Psychology

Expert Strategies for Dealing with Customers, Part 1

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Customers are obviously the life of a business – but what happens when a business owner starts crumbling when he needs to convince a customer to see things his way?

Today’s discussion will focus on specific tactics that can be used in business/sales settings. Feel free to experiment with these techniques regardless of the mode of communication (e.g. phone conversation, live dialog, text messaging, etc.). The important thing here is that you are able to apply the techniques and learn something new about how to deal with customers on a daily basis.

The first lesson that I am going to share with you today is quite simple: people decide based on what their internal gauges are telling them. You have your own internal gauges.

Your customer has his own gauges. You might feel that you are already offering the best deal in the world but that doesn’t matter in the conversation at all because what you need is a sale.

Each person has his own way of measuring advantages, benefits and risks. While it is true that you can invest a lot of time trying to explain away the risks, the sale won’t happen if you are not paying attention to the customer’s feedback.

So if you think the customer does not appreciate the benefits, you have to ask a string of questions to draw out the hidden objections. Only then would you be able to supply the information needed to ‘change the readings’ of the customer’s internal gauges.

The 2nd lesson concerns the USP or your Unique Selling Proposition. What do you have to offer your customers that would make you stand out from all the rest? What can you bring the table that two hundred other competitors still haven’t brought to the table themselves?

Dig deep and figure out how you can make yourself unique and special and I can assure you – your customers will gradually change their perception of you and the business that you represent.

If you don’t change, I cannot even guarantee that they would try to change their perception of your business. And why would they? You haven’t change at all – why should they even change their mind if you are not offering something fresh and positive?

The 3rd lesson is all about choosing the right customers. We all know that a customer is only useful to a business if he actually does business with you and he openly shows that he values whatever you are offering. If a customer is happy to do business with you and is a repeat customer, he belongs to the “20” group or the upper 20% of the customers that your business has had the pleasure to have.

If a customer always complains and constantly becomes a burden to deal with, he probably belongs to the “80” group of 80% of the problematic people that every business has to contend with if they want to survive. Face it – not all customers are angels.

You are eventually going to meet a bunch of customers that are simply not worth your time. Don’t worry – these customers will have a use. Send them to your competition and let your competition handle these difficult people. Focus your energy and time on the “20” group. Your business would blossom if you do this.

Of course, if you can add more people from the “80” group to the “20” group, that will be favorable because the more paying customers you have, the better.

But sometimes, if a person is too resistant and is too much of a bother, he simply is not worth your time anymore. It’s a hard truth that we all have to deal with. Don’t be afraid to send a customer away especially if the customer becomes too aggressive or resistant to your best efforts.

Now, let’s talk about another problem that businesses have been dealing with since time immemorial: customers who feel that they are entitled to everything just because they are the customers.

Don’t get me wrong – I love customers. I love people who come to me for business opportunities. However, there are times when a customer seems to have prepared for a battle more than anything else when steps up and talks to the business owner.

This is when it gets problematic. What do you do when the customer is aggressive and doesn’t want to compromise with you? My tip for you is quite simple: be brutally honest with the customer. By “brutally honest” I don’t mean that you should be extremely aggressive.

Keep smiling as you talk but make sure that you share the details that you haven’t been sharing before. For example, if the customer is asking for a large discount that you can’t give, explain why you can’t give the discount. If the customer feels that he is entitled to a discount, he is also entitle to a full disclosure of why he can’t get one under certain circumstances.

Today’s final lesson centers on the idea of perception. Your perception of the world, as far as you are concerned, is the totality of reality. Your perception may be close to the perception of the customer but at the same time there will be marked differences because you are completely different people.

Often, it is more productive to adapt the viewpoint of the customer so you can understand why he is talking and behaving in a particular way. Once you get into the shoes of the customer, it would be much easier to explain details and offer relevant solutions. If you want to be relevant, you have to know the customer’s needs.

Again, don’t be afraid to ask questions. If the customer’s needs sound strange to you, have him explain his needs in terms that you can understand.

People appreciate it when a business owner or sales person asks questions instead of assuming what the customer needs. Often, assumptions are wrong because if you are addressing the needs of a single customer, his particular needs will be markedly different from the needs of the next customer.

Covert Persuasion Toolbox, Part 2

Covert Persuasion Toolbox, Part 2

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Covert persuasion works extremely well because the influencer would be closely focused on the subject and how the subject responds to different persuasion tactics. In a previous discussion, we focused on the following persuasive tools: questions, attitude, mental images and needs.

In today’s discussion, we are going to delve into more tools and tactics that will help you achieve persuasion or influence more quickly in almost any situation. Bear in mind that not every tactic will work so you still have to plan ahead.

The worst thing you can do as an influencer is to just pull out random strategies and language patterns in the hopes that you will be able to create a miracle out of thin air. Influence and persuasion does not work this way at all.

The more you don’t prepare for a conversation with another person or an important meeting with a large audience, the more likely you are going to fail.

Sure, you can master different tactics but having the tools alone will not guarantee your success. It’s like have a large shed full of brand new power tools. If you don’t know how to choose the right tool and if you don’t know how to use the tool properly, you might end up with a lopsided creation or you might even get hurt using the tool.

The same principle applies to persuasion. There are numerous tools that you can use but every tool has to be used at the right time and at the right place.

Below are two specialized tools of persuasion. Use these tools wisely and make sure that you use specific techniques in the right situations.

