Persuasion

Ten Observations About Customers

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Here are ten observations that I have had about the human nature of people as customers:

1. People know what they don’t want – People know exactly what they want but often times have trouble expressing it.

Key – Using the following phrase helps get people to tell you what they want: “I know you may not know now, but if you did know, what would it be?” This gets people to open up and begin talking about their interests and choices.

2. People don’t return – Most people who have a bad experience would rather leave quietly and avoid conflict.

Key – Be sensitive to your target’s needs and become their advocate. Ask open ended questions and listen closely to their answers. Never interrupt and always assure them that you value their business. Before offering the solution, ask them what they think may improve the situation. The answers can be very surprising.

3. People feel the deserve the best (entitlement) – In business settings , most people feel as though they are entitled to certain things and if you’re doing business with them, (in their mind) you owe them.

Key - Give the most real and honest treatment you can in response to the questions you get from your customers.

4. People do more to avoid pain than to gain pleasure – Pain equals loss which is what people run from. Key – Focus on what the target has to lose by not getting involved. Have your argument and touch pints written down for easy articulation.

5. People don’t listen, they wait to talk – Even though they may not listen when you talk, you gain an advantage when you listen to them because you uncover their desires.

Key - Use questions to get access to the info you need. People love to hear themselves talk; they just have to know you really care. Start by asking about things you think they enjoy talking about or that they think are relevant to them getting what they want.

6. Most people are pessimists – Nothing great ever comes of this type of defeatist attitude.

Key - Challenge them immediately and stop the negativity as it can become viral very quickly. Flip the script by asking them how they think the problem can be solved. This will quiet them because they’ll be exposed as someone who has no substance; just negative thoughts with no reasoning to support it.

7. Perception is reality – Everyone sees the world differently but we all assume what we see is real and/or correct. This is where miscommunication comes from.

Key – True masters of influence are simply masters of seeing the world through the eyes of their targets. You do this by asking the right types of questions, listening and observing.

8. People prefer the path of least resistance – Most people will not act if it’s easier to stay put or if there are no perceived consequences.

Key – Show the customer how buying now will help them avoid higher costs later, save money or avoid a potentially painful consequence. If you ask too much of them or make your request seem difficult, people will avoid you.

9. Attitude shapes experience – Anyone (including you) can completely change their perception of a current experience because of their attitude.

Key – You can improve your target’s attitude by asking a question that breaks his/her state and changes their view of the current experience to a more positive one.

10. Complainers like to complain – Seems pretty simple but your job as an influencer is to remember where your target is coming from. The complainer (especially in business settings) cares more about the experience of complaining than anything else. Often times, the complaint doesn’t even need merit.

Key – Questioning the complainer makes them more defensive and just adds fuel to the fire. Only question them to gain more information so you can help them rather than doing so to learn their intentions.

The Role of Passion In Persuasion/Influence

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Many people like to ask themselves what the right path in life and business is, where they should focus their attention, where they should invest their money and how they should be educating themselves.

In my opinion however, there is one question that come before all of those: “What am I passionate about?”

Passion ignites the burning fire that resides within all of us. This is the fire that's ultimately going to propel you to the levels of success that you always dreamed of.

Passion is going to provide you with the determination to move forward even when you're tired and want to give up.

Passion is going to provide you with the energy needed to wake up every morning and look forward to investing time into something that's going to pay you back immensely at some point.

Aside from all that, passion is extremely beneficial when trying to influence others.
Passion leads to captivation and captivation leads to engagement which positions you to influence others.

Most people want to be passionate about something so when they come across someone else that is passionate they are immediately drawn to them. They can see that you are driven by something, that you believe in something and within them comes a sense that you can provide them with some sort of help that is going to improve their lives.

Just because you’re passionate doesn't mean that people will like you but they will respect you for the fact that you can identify something in your life that you truly feel strong about and are determined to either attain or protect with immense conviction.

