How To Persuade People To Do What You Want

How to persuade people to do what you want? How to convince someone to do something?

I’m excited to share with you some really valuable techniques about persuasion. They were discovered and scientifically tested by a team of psychologists working under Robert Cialdini, Ph.D. He is a professor at Arizona State University in Tempe and author of the highly acclaimed book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. If you want to influence and persuade people to do what you want, or if you want to be able to resist the persuasion attempts of others, read this book (here’s a link to get it now). If you’re in a hurry, here are the highlights and how they apply to relations with customers and others — plus a few influential tips of my own:

1. Reciprocation — Cialdini and his associates found for example that the Krishna sect, which used to press people for donations in airports and other public places, changed their tactics with enormous success. Now they give people flowers, refuse to take them back, and ask for a donation in return. We are all ingrained with the “reciprocation gene.” It is human nature worldwide to respond to a gift by giving something in return. What this means for your organization is, before you ask people for something (like their money), give them something FIRST. What can you give away?

• A free sample of your product or service
• Some valuable information they can use–not just your brochure!
• A free meal, dinner or nice event
• If you can’t think of anything else, try flowers!

The more you give away upfront, the more likely the customer or other person is to give you their money, attention or other value in return. The trick is to do this tastefully–in the best case you are just following the golden rule.

2. Commitment and Consistency — Once people commit to something, they tend to continue behaving in ways that are consistent with that commitment. Researchers created a test where one person left a portable radio on a beach blanket close to a randomly chosen subject, walked down the beach, and a second person came along and “stole” it. They found that if the first person said nothing to the unsuspecting subject, in most cases they would ignore the theft. But if the first person asked the subject to “watch my things”, 19 out of 20 subjects would chase down the thief. What this means for promoting your organization is:

• Ask each customer or prospect for a small commitment early on. If they commit in writing, signing their name, even better.
• Thereafter relate to that person with consistency. Follow up with them repeatedly to reinforce the commitment and strengthen the ties. If you’re consistent with them, they are more likely to remain committed to your cause or relationship.
• Over time you can ask for other signs of commitment. When you do, subtly remind them of their previous consistency, as in, “You have been a regular donor to our campaign for five years now. This year we ask that you increase your giving by 10% because of the increased demand for our services.” (Heard that before? 🙂

3. Social Proof — People are naturally inclined to behave in a way that has been proven socially acceptable. Studies have shown that laugh tracks on TV comedies make people think what they are watching is funnier than if there is no laugh track. This happens in spite of the fact that everyone universally agrees that laugh tracks are fake and obnoxious. Cialdini notes that a crowd may watch someone being attacked and do nothing because everyone else is doing nothing. The same people individually would be much more likely to act. To use this to your advantage:

• Point out how many people are already doing what you want the “new” people to do–i.e., they’re customers, subscribers, members etc.
• Create events where large numbers of people show up. Mix existing customers or members with new prospects.
• If you’re really up to it, put on a conference or program where people can learn from you in a group setting and really bond with you!
• Asking people to make testimonies at these group events strengthens the social proof. E.g., “What this organization means to me” or “Why I tithe.”

4. Liking — “As a rule, we most prefer to say yes to the requests of someone we know and like,” Cialdini says. That should come as no surprise. Relate to others as a real person, in a way you would like (or better, in a way the target audience would like).

• Communicate like you are talking to a friend. Speak about “I” and “you” and not “he,” “her” or “it.”
• Be a personality. Be seen. Mingle with people.
• Encourage visitors or prospects to contact you by phone or email and answer them cordially.
• Demonstrate in all your dealings that you are a person of integrity, that you care about other people and can be trusted, and not that you are just after their money. The other points of persuasion will help with this.
• Call people by name. Even though you’re using a computer program to do this, people feel that you are addressing them more personally when you use their name in your emails or letters to them.

5. Authority — It is indeed amazing what people will do when instructed by authority. Experiments have shown that ordinary people are willing to inflict punishment such as “electric shocks” to an actor pretending to be a victim when they are instructed to do so by an authority figure such as a psychologist in a lab coat. Of course we learn as children to obey parents, teachers and authority figures, although as teens or young adults we may rebel. The early learning still sticks. To use this to your advantage:

• Cite your expertise when offering information or advice to others — not blatantly of course, but be sure the evidence is somewhere it can be seen.
• Cite the authority of other experts, just like I’m doing in this article, to build your credibility.
• Create an archive of information on your website or other resource which proves you have extensive knowledge on your topic.
• Share valuable new information as you learn about it to demonstrate you are an “insider.”
• Invite an authority to speak at your social-proof event to vouch for your cause.

6. Scarcity — Nothing drives a sale like the sense that the item is scarce. There are many occasions when buyers on eBay or any auction will compete for an apparently scarce item and drive the price up. Although products may be scarce, if you are in the information business, you are not selling or offering anything scarce. It is just bytes and bits on a computer which can be replicated infinitely at virtually no cost. And so in many cases you have to create scarcity. There are two basic ways to do this:

• Offer products, services or deals that are only good until a certain deadline. You see this in ads and direct mail catalogs all the time. To be totally ethical, make the deadlines real and stick to them.
• Offer products, services or deals to a limited number of people. Say, “This offer is good only for the first 100 to buy it” or “I only have five of these available.” And again, if you’re totally ethically, you will abide by that number yourself.

You can also create a sense of urgency with the language you use. “Buy now and get a big discount.” Or one I’ve seen often on the web, “My friends think I’m crazy for offering this package at this price, but I want to experiment for a short time and see how it works.” Watch out for sites that offer you a special deal by a certain deadline which just happens to be tonight, 24 hours or 3 days. Most of those are programmed to constantly up the deadline each day. You can highlight those “deadlines” and view their source code and see it for yourself.

I’d like to add a couple of more persuasion strategies based on many years of marketing experience:

7. Ask First — Before you ask a customer or other person to do, act, buy etc., try to understand their present needs, wants, perceptions and satisfactions. This is why experienced marketers ALWAYS conduct some type of survey by telephone, mail or focus group before attempting to market to any group. Once you know what people want and perceive, you can develop a program to authentically meet their needs in “their own language.” This is probably the most powerful persuasion strategy of all.

8. Because — Another researcher (sorry I don’t remember who) found that people are much more likely to acquiesce to your requests if you begin with “Because.” One test she conducted involved trying to move ahead of people in a line waiting to use a copier. When she said, “I need to get these copied” she did not get many people to gladly let her go first. When she said “Because I have a deadline, I need to make these copies right away” or almost any other sentence using “because,” people would much more often let her move ahead. I wonder if this is linked to our childhood habit of asking, “Why, Mommy?” for anything we wanted to understand, and when Mommy said, “Because I said so” or “Because you’ll hurt yourself” or whatever, we took that “Because” phrase to mean “Mommy loves me.”

9. Caring — You’ve probably heard the statement, “I don’t care how much you know until I know how much you care.” People are sensitive about “being done unto.” If you demonstrate that you care about someone before asking them to do something, they are more likely to trust your motives and acquiesce. We used to tell our daughter, “We love you, but we can’t let you do that.” It is important to separate the person from the act, especially with a child or someone you truly care about. I guess the bottom line of all this is, love is the most powerful persuasion “force” of all because it is such a deep human need. And if we truly love others, we will never take advantage of them or ask them something that will help us and hurt them.

Persuasion is a powerful thing. Use it ethically and both you and your “persuadees” will be better for it. Contact the Lawrimore team using the quick contact form on the right of this page to talk about how we can help you use persuasion to grow your business.