Tool # 1: Speed Matters

One of the most effective elements that you can add to any interaction is speed. The speed trigger can be used in almost any situation where the influencer requires a leeway in exchange for something valuable. For example, a salesman might say something like “I will shave $500 off the initial payment and have it delivered to you today. No more additional shipping fees”.

The speed element usually shocks the subject into complying with the request because it’s hard for the human mind to wrap itself around the idea of having something so quickly.

Speed is convenience and happiness rolled into one and all the mind can say is “yes, give it to me!”. This might sound incredibly sneaky (and it is) but it is not unethical at all.

Both the subject and influencer will benefit from the interaction and as the influencer, you are just expediting the transit of the benefit from your side to the subject’s side. The speed element is extremely effective because it can be ‘added on’ to any conversation. Let’s say you need someone to accompany you to the movies.

Instead of sending a message like “Will you go with me to the movies tonight?” you can instead send a more persuasive text message: “Will you watch “The Avengers” with me? I’ll pick you up in half an hour with my new ride”. See the big difference? The element of speed shocks the subject into action and really helps prevent any knee-jerk reactions like “I’m busy tonight”.

Tool # 2: Damage Control

Let’s say that a person that you have just completed a business deal has not come back to do business with you again. When you finally get a hold of the person, he doesn’t want to talk about what happened the last time that he did business with you.

Obviously, something went wrong – why wouldn’t he do business with you again? In situations like this, it is very important for you to perform proper damage control.

It is not enough to just apologize because that does nothing to address the actual cause of the problem. Begin damage control by asking general questions about his experience when he was doing business with you.

Move from general questions to specific questions further down the line. When the subject becomes more open to sharing his thoughts with you, just back down – don’t try to defend yourself or your decisions in the past.

You are at a point where your past decisions have already had an impact on another person’s life, so it would be pointless to explain every decision that led to that point.

The most helpful thing that you can do right now is to just listen. That’s right – sometimes the best solution is to just quiet down and listen intently at what the other person has to say.

People are very emotional especially when it comes successes or losses. A person who has just suffered from a loss will be very sensitive and very defensive and will simply walk away if he thinks that you are not going to be the one providing the solution to his new set of problems.

After listening closely to what the subject has to say (and after jotting down a few important notes), provide some reassurance that you value the subject’s business and you are willing to make things right. This reassurance is the first step to creating a new business relationship with the other person. Sure, not every person will be as forgiving, but it is worth a try.

Provide a solution that you think will solve the subject’s problem. After laying down your new solution, ask the subject if he wants the solution or if he has a better solution in mind. Once again, hear him out. If the solution he has proposed cannot be implemented because it will go against your principles, try to a middle ground.

There is always a middle ground – you just have to work hard to negotiate with the other person. The other person will yield to this middle ground because no one truly likes the idea of walking away with nothing and obviously, as the influencer, you are going to great lengths to offer something of value to the subject.

How Do People Make Decisions?

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It’s easy to say that we want other people to agree with everything that we want them to do, but in the final analysis, this single task would be extremely difficult to accomplish if we had no idea how people actually make decisions.

Few teachers of influence will actually bother themselves to discuss decision making patterns with other people for the simple reason that it forms the center of every influencer’s arsenal. Who would want to give away the sharpest knives in the drawer?

I would – because I want you to learn as many useful things so you can start practicing persuasion and influence as soon as possible. In today’s discussion we are going to delve into the various decision-making patterns that people use (one time or another).

Note that although people want to appear rational and logical all the time when they make decisions, this doesn’t happen all the time. Sometimes, decisions are driven by emotions; sometimes they are driven by so many other factors. Knowledge of these special decision triggers can help you create more compelling arguments and can also help you strategize better in the future.

Decision-making patterns & triggers

The “foot in the door” technique still works. When someone makes a small request, people are liable to say yes. The trick is to identify that small request that will get the other person to agree. When you get that first non-committal yes, you can follow up with another request, and so on. The secret is getting into the zone where you are making requests and the subject feels compelled to comply with your requests. Using questions can also be helpful here since people are also compelled to answer inconsequential questions.

Loyalty to a product or system forms when a person actually has the product. People tend to perceive what they have as better than what other people have. So if you want someone to buy something expensive from you, first give them something valuable that comes at no cost. When loyalty is established, it would be much easier to sell something to that person.

Frame your offer as if they already have what you are offering and they are already enjoying all of the benefits of having what you are offering. This works especially well when you are selling a service. For example, if you do people’s taxes for them you can tell a potential client that he might be going on a short vacation instead of doing his taxes and endless paperwork for his business. The subject has to be able to imagine that he already has what you are offering. He has to feel that he owns what you are offering.

When a person is refusing your offer, do not act overly aggressive. Instead, conjure a clear mental picture (with a little tension) and project that image to your subject. The image should be able to convey what would happen to the subject if he does not take up your offer. Remember – only moderate tension is required. Do not overdo it! Do not try to scare your subject witless because it might backfire on you.

People are able to make decision faster if you line up the information in such a way that every step leads to another logical step. You have to condition the subject to think in a certain way so that when you are ready to reveal your offer or what you want him to do, he will readily agree with what you want. If you do not condition the subject, he might refuse because there has been no prior conditioning to begin with.