Past passion also allows you to transmit charisma which will enable you to tap into the hearts of others and get them emotionally vested in whatever it is that you believe in. Passionate people are constantly letting others know about their message and in turn, converting them to follow their cause.

True passion also allows you to diplomatically defend your point when someone disagrees with you by openly listening to their feedback, points of view and opinions and then making a counter argument without insulting them.

It has been said that enthusiasm is contagious but so is passion. You can transfer your energy to others by simply showing them how passionate you are about something and it will have a positive impact on their life as it pertains to the subject you are passionate about.

For example if you are trying to teach people how to sell more (and you are truly passionate about it), you will transfer that energy into the people whom you’re teaching; causing them to become more confident, more optimistic, more proactive and more willing to learn about becoming a master salesperson.

While passion is an important part to the influence process is not the only part. If you can combine education, practice and persistence on a particular subject with your passion about it, you will then begin to experience even higher levels of success.

Remember the question I asked you just a few minutes ago? “What are you passionate about?”

Most people either can't answer this question because they either don't know or they think they know but they're actually confusing passion with excitement or hype about something.

When you’re truly passionate about something, you can easily speak about it and it doesn't feel forced or fake.

If your target senses your passion is not real or that it’s forced, your persuasion efforts can actually backfire on you as people will view you as a phony. Being viewed as a phony destroys one of the most critical components needed to influence others which credibility.

Passion also never stops being developed or enhanced. Sometimes the only way to increase the level of passion is to step out of your comfort zone and do something different. Oftentimes this includes things you might not be so enthusiastic about doing but the more you expose yourself to, the greater your chances are of finding more reasons to be passionate about the things you love.

Here’s how I sum up the importance of passion in persuasion and influence. Passion leads to charisma which leads to emotional engagement. Once they are emotionally engaged, they are able to be lead in whatever direction you choose.

The Scarcity Trigger

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The scarcity trigger tells us that the less available something becomes, the more people want it.

Scarcity is the method used to create urgency so that someone will take action.  Ultimately, we can make the greatest presentation in the world as to why someone should comply with our request and they can logically and emotionally agree with everything that we have presented.  Still however, they need a reason to act now and the scarcity trigger is the most effective trigger that you can use to get someone to take action immediately.

It is human nature to always find something more appealing and interesting when the odds of getting your hands on it are less likely.  We see this in the dating world all the time. The challenge of courting someone who is not always available seems to be something that people find themselves to be obsessed with.

In most cases when a person shows all of their cards and becomes readily available, the spell becomes broken and there is no longer an element of surprise.  Whenever our choices become inhibited, limited or lessened we become more likely to desire those choices on a stronger level.

Scarcity can make any product seem more valuable and interesting.  It makes people take action immediately because they do not want to take a loss. Loss in general, is a feeling that most people try to avoid.

From as far back as childhood, the minute we are told we cannot have something, we simply want it more.  The reason for this is because the minute we feel there is a potential to lose something, we begin the thought process of how we can stop that from happening. This is called preventative action.  And the key word is action. Whatever our reasons may be for doing it, we begin to take action and that is ultimately what you want the other party to do when trying to influence them

In all my years of being in the Internet marketing business and writing sales copy, the scarcity trigger is one of the most important tools that I have used to get the customer to take action. And in today's world, the more successful Internet marketers have become successful because of their ability to apply the scarcity trigger in new and creative ways.

Things like limited supply, first hundred callers and countdown clocks on webpages are driving more and more people to click the order button. Now more than ever, there are numerous ways for you to use the scarcity trigger.  Here are some of my favorites:

Restrict Freedom - As I said before, we always want what we can't have and the minute we are told something will go longer be available, we seem to want it even more. That’s the moment when the desire and urgency to act immediately goes up.  The best way to implement this is to simply create a situation where whatever you have to offer is now going to be limited or will soon not be available any more.  In sales we call this the take away close.  If you remove your prospect’s ability to have what you have to offer, you will increase their desire to have it.

