# Strategy Elicitation — Full 4-MAT Presentation Script **Presenter:** Dustin **Total Time:** ~20 minutes (plus ~30 min exercise) **Has Demo:** Yes --- *Last updated: March 21, 2026 at 12:00 PM MT* ## 1. WHY — Motivation (~3-4 min) *Goal: Short motivational opener. Why should the audience care about strategy elicitation? Pull them in emotionally before teaching anything.* --- Have you ever been talking to someone -- a client, a prospect, someone you are trying to help -- and you know you have exactly what they need, but no matter what you say, it just does not land? I know you have been there, because everyone in this room has felt that disconnect. You have got the right message. You believe in the product or the service. You know it would change their life. But there is this invisible wall between you and them, and your words just bounce off it. And you are probably wondering, "What am I missing?" > [STORY PLACEHOLDER: Tell a personal story about a time you were trying to communicate something important -- a sale, a coaching conversation, a negotiation -- and it wasn't landing. You could feel the disconnect. Then describe a moment where you shifted your approach, maybe without even knowing why, and suddenly the other person lit up. Something clicked. They leaned in. They said yes. The key is that you didn't change WHAT you were saying -- you changed HOW you delivered it. You matched something about the way THEY process information. Use sensory detail, present tense, and build tension before the shift.] Here is what I have come to understand. It is not about what I am saying. It is about whether I am saying it in the language of the other person's mind. Not English or French or Spanish -- the internal language. The sequence their brain runs to arrive at a decision. And that is the most important distinction you will hear today. Because when you understand someone's internal sequence, and you deliver your message in that exact order -- the barriers disappear. They do not resist. They do not object. They light up, because you are speaking their internal language. People often find this is the missing piece they have been looking for in every conversation that did not land. > "Either they buy what you're saying or you buy why they won't." That is true every single time, isn't it? Every interaction is a sale. Even convincing your partner where to go for dinner. And the thing that determines whether they buy or do not buy? It is not the content. It is the internal process they run to accept or reject information. What we are going to learn today is how to crack that code. It is called **strategy elicitation**. And whether you begin to see the applications right now or they unfold for you over the coming weeks, this is one of the most powerful skills in all of NLP. --- ## 2. WHAT — Information (~15 min) *Goal: The main teaching block. What strategy elicitation IS -- definition, theory, components, the TOTE model, buying strategies, love strategies, formal elicitation, eye pattern elicitation. Pull heavily from Gina's transcripts.* --- ### What Is a Strategy? So what exactly is a strategy in NLP? A strategy is a specific sequence of internal and external representations that consistently produces a specific outcome. That's the formal definition. But here's what it really means. > "The theory is that a certain syntax, a specific syntax of internal and external human experience consistently produces a specific outcome." Everything a person does runs on a strategy. Every behavior, every decision, every habit. > "All of our behavior, everything that we do is involved with a strategy. We have strategies for love and hate, for learning, for not learning. We have strategies for parenting, for forgetting, for sports, for communication, for decision-making, motivation. We have strategies for happiness, for sex, for reassurance. We have strategies for eating, for health, for disease, for creativity." That's important for two reasons. First, if I find a really good strategy -- one that produces great results -- I can adopt it, model it, and use it. Second, if I find a behavior I don't want, I can change it by changing the strategy that drives it. The behavior is just the output. The strategy is the code running underneath. --- ### The Components of a Strategy The elements that make up a strategy are the same representational systems we've already covered: Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic, and Auditory Digital. Each of these can be either internal or external, and the internal ones can be either remembered or constructed. > "Visual external could be seeing something outside of yourself and visual internal would be seeing a picture inside of your head. And that internal picture could either be constructed, I imagine, or remembered, i.e. from a memory." So Visual external is seeing something in the real world -- a product on a shelf, a person's face. Visual internal remembered is pulling up a picture from memory. Visual internal constructed is imagining something that hasn't happened yet -- picturing how those boots would look on my feet, for example. The same applies to Auditory. Auditory external is hearing something in the environment -- a phone ringing. Auditory internal remembered is hearing that phone ring in memory. Auditory internal constructed is making up a sound I've never heard before. > "There's a very specific type of auditory which is auditory digital. Auditory digital is primarily internal and it's usually your voice in your head. So generally it's simply your internal dialogue." And then Kinesthetic. Kinesthetic external is a tactile sensation -- the feeling of the chair against the backs of my legs. Kinesthetic internal is an emotional state -- happy, sad, excited. And there's something called kinesthetic meta, which is a feeling *about* something. "How do I feel about that guy?" That's kinesthetic meta. All of these elements are what I'm looking for when I elicit a strategy. I'm discovering which of these representations fire, and in what order. --- ### The TOTE Model Strategies run on a model called the TOTE model -- Test, Operate, Test, Exit. It was first formulated in 1960 by Miller, Galanter, and Pribram. > "TOTE stands for Test, Operate, Test, Exit. And sometimes we call it Trigger, Operate, Test, Exit." Here's how it works. The first Test is a trigger -- something that kicks off the strategy and establishes the criteria. The Operate phase