Frame offers in such a way that the subject will think that he is getting great value. For example, saying “this product is $20” would have a different impact from a statement like “this product used to be $90 but now it’s being offered for a limited time for just $20”. Do you see the difference? Wording is everything so before you make an offer make sure that your offer has been worded the best way possible so that the subject would find your offer irresistible.

Appeal to a person’s sense of logical decision making; this will trigger positive emotions and the subject will think that you are an extremely sensible person for thinking that he has good decision making skills. Phrase your offer in such a way that when he does agree to your offer, he automatically becomes a “good decision maker”.

After making an offer, be sure to offer something of value to buffer the “pain reaction” to a decision. For example, people tend to feel buyer’s remorse because they feel that they should not have spent that much money on what you were offering. To avoid this, make sure that you offer something that will reduce the pain reaction. The pain reaction often blurs out everything else at the point where a person is ready to make a decision about something.

Use emotional triggers often – because people tend to make decision faster if they feel that they are making the right choice. After making the choice that has been based on emotion, they will later rationalize what they have done. Don’t worry – emotional decisions are often permanent and they make people happy. We are not only social creatures – we are largely emotional beings, too!

People are impulsive whether they agree to that or not. A person can try to control his impulsive nature but if you know how to use the right emotional triggers, the conscious control over man’s impulsive nature can be bypassed.

Influential statements are not examined by people. Feel free to use different hypnotic language patterns because very few people actually go out of their way to analyze each and every sentence they hear.

Eliminate the risk in every negotiation and interaction because people simply hate risk.

People often go for something that is 100% sure than what is only speculated.

The One Word That Could Persuade People (In Almost Any Situation)

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It is estimated that the English language has over one million familiar and frequently used words. We may not be using all of these words but when a child hits the age of four, he already has a fair mastery of the language itself.

Would you believe it if I told you that there is one word that could spell the difference between a successful interaction and a really bad one? Would you take the opportunity if I were to reveal that one word that could make people say yes even if they would experience inconvenience if they did say yes to you?

Do you like standing in line for something? I sure don’t – because often it’s a massive time waster and we are almost always running out of time when it comes to all of the stuff that we need to do.

The regular career person would never say that he enjoys standing in line for anything. People would always want stay ahead in a line so they could finish what they came there to do more quickly. With this in mind, what do you think would be that one thing that could make the person in front of a line give his spot to you?

Now, one of the things that we have to remember as influencers is that persuasion or influence are rarely complicated matters. You don’t need a PhD or a degree in rocket science to understand how persuasion or influence works. What you do need to learn are the subtle changes that you have to make during an interaction that would make your communication more effective. Genuine master influencers don’t talk like Martians.

We don’t use any magical jargon so that people would simply agree with us. What we do know are the specific triggers that encourage very specific responses in people. One of the most effective triggers (according to current studies) is the word because. Before you let out your collective “what?!” let me share with you the results of a study led by researcher Ellen Langer.

Ellen Langer wanted to find out if the word “because” would actually make any difference if someone wanted to get ahead in a line to a Xerox machine. The constant variable in this study was the fact that every that stood in line at the Xerox machine was in a hurry and that everyone wanted to finish quickly.

Langer wanted to know how people would react to a complete stranger who walked up to the head of the line so that he could get ahead of everybody else. Normally, people would say no to someone who was obviously cutting ahead of the line for his own sake. But was it possible to bypass the normal defensive response to such behavior by adding an extra word to a statement?

To test Langer’s hypothesis, the stranger that they requested to perform the live experiment for them was asked to approach different individuals who was at the head of the line to the Xerox with two different statements. The first statement was “Excuse me, I have to photocopy 5 pages here.

May I go ahead and use the copying machine?” while the second statement was “May I use the copying machine because I have to make several copies of this document?” Of course, the two different statements were used separately in different situations, with different people involved.

It is interesting to note that the reason stated by the complete stranger was a bit nonsensical because everyone who lining up to use the Xerox machine all had to make copies of documents that they were holding. The complete stranger who had to walk up to the head of the line was simply stating a common fact that he had to use the machine to make copies of his own documents.

If you look at the situation from a broader perspective, the move of the complete stranger did not make sense at all because what was the point of telling the person at the head of the line that he had to make copies, too? There was no special reasoning or excuses involved in the experiment.

One would think that in order for this technique to work, one had to think of a really good reason to cut ahead of everybody else. Reasons like “my boss will kill me in 5 minutes if I don’t get this to the meeting on time” would seem more appropriate.

Langer didn’t want to complicate things too much so the reason that was given was direct and very plain – the complete stranger just wanted to make copies, that was all.

The person who was ahead in the line could either comply with the stranger’s request or he could blatantly refuse – it was wholly up to the respondent. If the unwitting respondent said no, the stranger would probably just get in line like everybody else.

After the live experiment, Langer discovered that there was a 94% compliance rate when the stranger used the word “because” in his statement. Only 60% of the individuals who received the first test statement complied with the request. This shows that no matter how logical we may think people are, in reality, logical or rational can be bent or diverted by a single word.

This is the beauty of covert persuasion and influence; it doesn’t take much to get people to say yes to you. In fact, all you need most of the time is the right words and using these special triggers at the right moment. Timing is essential if you want to persuade people.

For example, Langer’s experiment probably would not have worked well if the stranger asked someone from the middle of the line to give up his spot. The request had to be given in such a way that was needed was already within reach and the subject had the choice to either give in to the request or not. A quick decision had to be made because there were other people standing in line.