Limitations - The second method which you can use is limitations in the form of space, numbers, access or time.  The minute people feel like they are competing to get something, their desire to have it will increase. Always give people deadlines.  It is human nature for us to structure our actions around deadlines. Without them, people have no definitive time to know when they must take action and therefore can spend endless amounts of time procrastinating.

Loss Potential – Last but certainly not least is the potential to lose something.  People need to realize that if they do not act upon whatever it is that you have to offer, they may lose something. People are generally motivated by either pain or pleasure and truth be told, pain is actually the greater motivator of the two. Since loss equals pain, it is very important to focus on what someone risks losing if the do not act. Here’s an example.  If I told you that if you went to the gym every day for a month straight, I would give you $10,000, your decision to go would be based on how bad you need that $10,000 and you probably would do it.  But if I told you that if you did not do the gym for 30 days straight that I would automatically remove $10,000 from your bank account, you would probably be even more motivated to take action.

The reason for this is because in the first scenario, if you don't win the $10,000 - while that might not be fun - you have not lost anything so you are right where you started. In the second scenario, you are now in the negative and have lost something.

The Verbiage Trigger

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Sometimes it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.

Sometimes it is not what you're saying to someone, but the way that you're saying that will impact them and cause them to take action.  Your message can be perceived in various ways depending on your verbiage. Take the following statement for example:

I didn't say he hit his wife.

There are many different ways that we can actually make this statement depending on the emphasis on the words. Emphasis on certain words changes the way the person you are speaking perceives the information. Read the following statements out loud and each time, put emphasis on the word that is in bold.

I didn't say he hit his wife.

I didn't say he hit his wife.

I didn't say he hit his wife.

I didn't say he hit his wife

I didn't say he hit his wife.

I didn't say he hit his wife

I didn't say he hit his wife.

While each one of these statements has the same words, they all convey a different message. That is how the verbiage trigger works.  Words are extremely powerful and every time we use them, we can create mental visions which then instill feelings within someone. Words like disease sadness, depression, hatred bring feelings of negativity while words like happiness, joy, fulfillment and success instill good feelings within us. Your word choice in the influence process is extremely important; especially if you're speaking to an auditory person. An auditory person is a person that is more open to suggestion and processes information based on the way things sound.  Generally speaking there are three types of representational systems that people use to process information:

Auditory – Make decisions based upon the way something sounds.

Kinesthetic - Make decisions based upon the way something feels.

Visual - Make decisions based upon the way something looks.

Therefore, if you're speaking to an auditory person, the words that you are using are going to have very powerful effect on them so you must be extra conscious of words that may turn them off as well as the words that may actually prompt them to take action. As an example, working in the fitness industry for many years, you learn to use certain words versus other ones because they sound better to the customer.  When they join, we ask them to sign a piece of paper which says they agree to pay for the service but we never call that a contract; we call it a membership agreement. We don’t ask for a signature, we ask for an “okay”.  If they asked me if was getting paid a commission, I tell them that there is a fee for my service.  When I was trying to convey my point, I never told them that I'm trying to sell them something; rather I sad that I wanted to get them involved in what we have to offer.

Remember that the way that you verbally package something can also completely change the perception of something. For example, if I wanted to tell you that my Internet service is extremely fast and that no other brand is faster, I could say that no other brand works faster even if my brand doesn't fall into that category.

Storytelling - Story telling is one of the most effective ways to persuade someone.  People love to hear stories and when they do, the mind becomes organically engaged because we desire to know the outcome of the story.  One of the most important parts of the story are the mental images that vivid speaking produces. When you're speaking vividly, you're basically creating a picture for the person who you are speaking to which will then help them to use their imagination.  We do this by making them feel what we are speaking about in the story that we’re telling.  I do have a couple of rules that I generally like to follow when it comes to verbiage.

