THURSDAY, MAY 16, 2013
Winning People Over: Persuasion & Influence (1 of 4) by Darren Hardy
Eat or be eaten. Influence or be influenced. Someone is always selling and someone is always buying (consciously or not).
If you open up your medicine cabinet, your dresser drawers, your pantry or your garage… or just look around the room you are standing in right now, each item you see is a war trophy, representing somebody’s or some company’s victory—who got you to trade your hard-earned money for their product.
How did they do that? What tools did they use?
That is what I will teach you in this four-part blog series—the all-important skill of influence and persuasion.
Make no mistake. There are legions of influence agents operating around you everywhere, all day. Sometimes it’s in the form of a TV commercial, or a phone solicitation, or grocery store announcement, bus bench or billboard, and other times it’s in the form of a solicitation or request by a child, spouse, employer, priest, friend or co-worker.
A friend of mine once tried to count the number of direct attempts to control his thoughts and behavior that he encountered in a single day. This included people requesting him to do things, forcing him to do things, asking him to buy things, telling him to pay for things, showing him where to stop and when to go, suggesting how he should think about things, offering him slogans to repeat, songs to remember, attitudes to change, and ideologies to believe. He doesn’t even read the newspaper, listen to radio or watch TV! He gave up by 10:30 a.m., as he lost count somewhere around 500.
Research calculates that the average person receives more than 30,000 persuasion attempts—every day!
This isn’t just happening in news and commercial marketing; it is happening in most every conversation you have.
For instance it’s estimated that 80 percent of your time at work is spent in verbal communication—most of it consumed with fellow employees, customers or vendors trying to get you to do something. Then when you go home you have to watch out for your spouse, your children, your neighbors, strangers and countless others you meet in the course of an average day angling you for something they need.
Really you could say society is simply a mass of people influencing, persuading, requesting, demanding,guilting, pleading, cajoling, inducing, and otherwise manipulating each other to further their individual needs and agendas.
Let’s face it: If you want to navigate the sea of society successfully you will need to learn how to become more positively influential and persuasive yourself.
In this series I will give you the insights on the topic from one of the most influential and persuasive people in history: Aristotle himself and his famous dialectic on the three levels of persuasion. I will use that as the framework to give you some of my own tips on influence and persuasion so you too can become even more persuasive and influential in your marketplace, community and household.
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WEDNESDAY, MAY 22, 2013
Winning People Over: Persuasion & Influence (2 of 4) By Darren Hardy
No discussion on the topic of influence and persuasion is complete without a few words on Aristotle’s famous dialectic on what he calls the three levels of persuasion:
LOGOS, PATHOS and ETHOS.
In each installment I will boil it down to a single action item for you to walk away with in order to make this new knowledge have power in your own ability to persuade and influence others.
Let’s start with LOGOS—which can be understood as simply logic.
So the first form of persuasion has to do with convincing others through the use of logic. I interviewed Dave Lakhani recently (grew up in a cult, now best-selling author of Persuasion: The Art of Getting What You Want). Here is how he put it: “Persuasion is helping people come to their own most logical conclusion which happens to be one we share.” He goes on to say, “Persuasion is about being a more effective communicator and getting the best outcome for everyone involved.”
“Persuasion is helping people come to their own most logical conclusion which happens to be one we share.”
So, in LOGOS, we use logic and reasoning to persuade others to see things in a new way. Let me give you an example; this is how I lay out the argument for why someone shouldsubscribe to SUCCESS Book Summaries.
I do it through a series of logical questions…
Do you agree if you read 36 books from the best experts in the world over the next 12 months it would significantly improve your results?
Is it true you probably don’t want to spend the $1,000 to buy those books or have an extra 150 hours to sit on your couch to read those books?
So you want the results, but you don’t have the time, is that right?
Well, what if you could collect the best ideas from those 36 books, without having to read a single word… having them narrated to you… while you drive, exercise or walk the dog, taking zero extra time and for a price less than 10 percent of the cost to buy those 36 books? Would that be interesting? Would it give you a massive advantage over your competition? Would it help you make lots more money in your field? Why wait, go tohttp://www.successbooksummaries.com (and yes, I think you really should!)
LOGOS works best one-on-one, in small groups, and in writing, where you can focus your communication on one issue at a time and lead your subject through a series of agreements.
Now, as Dave said, “The difference between persuasion and manipulation is intent. Persuasion equals a mutually beneficial conclusion.”
Let me give you the best tip to crafting your LOGOS, or logical persuasive arguments or presentations. Today, the next time you want to persuade somebody to do something, before you speak, pause and ask yourself: Why would this person WANT to do this? What’s in it for THEM?”