How Can Similarities Covertly Influence People?

How Can Similarities Covertly Influence People?

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We live in a largely globalized, multi-cultural world. The United States (as well as many other large, industrialized nations) has become a veritable melting pot of different ethnicities.

Guys like Thomas Friedman have acknowledged that ‘the world is flat’ and that we now live by different rules under globalization. Despite these monumental changes in the way we live and work, social psychologists and social scientists have pointed to the fact at the very core of our beings, we remain the same. We are driven by the same impulses that made us one of the most dominant species on this planet.

We may be sporting iPhones now with 4G but at our very core we are still warriors preoccupied with survival. You would do well to remember this when you are dealing with different people – because no matter how educated and sophisticated people are, deep down they share the same instinctual drives with you and me. They are not as infallible and foolproof as they are thinking.

Need proof? Let me tell you a story. In the year 1993 the town of Quincy (located in Illinois) was devastated by floods.

Everyone was feeling very pessimistic and hopeless at that time because supplies were running out and it appeared that very little help was coming immediately. Then everyone suddenly brightened – because another town was contributing a torrent of provisions. The generous town was Quincy (located in Massachusetts).

The two towns had no historical ties but the other town chose to help this town instead of all the other towns that have been hit with the natural calamity. How can we explain this somewhat strange move by another town that had no real affinity with the town of Quincy in Illinois?

To understand why this happened, we must turn to social psychology. Social psychology has long pointed out that people were most likely to be supportive of other people that showed some similarities.

By similarities, I am referring specifically to traits and objects that are shared by both parties involved. Why are similarities so important to people? Several years ago, social scientists conducted a different study that focused on children’s reactions to pictorial depictions of people.

Essentially, what they did was they used a single image of a boy or girl and made different copies. Each copy sported a different skin color so in the end, you would have a collection of identical images with different ‘skin colors’.

When the researchers showed the images to the children (which are of different ethnicities), they were astounded by the fact that the children felt more affinity to the representations of people who look more like them. This study reflects a basic fact about humans – we gravitate toward individuals that are similar to us. It is a survival instinct.

We do this because instinctually we believe that our group would take care of us more readily than other groups. Some degree of aversion to differences is also rooted in our instinctual ‘makeup’. This aversion to difference applies to every aspect of our personal lives, professional lives and even in the plainest social interactions.

You can see this most plainly in bars, schools or even public libraries. People feel more at ease when they are with people they know. People feel more comfortable hanging out with individuals who have identified with a particular lifestyle or way of life. And people are more likely to be supportive of another person if he shows that he is ‘one of the group’.

A recent study headed by social researcher Randy Garner confirms this. In Garner’s study, the researcher sent out a large number of mails to completely random individuals. Garner did not know any of the respondents and the respondents had no idea that they were chosen for a study that aimed to discover the power of similarities in social interactions.

The researcher wanted the respondents to fill up a form and mail it back to him so that he could record the collected data. Sounded simple enough, right? Here’s the twist: Garner wanted to know how the random respondents would react to name differences and name similarities.

Garner split the respondents into two groups. One group of respondents received mails from people whose names had no spelling or phonetic similarities at all. Another group received mails from people who had a similar-looking or similar-sounding name. For example, a guy in the second group who was name Jake Smith may have received a mail from someone name Blake Fitch.

The researcher played around with many possibilities and permutations but one thing remained constant – the similarity in the names had to be obvious and the similarities had to be striking enough to get the attention of the subject.

The result of the study proved that Garner’s initial theory was correct – people who received mail from someone who had a similar-sounding name were more likely to fill up the form and mail it back to the researcher than people who received mail from someone whose name had no similarities at all with their own names.

This might look sketchy at first but you can really see how people can easily agree to do something for a complete stranger just because he had a similar-sounding name! The individuals who did mail back their responses to the researcher may have not thought much about their decisions but the statistics point at a constant tendency that cannot be ignored at all.

How can you use this to your advantage? Simple: when you are interacting with someone, be sure to point out genuine similarities between you and the other party. Do not invent similarities! It won’t have the same effect because invented similarities would have to be followed up with even more fictional details.

Find common ground and delve into those commonalities to establish rapport with the other person. Think small and big similarities – because any level of similarity will help you persuade and influence the other person. Trust me – this works!

A Shortcut to Persuasion: Storytelling, Part 2

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Effective storytelling can spell the difference between a captivating and persuasive dialog and a boring and energy-sapping interaction. As the influencer you are responsible not only for providing hard facts and argument; you are also obliged to be a good storyteller.

Good storytellers rarely fail because they can gain rapport with their subjects more quickly than influencers who rely solely on rational arguments. Good storytellers are much more successful because they can exert some degree of control over the subject’s emotions and imagination.

And as you may already know, it’s actually easier to persuade or influence someone if you have access to the person’s subconscious mind. The subconscious mind actually has some degree of control over the decision-making process.

When the imagination and emotions are fired up strategically, a person is able to say “yes” with little or no hesitation. Below are some more strategic guidelines to make your stories more effective when it comes to persuading and influencing others:

# 1 Create a story that breaks their current mental trances

People spend their days within the influence of mental trances. Each subject has a specific mental trance that you would have to break in order to get your message across. For example, your subject may be preoccupied with work-related problems or family problems.