Rule # 1 Speak Simply And Clearly – Speak clearly and don’t use complex words that your audience may not know the meaning of.  It’s essential that your audience understands every word that rolls off your tongue. If they don’t, you risk losing their attention due to the fact they are too busy trying to understand what you are saying. When that happens, they are no longer engaged. If I was giving you directions to go find $1 million, but I was saying it in a language that you couldn’t understand, chances are you would never find the money because I would never have prompted you to take any sort of action. The same is true if you use words that people do not understand; they will not take action.  Secondly, you don't want to use words that are abstract or unclear.  One thing that you never want to do is confuse the person that you trying to gain compliance from because that will only lead to procrastination and ultimately not making a decision.  Always use language that is a verb driven meaning it includes action verbs.  This will engage your prospect’s emotions both on a conscious level and a subconscious level.

Rule #2 Keep Your Sentences Short And To The Point - You never want to overwhelm people with what you're saying because if you do, you will lose them and as I said before, once you've lost them, it’s pretty much pointless to continue your presentation.

Rule #3 Use Volume Accordingly - Always make sure that when you're speaking, the volume is the same as it would be if you were in a Starbucks talking about a potential business deal.  All parties come with the understanding that while it is a public place, the people there are having conversations and trying to get work done, so it's not the right time to raise your voice. If on the other hand, if you're an expert persuader who was the hired to be a motivational speaker and you're giving a speech in front of thousands of people, you don't want to keep your voice down. In this case, you want to project your voice and speak with lots of energy and enthusiasm. Point being is that there are times when you’ll need to raise your voice and times for you to lower your voice but you should always be conscious of that and know which is appropriate based on the environment.

Rule # 4 If Nothing Else, Master Articulation - The ability to properly articulate is priceless and extremely important when it comes to verbiage because it enables people to better understand what you're talking about.  Sometimes, you can make a statement, but people will not agree with it simply because they don't know enough about it. If you're able to articulate your point effectively, you will then enable them to understand it better and perhaps change their opinion of it.  People who can articulate their points well are also very much admired by others because it makes them appear intelligent and well versed.

Rule #5 Pay Attention To Your Pace - The pace at which you speak is also very important.  Pay very close attention to how fast or slow you are delivering your message.  You may be saying some of the most important things but if you're speaking too fast, your message may become lost or you may lose the listeners attention because they're trying to follow up on what you said last. By the same token, you don't want to speak extremely slowly, because you can bore someone and completely lose their attention as well.

Rule #6 Use Comparisons - One of the most effective parts of verbiage that I have ever used is comparisons.  Any time I'm able to take the situation and completely reformat it by comparing it to a similar situation only with different events or circumstances; I can engage the listener much more effectively. Sometimes people don’t agree with what you’re saying simply because the concept may not make sense to them. If you can compare it to something similar that does make sense to them, it will make them more receptive to what you’re saying.

Three Simple Steps To Gain Repeat Compliance

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The human brain is wired in such a way that a person comes with decisions instantaneously and then finds reasons to justify that decision. These reasons could be fact or fiction; it doesn’t matter.

If the person has to come up with a lot of reasons, they will regret the decision later. In fact, the 2 are directly related to one another meaning the more reasons they have to come up with, the more regrets they will l experience later.

And if they wind up openly discussing these reasons, then the regret is even worse.

That’s why it’s extremely important to remember that when you gain the decision to comply from someone, immediately shut up and move on to the next step. Never encourage your target to think about what a great decision they made because it will backfire on you.

If you begin asking them for reasons why they decided to comply, they’ll wind up backing out a few days later.

Once you gain compliance, the next step is to set yourself up to gain it again. So if you do business with someone, the key is to be able to do repeat business over and over again.

One way to ensure that is to limit the amount of choices of what you have to offer. Choices confuse people and give them reasons to procrastinate.  Instead, find the driving need (or at most the top 3 needs) and fill them for your customer.

Anything that does not fill an immediate need will just cloud their judgment and when they do finally decide, will cause them to be unhappy with the choice they made.

You must also be sure that you don’t present what you have to offer in a way that resembles anything that may have burned them in the past.

I came across this a lot when I was selling fitness. The truth of the matter is that most people who join a gym don’t stick with it. So unless it was their first time joining a club or they work out regularly and were choosing my location simply for convenience, the odds were that they joined a gym in the past and didn’t stick with it; hence wasting their money.

