inside, through this practice. The related pages are on non-verbal hypnosis and on kairòs, the time of opportunity; the demonstrations are on our YouTube channel.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does this work outside selling?

It was written for selling and it works everywhere people decide: interviews, negotiations, teaching, leading a team, a difficult conversation at home. The laws are the same; only the desire to be heard changes.

Is fascination a form of pressure?

It is the opposite. Pressure raises the other person’s guard; fascination lowers your own noise until the other person’s system feels safe enough to listen. The customer still buys only if he desires — fascination makes the desire audible.

Do you need a gift?

You need a guide. What is mistaken for a gift is a person who already holds a stable presence without knowing how. The skill divides into parts that can be taught: your own state first, then the quality of attention, then the technique.

Is it ethical?

In our School persuasion is taught as an art of self-knowledge, communication and presence, with the freedom of the other person as its first rule, and it is taught only to people who promise to use it for the good — the power of a technique makes the quality of the person using it even more important.

In the Mesmerismus® of Prof. Dr. Marco Paret this heritage is taught as an art of self-knowledge, communication, wellbeing and personal growth. It is not a medical treatment and makes no therapeutic claims.

Notes and References

1. Paret, M. (2007). Vendita e comunicazione persuasiva con PNL 3 e ipnosi. ISI-CNV — the original course text.
2. Traverso, M. & Paret, M. (2009). I pilastri della persuasione. Vendere, convincere, affascinare. Lessons I–V: the consultant to the purchase; “you sell person to person”; “the customer buys only if he desires”; rapport, the critical factor and the E.T. example; modelling and mirroring; the three sensory channels and the car example; the bridge to the future; objections as information; the moment of closing; after-sale.
3. Cialdini, R. B. (1984). Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. New York, William Morrow — the six principles, five of which the 2009 book adopts as pillars.
4. Deutsch, M. & Gerard, H. B. (1955). «A study of normative and informational social influences upon individual judgment». Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 51(3), 629–636.
5. Aronson, E. & Mills, J. (1959). «The effect of severity of initiation on liking for a group». Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 59(2), 177–181.
6. Paret, M. Ipnosi istantanea e lo sviluppo del potere dell’occhio, con applicazioni per l’ipnosi, la persuasione, la terapia e l’alchimia dell’uomo. ISI-CNV — fascination applied to persuasion; the mirror exercise.
7. Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory. New York, Norton.
8. On the open debate: Grossman, P. et al. (2026). «Why the polyvagal theory is untenable». Clinical Neuropsychiatry, 23(1), 100–112; and, in the same issue, Porges, S. W. (2026). «When a critique becomes untenable», 113–128. The two papers are the two sides of a live controversy about the physiological model; for the School the polyvagal reading remains a fixed point of reference.
9. Hirsch, J. et al. (2017). «Frontal, temporal and parietal systems synchronize within and across brains during live eye-to-eye contact». NeuroImage, 157, 314–330.
10. Méheust, B. (1999). Somnambulisme et médiumnité, 2 vols. Le Plessis-Robinson, Les Empêcheurs de penser en rond.
11. Paret, M. (2011). Training Manual: Mesmerismus – Fascination – Presence. ISI-CNV, Université Européenne.

You sell person to person, and the customer buys only if he desires. Everything else — rapport, the senses, the bridge to the future, the five pillars — is the craft of hearing that desire and letting the person see himself already satisfied. Fascination is what makes the craft invisible: a presence the other person feels before any word, learned live, and still being taught.