is where data gets accessed, either internally or externally. This is the part that in NLP we usually call "the strategy." > "The operation part is what we usually talk about as a strategy in NLP." The second Test compares the data gathered during the Operate phase against the criteria set by the first Test. If there's a match -- a positive exit -- the strategy completes. If there's a mismatch, the whole thing can recycle: adjust criteria, gather more data, run through the loop again until it either matches or the person gives up. --- ### Buying Strategies: Motivation, Decision, Reassurance Now here's where this gets practical. When I look at a complex behavior like buying something, it's not just one strategy. It's actually three distinct strategies running in sequence. > "The act of buying a car is actually three strategies with a tiny little sub-strategy. You've got the motivation strategy, the decision-making strategy, running the convincer sub-strategy in order to be convinced, and then the reassurance strategy." Gina uses the example of buying a car to illustrate this. The **motivation strategy** fires first -- typically about six months before the actual purchase. One day I'm driving along perfectly content, and then something shifts. I start noticing other cars. Features I never paid attention to. Colors, models, shapes. I'm not buying anything yet, but I'm motivated. That strategy is running. > "You're driving along in your car and your present car is just fine. You don't notice any other cars. But one day you drive along and you wake up and you go, whoa, and you see another kind of car." The **decision-making strategy** kicks in when I actually show up on the lot. Now I'm choosing among options. And car dealers know this -- research shows that once a buyer sets foot on the showroom floor, they'll buy within 24 to 48 hours. > "Which is why most car dealers don't want you to walk away. They want you to stay there." Inside the decision-making strategy, there's a sub-strategy called the **convincer**. That's the loop I run to become convinced it's the right choice. Some people need to see it three times. Some need to walk away, look at other options, and come back. Some need to sleep on it. The convincer is how many times I need to cycle through until I exit. Then after the purchase, the **reassurance strategy** runs. > "People don't feel good about their purchase until the reassurance strategy has been fulfilled." Some people won't even buy until they've mentally simulated the reassurance in advance -- they pretend they've already bought it, run the reassurance strategy in their imagination, and only then pull the trigger. --- ### Love Strategies: The Parallel This same three-part pattern shows up in relationships. > "The parallel to love strategies is almost linear." The **attraction strategy** is like the motivation strategy -- I'm figuring out my criteria, what I'm attracted to, what I find compelling. The **recognizing attraction strategy** is like the decision-making strategy -- I'm choosing among people who meet those criteria, noticing when someone else meets the standard. And then the **deep love strategy** is like reassurance -- I've committed, and now I'm running the internal process that confirms this is the right person. > "Love strategies run pretty much through motivation, decision, including a convincer, and a reassurance strategy." The point is that most major strategies follow this same architecture: motivation, decision, reassurance. Once I understand that, I know what chunk level I'm eliciting at, and I can get much cleaner results. --- ### Formal Elicitation Now let me walk through how formal elicitation actually works. The script goes like this: > "Can you remember a time when you were totally X'd? Can you remember a specific time? What was the very first thing that caused you to be totally X'd? Was it something you saw, the way someone looked at you? Was it something you heard, someone's tone of voice? What was the very first thing?" I replace X with whatever strategy I'm eliciting -- motivated, convinced, in love, decisive. I ask the person to go back to that specific time, associate into it, and then I walk them through each step. Gina demonstrates this with a client who bought a pair of riding boots. The client says she walked into the store and "they caught my eye." That's interesting -- "caught" is a kinesthetic word attached to a visual experience. That's a synesthesia -- a two-step process where one system triggers another. > "Whenever someone says to you, I looked at this thing and it caught my eye. Caught is a kinesthetic word. So to me, that's a kinesthetic synesthesia." Then the client pictured the boots on her feet -- that's a visual construct. That gave her a good feeling -- kinesthetic. Then she popped out of the strategy to run her convincer: she left, visited two or three other stores, looked at unrelated items, and came back. When she returned, she checked the price -- auditory digital -- and tried them on -- kinesthetic. Then she bought them. So the full strategy notation reads: Visual external with kinesthetic synesthesia, Visual construct with kinesthetic synesthesia, then Auditory Digital, then Kinesthetic. The convincer sub-strategy involved physically leaving and returning after visiting a set number of other stores. --- ### Testing the Strategy Once I have the strategy, I test it by delivering a sentence that follows the exact same representational sequence. > "You just take some of those words and you form a sentence out of them. So you might say to your client, I want to make a proposal to you, which when you have the opportunity to look at it, you'll get a good feeling about it right away. And when you get a chance to look at it and imagine how you can use it, you'll get a really good feeling about it and then you'll notice that the price is right so you can feel good about it and you'll go ahead and do it." Look at what's happening there. The sentence walks through Visual ("look at it"), Kinesthetic ("good feeling"), Visual construct ("imagine how you can use it"), Kinesthetic ("really good feeling"), Auditory Digital ("the price is right"), Kinesthetic ("feel good about it"). It matches the exact sequence of the client's strategy. > "The client will be smiling. When you get the strategy and you deliver the proposal to them in the words that align with their strategy, they light up like a Christmas tree." I