A person’s trance acts like vale that prevents you from embedding subconscious commands. As a storyteller, one of your biggest goals is to shatter the subject’s current trance (whatever it may be) and transport the subject to another dimension where your words, ideas and internal representations are at the very center.

Spin a yarn so well-made that the subject would willingly get out of his current trance to pay attention to the experiences you are relating through your stories.

# 2 Scary stories can work for you

A lot of influence teachers warn against the use of scary stories. I believe that scary stories can help you persuade someone but you have to keep everything balanced. A scary story should elicit a desired response from the subject or audience but it shouldn’t frighten them so much that they want to make a run for it. A scary story should provide the right amount of details and you must not forget to integrate important points of your main argument to the story.

# 3 Share knowledge as if you were sharing water or food

As an influencer, your job is to create harmony or rapport between you and the subject. You must speak at the subject’s level but at the same time, you shouldn’t appear like you are lowering yourself or raising yourself above the subject. This principle applies to storytelling as well.

When you are sharing knowledge, the subject has to feel that you are sharing something really valuable and you are not telling him something because he needs to be educated.

The subject must feel that he is gaining a valuable resource when he chooses to listen to you. He must not feel stupid while listening to you so be careful of your terms and how you phrase facts and statistics.

Complex facts must be presented in simple terms. Avoid highfaluting jargon and industry-specific terms that your audience may not fully comprehend. Anything that cannot be understood within a second or two should be considered a stumbling block and must be avoided. Remember: the center of the interaction is your audience, not you. Don’t say something because it pleases you. Say something because it helps you influence or persuade the other person.

# 4 Be a humble storyteller

Showing that you are a humble person will naturally lower the subject’s mental defenses. Some people think that in order to be assertive, you need to be pushy and arrogant. You don’t have to go down this path at all because this approach can backfire on you easily.

If you project to your audience that you are arrogant and “high and mighty”, any rapport that you may have created in the beginning will dissolve. Your audience might feel defensive or agitated with the situation. Your audience’s attention will probably waver too.

# 5 Harness the power of visualization

A story can only be truly captivating if you can create exact internal representations in the subject’s imagination. Your words should also trigger the right emotions.

If you are able to trigger the right images and emotions in the subject, you can get him to agree with you almost automatically. For example, if you are offering a new system that streamlines stocking and inventory, you can share a story about how a medium sized enterprise was able to save thousands of dollars every month simply by using the system.

You can paint images or internal representations that focus on being able to relax because the system can literally run itself for you. After painting this picture for your subjects, you can then follow up with a simple question (which is actually a lead-in for the call to action): would you like to enjoy more days off every week because this system actually works for you on autopilot, 24 hours a day, seven days a week?

Any business owner would squeal “yes!” when you ask such a question because no one in their right mind would refuse a few days of rest.

# 6 Always include verifiable facts and statistics

Some people like hard facts while some don’t. To strike a balance between these two groups, I recommend ‘sprinkling’ verifiable facts throughout your story to make it more believable. Examples of verifiable facts are:

Names of people involved
Dates of events
Places where events took place
Time when an event took place
Past statistics research
Current statistics

As long as a detail was taken from somewhere that is credible, it can be used in a story. Avoid adding hearsay and speculations to your story. Such elements might make your story sound interesting but in the end they just make you look bad because they’re still fictional.

The Power Of Surprise

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Only a handful of people know how truly powerful personal communication is, even on the level of mere text messages. In our technology-imbued age, using devices to communicate with others is unavoidable. The circumstances that drive our personal realities often keep us far from some of our acquaintances (and even sometimes, our families).

While many would view this is as a hindrance, I personally view this situation as merely another opportunity to practice covert influence.

The challenge now is to pack as much power into one’s words so that the same influential effect would be achieved. In today’s discussion I am going to share with you two strategies that might come in handy when you need to persuade or influence someone – with just a text message. Doubtful? Welcome to the world of real covert influence.

The power of unexpected gifts

A recent study by a group of behavioral scientists (headed by David Strohmetz) revealed just how powerful unexpected gifts can be if given at the right time and to the right people. In the first trial (and other succeeding trials), the researchers asked the servers to abandon the idea of presenting mint baskets to restaurant patrons.

Instead, candies will be given away to the patrons directly right before they left the table. The goal was to increase the tips being given to the servers. In the first attempt, the servers gave one piece of candy to each restaurant patron.

A single candy (for each diner) yielded in a 3.3% increase in tips. In the second attempt, the servers gave away two candies instead of one. The tips increased from 3.3% to 14.1%. Sounds good, right? It gets better!

In the third attempt, servers were asked to give just one candy to each diner - but right before they leave, they would turn back and give each diner an additional candy for no reason at all. No words or niceties were needed and yet, the simple modification in the process of giving away the candies resulted in 23% more tips for the servers.

Amazing, isn’t it? The third approach really boosted the tips for the simple reason that the diners felt compelled to reciprocate the nice gesture of the servers. It’s still reciprocation, but it’s done in such a way that the reciprocation feels very natural and the ones reciprocating would feel happy that they have reciprocated what was done to them.

How can you apply this when you are texting someone? Easy – when you need to ask someone a favor or if you need something done, don’t start the interaction with the request or task. Instead, start by saying something that is completely unrelated to your request (make sure that it will benefit the other party) and let the other party enjoy your gift before you make a request.