I know this sounds simplistic but—trust me as the recipient of a lot of poor and unpersuasive communications—pausing to ask ourselves this question will stop us from launching into a diatribe littered with futile chatter about our desires, what’s important to us and why wethink they should do something… without the consideration or presentation of why the other person would really want to. Try it today.
Winning People Over: Persuasion & Influence (3 of 4) by Darren Hardy
PATHOS is used to gain individual attention, to disgruntle large groups, create mass movement, advertise products, start revolutions and winelections.
Both sides of the emotional spectrum are used, and both are as equally persuasive.
Positive emotions like: pride, joy, fulfillment, meaningful contribution, recognition, love, compassion and honor.
Negative emotions like: prejudice, fear, uncertainly, doubt, greed, hate, desperation, shame and guilt.
I remember Brian Tracy asking an audience, “What percentage of human decision making is rational and what percentage is emotional?” Most answered “80/20” or “90/10”. Brian then pointed out that we are 100 percent emotional.
Human beings, including you, decide emotionally and then justify logically.
Whether people use negative emotions to persuade, or positive emotions to persuade, both are extremely powerful. Look at how people were persuaded by Hitler, Churchill, Jim Jones, Gandhi, Napoleon, Cesar Chavez, Mussolini, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Mother Teresa, Stalin, and every other persuasive and influential leader. Whether leaders use positive emotions to empower you, or negative emotions toimprison you, they all use the power of PATHOS persuasion.
Which type of emotions should you use to build and empower? Certainly I have a strong preference. As you make your choice always remember this, if you build positive emotions, you will receive back and reap positive emotions. If you cultivate fear, you will live surrounded by fear.
If you build positive emotions, you will receive back and reap positive emotions.One key aspect of persuasion and influence I have learned is, “People support what they help create.”Before making decisions in closed door board meetings, allow your employees, team members, customers, partners and vendors the ability to co-create, offer thoughts, feedback suggestions and input before dictating your plans and projects. I guarantee your ability to persuade buy-in and support will go up many times over.
If you cultivate fear, you will live surrounded by fear.
In executing this idea I might offer another suggestion and tool of persuasion that many people and companies mess up: present fewer options.
When presenting ideas, soliciting feedback or making offers, instead of making 10, 20 or more choices available, only offer three. Would you choose A, B or C?
The reality is if you give too many choices people get confused, frustrated and eventually give up. Too many choices overwhelm and scare people off—they can’t make up their minds. Offering fewer choiceslessens the frustration of trying to figure out which option is best.
Studies show that companies offering fewer choices have better conversion rates than those with a large number of options. I won’t go to the Cheesecake factory restaurant for this very reason! By comparison, you go to a gourmet restaurant and they offer you very few, excellently selected options to choose from…ahhhhh….
I learned this principle when I sold real estate. When I was green in the business I would show a potential buyer 10 – 20 different houses—thinking more options to choose from, having more education and more reference points to compare against was better. Not so.Learning and employing the law of the few and the law of contrast improved my transaction rate by at least a factor of 10, which skyrocketed my income. I am suggesting that the use of these two tips in your own business, your own sales scenarios and in your own everyday conversations can have the same impact on your results.
Then I learned this crucial principle of persuasion. I would first explain to the buyer that I have scoured the marketplace of every available option using their stated desires and criteria. Of all the options that fit their criteria, the houses I would show them are the very best three. Then I used another principle of persuasion that I will give you here as a bonus for free… see what a nice guy I am? (That’s the power of suggestion, by the way.)
The principle is what’s called the law of contrast. What I would do is show the least best option first—the one that was listed way over price and wasn’t very attractive. I wouldn’t let them write it
off it too fast, I’d want them to walk around it and let it settle in emotionally a bit: “This is what this price buys you?”
Then I would take them to THE best option – best price and most attractive. Now, all of a sudden, this house looks like a dream come true! If I had taken them there first, without a contrast reference point, it would have looked just average and human tendency is to look foreverything not good about it.
Then finally, I would take them to the third option, which wasn’t as bad as the first, but certainly doesn’t live up to the second, which confirms and reinforces their decision on why No. 2 is perfect… and a GREAT deal.
Because they are not overwhelmed and have contrasting points of reference confirming and persuading both their LOGOS and PATHOS (logic and emotions), they were ready to make a decision to move forward.
So, as an action item, think about all the offers your company makes and the next time you need to influence someone’s decision apply the law of the few and the law of contrast. And by the way, people appreciate it when you make decisions easier for them by narrowing it down to only a few and providing high and low contrast points to compare against. Everyone wins!
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