When performing my needs analysis to determine what brought them in, I would always find out if they did in fact join a club in the past only to not go. And if they did, I had to structure my presentation very tactfully as I know that past regret was still lingering in their mind; as it will be for some clients of yours.

Regret can also work in your favor if the regret stems from them not taking action the last time and wondering what could have been.

The key here is to discover how they feel about previous decisions as they relate to what you’re offering.

Do they regret acting or not acting?

Whatever you do, never make them feel stupid about past decisions. Let them know that any intelligent person probably would have done the same thing if the situation presented itself in a similar manner.

If you show even the slightest inkling that you think they made a foolish mistake they will not only NOT give you their business but they may go out of their way to give it to a competitor or co-worker just to avoid giving it to you.

Ten Quick Facts On Decisions

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1.)    People make impulsive decisions and then stand behind that impulse as if the decision was made logically with a lot of thought behind it.

2.)    When a person’s decision turns out to have good results, they are quick to take the credit. When the results are unfavorable, they tend to blame external sources like timing and luck.

3.)    People make decisions based on emotion and then use logic to justify those decisions.

4.)    People are unaware of the fact that the manner in which a question is framed plays a bigger role in how people respond to it than the content of the question itself.

5.)    When making decisions, people overemphasize the role of consequence or pain nearly 3 times as much what’s really at stake.

6.)    People tend to avoid perceived risk.

7.)    Most people are not equipped to really calculate the chances that an event will or will not take place.

8.)    People tend to make decisions independently rather than seeking the advice of someone else who can provide a different perspective.

9.)    Most people will take a sure thing (even when it doesn’t make sense) as opposed to taking the risk of gaining something with 50/50 odds.

10.) People are unaware of how they can become influenced by specific questions which unconsciously change their minds.

The Law Of Proof

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The Law of Proof states that people believe if something worked before, it will probably work again . While emotion is what will ultimately get someone to take action, it is perceived logic that will open up the possibility of them taking action in the first place.  One of the biggest ways that we exercise logic - or at least what we believe to be logic - is by taking a look at what other people have done and the results they’ve experienced.

This method of looking for proof does two things: First, it shows us that a certain method of doing things is effective and second, it makes us feel the method is widely accepted so it must correct.

Each and every one of us wants to fit in, wants to belong and wants to be part of a certain social group.  It is human nature to feel this way and that’s why often times, we want to see what the majority of people have done in certain situations. In most cases, we will assume that if enough people did something, it must be the logical or correct way of doing things. We make these judgments based on social norms and there are basically two types that exist:

Explicit Norms - These are ultimately written, documented and/or spoken rules that are either accepted publicly or within a certain group of people. Examples include an employee handbook at a place of employment, the policies and procedures of an organization or street signs.

Implicit Norms – These rules of the game are usually not as openly stated as explicit ones. Implicit norms include traditions or something being accepted as “the right thing to do” such as saying hello to someone when you meet them for the first time or not putting your elbows on the table when you eat. These are norms that have been put in place over the years by society that most people have a basic understanding that they should follow.  In cases where we don't know what the norm is, we will seek to find and this is where social validation gives us is the short-cut that we are looking for. Rather than investing the time, energy and hard work of researching a certain topic and figuring out whether or not we should act on it, we simply just look at what other people do.

People in advertising and marketing know the power of social validation works extremely well which is why they put things like “over 1 million copies sold” on the cover of books which sends a message to us that says since over 1 million people have bought this book, it must be worth buying and therefore we should probably buy it.

There are many different ways to put social validation to work.  When trying to be persuasive, if what you have to offer has been socially validated by the majority of people, most people will be interested in it. When it comes to social validation, there are a few rules that I always like to follow.

Rule # 1 - The bigger the group, the more likely your chances of being able to persuade someone using social validation becomes. The higher the number of people thinking, acting and behaving in a certain way, the greater the likelihood of more people following.