Of course, you would need to back up your text messages with a real, unexpected gift (like a spa day for your wife or a new video game for your boyfriend). But you can relay your influential message through a simple text message and the effect would be nothing short of amazing. I’m not promising anything here since a lot of things can act as obstacles to any influential message, but I can assure you that unexpected gifts can ignite a sense of reciprocity so strong that the other party would offer to do a favor for you in no time.

However, I do have to warn you that this strategy works well if you don’t do it very often and you also have to limit the people that receive unexpected gifts from you so the technique doesn’t lose its power.

If you do it to everyone, word will eventually get out and people will stop responding favorably to your requests. So do this only if other techniques are no longer working. Because if you overuse this technique, chances are, it will soon backfire on you and you will lose your hold on your audience.

A note of warning about favors

Let’s admit it – we love favors. Favors are often lifesavers and in the long term, favors can often help us when we are out of options. When you are asking favors through text messages or even on the phone, be very careful as to how you frame your request. Recent studies show that the favor-doer and the favor-receiver often have very contrasting views regarding favors.

When Person A does Person B a favor, Person B often views the favor in high regard at first. Person A on the other hand, doesn’t view the act (the favor) in high regard (at first). What happens is as time passes, Person B’s view of the favor diminishes while Person A (the original favor-doer) begins to view his favor highly.

So in the end, Person A might ask Person B for a reciprocal favor and Person B might not look favorably at the request if it has been done a very long time ago. So if you are in the habit of seeking favors for past favors, I suggest that you don’t let months or years pass. If you need something from someone because that person owes you a favor, do it as soon as possible so you can increase the chances of receiving positive feedback from the other person.

Because if you wait too long, the other person might ignore your request because his view of the past favor has already been diminished by time. So when you need to ask for a favor through a text message, just send a quick and polite request – there’s no need to mention the past favor.

If your request is timely and has some connection to a past favor, the other party will understand and will probably comply with your request. If the other party declines for some reason, it is possible that the favor he owes has already ‘expired’ in his mind. I wouldn’t recommend pushing your case any further because that would only result in more negative feedback from the other party.

Using Personal Commitment and Self-Image to Encourage Compliance

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Covert influence works extremely well in many situations because it doesn’t force anything on the other party. This type of influence often leads people to personal conclusions that benefit both parties at once.

Unlike more blatant persuasive tactics, people rarely feel pressured to do something for the influencer because the other party doesn’t realize that he is being persuaded or influenced already. This is one of the reasons why I advocate ethic application of covert influence techniques because every human transaction should always benefit both parties (as much as possible, that is).

Personal commitment = influence

A study spearheaded by Freedman and Fraser shows us exactly how personal commitment can help an influencer accomplish his goals in a short period of time. In this unique study, the researchers sought to find out just what it is that encourages compliance in the least amount of time even if the influencer has no deeply rooted bonds with the other party.

In the study, the researchers headed to a wealthy neighborhood to discover exactly what it is that makes people say “yes!” to a request from someone who is a complete stranger. In the first round of testing, they asked members of the wealthy community if they would be interested in volunteering their frontage for a six foot sign that said “Drive Carefully”.

Of course, all the work needed to put up the gigantic sign would be handled by the Road Traffic Safety Committee. In their first attempt, as surprising 17% of all the respondents said yes to the request. The researchers were close to the answer they were looking for, so they dug deeper. This time, they change their tactics a little.

In the next round of attempts, they asked respondents if they would like to support the traffic safety campaign by hosting a small sign that said “Be a Safe Driver”. Because the sign that was being offered was tiny compared to the six foot sign before, almost all of the respondents said yes. But that’s not the end of the experiment – yet.

Two weeks later, another set of people were assigned to knock on the doors of those who have said yes to the small “Be a Safe Driver” sign and the respondents were asked again if they would like to help out by hosting a much larger sign. A staggering 76% of the respondents said yes to the request – a massive contrast to the 17% in the first attempt.

I know what you’re thinking – yes, there is something in the second approach that radically changed the situation. And this is the secret ingredient: personal commitment. The respondents in the second attempt were able to personally commit to the campaign and therefore, they felt that it was their responsibility to follow through with their personal commitments.

It was that simple. There was no force or coercion of any sort – people committed to the campaign even if the “shoe on the door” tactic was used in a small way. They could have said no, but something more important came to the fore – commitment and responsibility. You can sue the same strategy when you want to influence someone through a simple text message.

Before asking for a big favor (that would likely be met with a bigger NO), I want you to focus on having that person commit to something really small. Give the person time to develop the personal commitment within himself before asking for a bigger favor.

The other party needs a little time to add that new personal commitment to his image of himself before he/she can agree to bigger requests. Text messages that bolster the other party’s feeling of personal commitment to what you want to do (eventually) will also help you influence the other party when you need to request for something significant.

Remember: commitment almost always results in full compliance. If there is no commitment, there won’t be any pressing motivation to do something for someone else. But if there is personal commitment involved, the other party will see to it that he is able to follow through with his commitment.

Labeling, self-image and quick action

A person’s self-image is something that you can really tap into when you need to influence someone. You can do this by suggesting a particular self-image (a positive one, of course) that would later become a self-fulfilling prophecy for the other party. The effectiveness of this approach is illustrated clearly in a study headed by Tybout and Yalch. This particular study focused on voters right before Election Day.