can also test by running the strategy backwards -- delivering the same representational systems in reverse order. The client will disconnect, look confused, feel "off." Then I run it forward again, and they reconnect. That contrast confirms the strategy is correct. --- ### Eliciting Through Eye Patterns Now, formal elicitation requires a cooperative subject and time. But what about situations where I don't have that luxury? A business meeting, a sales call, a first conversation with a new client? This is where eye pattern elicitation comes in. It's a covert technique. > "We call elicitation of strategies using eye patterns a covert technique because it's something you can do without the person actually knowing you're doing it." The theory is simple: when someone is running their strategy internally, their eyes access the representational systems in sequence. I ask a question -- "How did you decide that was the watch for you?" -- and I watch where their eyes go. > "What they'll say at that point is they'll give me a story. And I'm listening to the story and I'm writing down what they say, but I'm also watching their eye patterns because they might say, I don't know, I just did. And their eyes move up into the right, up into the left, down to the right and down to the left." If the person is normally organized, I know that up-right is Visual Construct, up-left is Visual Recall, down-right is Kinesthetic, and down-left is Auditory Digital. So if their eyes went up-right, up-left, down-left, down-right -- I've got VC, VR, AD, K. That's their strategy, even if they said "I don't know, I just did." The key is to run it multiple times. I ask about several recent purchases at a similar chunk level. If the same pattern shows up two or three times, I've got it. > "What you'll see is that if you do it a couple of times, the pattern will start to repeat itself." Before doing eye pattern elicitation in a formal setting, I run an eye-tracking test first. I hold two fingers above the center of their eyebrows, high enough that they have to move only their eyes, and trace around the full range of motion. I'm looking for glitches -- places where the eyes can't smoothly access a quadrant. If someone can't access a particular quadrant, there may be a synesthesia or a trauma-related block, and eye pattern elicitation may not be reliable for that person. > "If they don't have full access to all of the quadrants, that means some of the eye patterns will be underrepresented or may not be accessed at all. In this case, you just can't use eye patterns to elicit strategies." --- ### The Spelling Strategy: Strategy in Action Gina gives a powerful example of how strategy work applies outside of sales or coaching -- helping a child who's struggling with spelling. > "One of the biggest things that kids struggle with is spelling. And if you know a kid who's struggling with spelling, chances are they're using the wrong strategy." Spelling is a visual recall task. The correct strategy is to look up and to the left -- into visual recall -- and see the word. But many kids look down when they try to spell, accessing kinesthetic. They're trying to feel the word instead of see it. > "If they're looking down, chances are they're trying to spell using a kinesthetic strategy." The fix is elegant. I write the word on a card in three colors, split by syllable, to pump up the visual submodalities. Then I place the card in the child's visual recall position -- not in front of them, but up and to the left for a normally organized person. They read it forward, backward, forward, backward, burning it into visual recall. Then the card comes down. On the test, they put their eyes back in that same position and retrieve the image. > "I can't tell you the level of satisfaction that comes from watching the kid go from being on the verge of hating school and hating learning to lighting up like a Christmas tree because they've finally figured out how to do this." That's the power of understanding strategies. I'm not changing the child. I'm not even changing the content. I'm changing the mechanism -- the internal sequence of representations that produces the result. --- ### Why This Matters Let me tie this all together. Every person I interact with is running strategies -- for decisions, for motivation, for trust, for love, for learning. If I can discover those strategies, I can deliver my communication in the exact language of their mind. > "If you can learn how to figure out how they do it, then you need to deliver your suggestions or your sale in their model of reality and their strategy. Now, if you can do this, they're more likely to accept your communication as intended." This isn't manipulation. The techniques are neutral. > "Techniques are neither good, bad, right, nor wrong. Intention is what gives the technique its designation." If I believe in what I'm offering, if I know my coaching or my product creates value, then it's my job to break down every barrier between my message and the person who needs to hear it. Strategy elicitation is how I do that. --- ## 3. HOW — Exercise (placeholder) *Goal: Brief setup for the demo and exercise. Strategy Elicitation has a demo.* --- Alright, so now you understand what strategies are, how they're structured, and the two main ways to elicit them -- formally and through eye patterns. Let's see it in action. Demo goes here. Now it's your turn to practice. You're going to get into groups of 2. One person will be the elicitor, the other will be the subject. The exercise instructions are in your handout. You'll practice both formal elicitation using the scripted questions and eye pattern elicitation by watching your partner's eyes as they describe a recent purchase decision. A few reminders: make sure your subject bought something they're happy with, that they bought it alone, and that you're eliciting at the right chunk level. Run the strategy at least twice to confirm the pattern. Then test it by delivering a sentence back to them in their strategy sequence. Watch what happens. You'll have about 30 minutes. Switch roles halfway through so both of you get practice on both sides. Exercise goes here. --- ## 4. WHAT IF — Future Pace (placeholder) *Goal: Self-discovery. Three questions.* --- **1. What questions do you have?** **2. What did you learn?** **3. What do I need to know?** --- **Word Count:** 3,023 words | **Estimated Talk Time:** ~22 minutes (at ~140 words/min medium pace)