Rule # 2 - The second important factor is the level of identity involved. The more people can identify with what the majority group is doing, the more likely they are to get involved in it. If we hear that a large number of people have bought a certain book on particular topic, it will open us up more to the possibility of doing it because we see that so many other people have done it but it must be a topic that we can identify and relate to, otherwise we probably would not have any interest in it at all.

Rule #3 - The third and most important rule of social validation is that the principle has to be extremely clear.  So the factor that is that's making it so large among the public is the factor that you want to exploit. This could include the fact that it’s the s the best-selling, the most effective, the cheapest or the longest lasting.

The Law Of Expectations

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The Law of Expectations says that people generally act in way that other people expect them to.

As individuals, we can sometimes make decisions and behave based upon how others expect us to.  This is known as the impact of suggestion in general and it holds true for behaviors that are both positive and negative.  We tend to fill the expectations that people have about us.  We all want to be admired, liked and respected.

And in our minds, if we can fulfill people's expectations, we believe they will like us more.  This can work both positively and negatively. If you constantly expect a person to act in a bad way, chances are they will eventually take you up on your assumptions.

There are various ways to communicate your expectations. Ivan Pavlov was a famous hypnotist and physiologist as well as a Nobel Prize winner.  He was most noted for his ability to get dogs to salivate every time they heard a buzzer. Pavlov would ring the buzzer and then feed the dogs over and over again.

Eventually, every time the dogs would hear the buzzer, they would expect that they would soon be fed and therefore begin to salivate.  You can actually do the same thing during the influence process with your audience in various ways which include:

Assumptions – The expectations that we have are usually based on the assumptions that we have about people or groups of people.  I remember growing up as a kid; I was not your typical grade A student.  I was always finding myself in some sort of mischief and had created a reputation for myself for being a troublesome kid.  As time progressed in school, more and more teachers, parents and children began to know my reputation and I continued my behavior because I felt as though they were expecting me to behave this way. I basically created an identity as a trouble maker for myself when I was around this group of people. Reputations are a powerful thing and most people feel the need to live up to them; whether good or bad.

This is exactly how the Law of Expectations works in sales. We use this law all the time by assuming that the sale was already made. So if I was presenting a product or service to you and I was trying to get you to visualize using it, I would ask questions like “so when you purchase this car will you be driving it to work or for pleasure?” I have already assumed that the sale has been made.  I am expecting that the sale will be made and subconsciously layering those expectations into the prospects mind so that eventually they will comply with my expectations.  You can also do this by asking questions that assume the decision for compliance has already been made.

Embedded Commands - The Law of Expectations is something we often find in NLP through the use of embedded commands. When using embedded commands, you are communicating to the conscious mind but sending a message to the subconscious mind at the same time.  Basically what you're doing is bypassing the conscious mind to have direct communication with the subconscious mind. You could do this either in spoken language or written language.

Much research has shown that we can actually use embedded commands to completely reformat our beliefs or values without even realizing that it has even happened.  That's what makes embedded commands so effective.  We have no time to use our conscious mind to logically scrutinize the information. Our subconscious mind has already made the decision for us.

Pacing and Leading - Pacing and leading are also powerful NLP tactics that involve use of the Law of Expectations.

When you're pacing, you are establishing rapport and making the level of communication easier.  And when you're leading, you’re simply just leading your prospect closer toward your viewpoint. Using both of these techniques allows you to direct a person’s thoughts and actions so that they are congruent to what you want to ultimately gain their compliance. In the pacing process, you can connect with the other party either verbally or nonverbally to build rapport with them.

When you do this, they feel like they're aligned with you and ultimately they feel more comfortable being around you. In pacing, you simply use statements that are universally accepted.  When you do this, you remove any chance of disagreement or noncompliance, and generally others will agree with what you're saying.

Pacing involves speaking a lot about topics that have already been proven to be valid or are socially accepted.  Once there is a synergistic relationship between you and the other person, you can create the expectation of agreement between the two of you and they will be more likely to comply with your requests.