The researchers told 50% of the respondents that (based on their answers to the questionnaires) they are above-average individuals with a high likelihood of participating in events in like elections. The other 50% of the respondents were told that they were average when it came to matters related to those mentioned earlier.

Sure enough, the respondents who were told they were above average when it came to participating in events like voting were 15% more likely to fulfill the categorization given to them by the researchers. How can you apply this technique when you want to influence someone through a simple text message?

Easy: create a positive self-image and tie this with what you need at the moment. For instance, if you really need a friend to finish a favor for you but he is having a hard time, simply tell him that he has worked exceptionally well in similar situations in the past and he possess specific traits that make him more than capable of handling the present task.

This is just one example of how you can tap into a person’s self-image to influence him covertly. This technique works well also because you are raising the other person’s status and that deepens trust even more. If the other party feels that you are raising his status, he would be more than willing to comply with what you need to reciprocate your own positive words and actions.

Dealing With Dissonance

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The mind’s ability to detect dissonance or incongruence may be our best tool when dealing with people of all sorts. When we communicate with other people, we always want to watch out for our own interests and the easiest way to do that is to avoid trickery or lies.

Of course, no one would tell you outright that he is lying or he is trying to deceive you in any way. No one would do that for you – and no one has to do that for you because you have your critical faculty and the reptilian complex at your disposal.

The human mind can detect dissonance at various conscious (and unconscious) levels. For example, let’s say that you have just learned that there is going to be a massive lay-off in your company because of management restructuring.

Around the same time that you have learned of this development, you were invited to a company party where all the employees are going to be drinking and enjoying themselves for a few hours. From the moment that you received the invitation to the company event you felt that something was really amiss.

Conflicting thoughts and emotions swirl in your mind and you may even feel suspicious about the invitation (even if the company party has been planned months before the news that there was going to be a massive lay-off in the company).

When you attend the company party, you see happy faces and people that you know. You smile and enjoy yourself like everybody else, but at the back of your mind, you are not fully convinced of the authenticity or genuineness of party.

What was the management up to? Why were the bosses throwing a party even if there was going to be a massive lay-off? At one point in the party, the dissonance starts to dissolve just a little bit.

You want to feel hopeful and some of the joy of the party starts rubbing off on you and you think once or twice that maybe the news wasn’t true and maybe something good was heading your way in the company. You feel hopeful, but there is dissonance.

Despite the dissonance, you feel hopeful… But why? The key element in this type of situation is manipulation. There is manipulation involved and when there is manipulation, there is always a desired feedback and outcome.

When the company throws a party it is trying to send a persuasive message to the people involved in the party. This message is hopefully understood and accepted by people, despite apprehensions and anxieties.

This is how non-verbal messages can be used to turn the tables even in the face of hard facts. And in the grand scheme of things, the ones who can use non-verbal persuasion to their advantage each and every time are the ones who emerge victorious, always.

When people rationalize, they are legitimizing their own point of view of something and they are resisting change

Now let’s move on to something equally important – something you have to learn carefully if you want to be really persuasive whenever you want to speak to someone face to face: people tend to process logical and illogical in such a way that everything would eventually align with their own biases and beliefs.

What does this mean? Well, people are prone to creating excuses to benefit themselves. Excuses aren’t ‘just’ excuses. Excuses are actually the end-products of people’s rationalizations about specific situations and outcomes. Why do people make excuses?

Usually, people resort to excuses because they don’t want to adapt another behavior or they don’t want to change an existing behavior. It is always easier to rationalize something as opposed to changing an existing behavior.

When a person rationalizes, he creates a space for the old behavior. When a person makes an excuse for something, he is really saying that he wants to maintain the old behavior because it simply works for him.

A person in effect legitimizes something and shows his resistance to change. Why is this so important to our study of human communication? Well, if we would go back to the communication cycle itself, we would see that a persuasive message essentially wants to achieve just one thing – change.

That’s it – we want someone to change for us because we want a particular outcome to emerge from the conversation or exchange. Persuasion and influence would be impossible if the other person was completely resistant to change.

Right now, I’m telling you that people are essentially resistant to change itself and a person would actually exert a lot of effort just to counter change itself.

Even the threat of change is usually countered with full force because humans have learned over time that in order to survive, a status quo has to be preserved. Preservation entails order and stability. Change is viewed as the antithesis of stability and order.

When something is changing and when this change is constant and continuous, the present order is disturbed and stability is removed from the equation. Thousands of years ago, instability usually meant migration from one place to another.

Change also meant that there might not be enough resources in a particular area to sustain family units that are living there. And so over time, humans have associated change with the tragedy or disaster. This kind of thinking has become part of the instinctual mindset of mankind.

So whenever a person is confronted with the possibility of change, he reacts negatively to that possibility not because he is being a pain but because people were designed to think in such a way.

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So if we were to combine all this knowledge now, what are the implications of change or loss of stability when we try to persuade someone? How must a person communicate if he wants to introduce change even if people were designed to resist change in the first place?

In order to answer these questions, we have to simulate a situation where a person was trying to introduce a particular change but was unable to do so because of the distortion of his message.

Here’s the hypothetical situation: let’s say that Person B was trying to convince a whole room of people that they should invest their money into Company B because this company has been experiencing a lot of success in the past year and all economic markers point to the positive.

Unfortunately, Person B was trying to say “Company B is doing excellent!” but his body language was actually saying “Company B is secretly already in ruins, stay away!”.

People were naturally keen to discover the truth and the dissonance between what he was saying verbally and what he was stating non-verbally was enough to convince people not to listen to him. Person B completely lost his audience because he was unable to convince the room that Company B was indeed worth their time and effort.

Now let us examine what just happened in the hypothetical situation. Why didn’t the people in the room just believe Person B even if he was saying outright that Company B was doing extremely well? Why weren’t the people swayed by all the statistics and pie charts presented by Person B? The problem boils down to dissonance.

Person B wanted people to believe in him and he wanted to introduce change (i.e. investing in Company B instead of other companies). Since there is a natural resistance to change, people needed to see and hear that everything was indeed true.

As much as people wanted to see facts and figures, the audience also wanted to see confidence, conviction and genuineness in the speaker, because he was the only ‘live marker’ in the room. He was the fountain of information and people expected more of him.

People weren’t expecting more statistics and such, the audience wanted to see congruence in what his body language and what his verbal language was transmitting. Any incongruence between the two channels of communication will easily convince people that the speaker is not telling the whole truth.

People would become even more resistant to the message of change because their internal alarm systems have gone off because of the dissonance between the verbal language and the non-verbal language being used by the speaker.

When you think about it, so much is really at stake when we communicate to people. We can’t expect people to convince themselves to change.

Speakers need to convince people, period. Speakers need to deliver both content and non-verbal cues that will prevent people from being resistant to what is being said in the first place.

Influencing The Leader

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Influencing the leader will be the most challenging of all decision makers.  In reality, you can't even influence them.  You can only influence them to influence themselves.  The only two things that you can use to do so are time and fear.  You need time, because leaders work at their own pace and will not be rushed by anyone.  And you need to reduce their fear as much as possible in order for them to take action.  Here are the key steps to doing so.

Never try to force a leader into doing something.  You could be giving a leader the best advice possible, but if they feel for a moment that you have a hidden agenda, they will become combative and defensive.  They will relentlessly begin questioning you.  When this happens it's best to gain your composure and stay patient.  Never become defensive or take things personally.  You have to see leaders for what they are- people primarily driven by fear.  This fear can sometimes transform into the complete terror of making a bad decision.

The key to dealing with a leader is to not let your emotions take hold of you.  Remain calm and reassure them.  If you can effectively silence their fears, you'll gain compliance from them.  The challenge is that in their mind the fears don't exist.  A leader will never want to admit to anyone else or to themselves that they are afraid of anything.  So they will often put off making a fearful decision by asking for additional information, when in reality, they might not even look at the information that they asked for.  If you sense that a leader is simply procrastinating when he or she is asking you for additional information, it's important to provide the information anyway.  Every time you respond to one of their requests, you actually reduce their fear slightly without actually calling them out on it.

During your presentation with a leader, be prepared for long intervals of silence as they often become very self-absorbed.  In meetings the key to influencing a leader is having a presentation that is linear and very well structured.  While they enjoy details, they only take them seriously if they feel they are being presented from someone who is an expert at what they do.  When you present data, it must be combined with discipline, authority, strength, power and command.  They admire and are open to approaches that are very straightforward and exude confidence.

In the end, the leader’s decision to comply will come from within.  Therefore, as I said earlier, you can't really influence them per se.  You can influence them to influence themselves.  The key to it is to always let them feel as though they are in control.  Their decisions must come from their thoughts and opinions rather than yours.  Think of it this way- when dealing with a leader, your job is not to sell.  Instead, it's to give them the opportunity to make a purchase.  Your best course of action is to give them everything they need to make a decision and supply them with what they asked for.  Then you can sit back while they influence themselves to take action.  This allows the leader take ownership over the idea, which is what they want more than anything else.

Some years ago, I had a business partner who was a leader who was obsessed with control.  I needed a certain amount of help from him, and I knew that if I got this help it would improve my financial situation drastically.  The problem is that I also knew that he wouldn't be willing to give it to me, because in his mind, the financial gain that I would receive would be something that he feared.  You see a leader always likes to feel like he or she is in a better position than those surrounding him or her.  Therefore, the thought of him giving me something that would possibly make me more money than him was something that he wasn't comfortable with.  Rather than asking him for what I needed, I asked him how he thought I could make more money with my business.  In his mind, I was calling on him for his expertise and good judgment.  He willingly complied, and gave me what I needed as a result.  My income doubled that year.

Because leaders often take an extremely long time to make decisions, a good tactic is to give them a deadline that is controlled by an external factor rather than you, This is where you create urgency to circumstances beyond your control so that you are not perceived as the bad guy.

For example, when I was selling gym memberships, the object of the game was always to get the person to join on that day.  Initially, we have something called the first.  This is an incentive, which meant that you would save money if you joined on your first visit to the club.  Oftentimes people would say, “Well, what if I come back tomorrow.  You won't give me the discount?”  This makes you appear as someone that doesn't want to do business with them.  So I began to change my presentation and say that the sale ended on that day, or that there were only a limited amount of memberships left.  This creates the same urgency and gives the same deadline; only it doesn't position me as the person who's in control of that deadline.  Therefore, I can’t make any adjustments to it.  They must act that day if they want the best deal possible.

You must also know your bottom line when dealing with a leader, as they will often try to push the limits as far as they can get them.   Never rush the leader, as you will only make them defensive and resistant to being influenced.