5 Ways to be More Persuasive

Give, but not too much.

Noah Goldstein, Steve Martin, and Robert Cialdini are the authors of the New York Times bestselling Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive. I recently met Steve on a trip to London where he runs Influence at Work, and he shared these top five ways to increase your influence and persuasion.

1. Be the first to give.

Studies Show that we are persuaded more by people who have done something for us first. We give bigger tips to servers who give us a mint with the check. We’re more likely to help work colleagues with their projects if they have helped us with ours. Requests that are personalized are most persuasive of all. When researchers randomly sent out surveys, they were able to double responses if they personalized the request by placing a handwritten note on the survey.

1. Don’t offer too many choices.

Whether it’s the number of products you offer of the number of retirement plans you allow your employees to choose from, too many choices often frustrate people. Companies offering a small number of retirement plans have far greater enrollment than companies that offer a large number of plans.

1. Argue against self-interest.

Trust is a critical component to persuasion. The surest way to be perceived as honest is to admit to a small weakness in your argument, product, or business immediately prior to communicating the strongest positive argument about your product or service.

1. Losses are more persuasive against gains.

Instead of telling your audience what they stand to gain from taking your advice buying your product, research shows that people are often more persuaded if you tell them what they stand to lose out on if they don’t take your advice or buy your product.

In 2003, the Oldsmobile far exceeded its sales projections despite the company reducing its advertising and product development budgets. Why? General Motors decided to discontinue the car because of slow sales. As a result, the car became something people would be losing out on even though before the news, few people wanted one.

1. Make people feel as is they’ve already made progress toward a goal.

A car wash offering a loyalty card nearly doubled customer retention by changing their offer from “Buy eight washes, get one free” to “Buy ten washes, get one free – and we’ll start you off crediting you for two washes.”

Some people have the ability to capture an audience’s attention, convince the undecided, and convert non-customers into customer. Some do not, but there’s good news from social science. Persuasion is not just a skill gifted to a chosen few. It’s a science, and researchers who study it have formulated a series of rules for moving people in your direction.

Learning about these rules can make you a more effective and ethical influencer.

How persuasive are you? You can find out by taking the free five-minute interactive test at www.myyesscore.com.

Guy Kawasaki, HVACR Business, August 2011

The One Million Guesses Quiz, Part 2

We’re back…with a few more quiz questions that we’re pretty sure you won’t be able to answer in a million guesses.

• Story: In March 2009, Julia Grovenburg of Forth Smith, Arkansas, got pregnant. Two and a half weeks later, she got what?

One Million Guesses Later: Pregnant again with a second child. Normally, hormones released after contraception and throughout pregnancy stop the release of eggs from the ovaries, preventing a woman from becoming pregnant while she’s already pregnant. However, in what doctors say is extremely rare phenomenon known as superfetation – of which there are only 10 known cases in history – Grovenburg actually conceived a second baby more than two weeks after becoming pregnant the first time. The discovery was made in June, when doctors performing an ultrasound found two fetuses in different stages of development in her womb. (No word yet on the outcome of pregnancy.)

• Story: In August 2009, a British dwarf performing at the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland had to stop his show mid-act and go to the hospital. What happened?

One Million Guesses Later: His penis became glued to a vacuum cleaner. The festival is known for its odd performances, and Daniel Blackner, also known as “Captain Dan the Demon Dwarf,” has a particularly odd act that he performs with a vacuum cleaner and a… special attachment. But this time the attachment had broken before the show, and he’d use extra-strong glue to fix it. It hadn’t dried by the time he did his act….and it took a trip to the hospital to get the device removed. “It was the most embarrassing moment in my life,” Captain Dan said later.

• Story: Scientists at the Primate Research Center at Japan’s Kyoto University reported in 2009 that while they were studying macaque monkeys at a shrine in Thailand, they’d seen several females teaching their babies to do what?

One Million Guesses Later: Floss their teeth with human hair. For years, monkeys at the shrine have been known to pull out the hair of visitors, sit down with it, and spend several minutes running a strand of hair through the gaps in their teeth. That’s surprising enough, but the Kyoto researchers followed the activities of seven adult females, all with on-year-old babies, and found that a young monkey would sometimes sit in front of its mother and watch her intently as she flossed. While the abby was watching, the mother would exaggerate her flossing motions, opening her mouth very wide, cleaning the same spot several times with obvious motions, all while looking at the young monkey. They were, the researchers said, teaching the kids how to floss. “These findings suggest” said lead primatologist Nobuo Masataka, “that education is a very ancient trait in the primate lineage.”

• Story: Firefighters in St. Petersburg, Florida, received a call in 2009 that a man was bleeding from his face not far from the fire station. Two firemen jumped into their rescue vehicle, hit the lights and sirens, and when the garage door opened, they did what?

One Million Guesses Later: They ran over the guy they were rushing to help. Ted Allen Lenox, a 41-year-old homeless man, was lying on the ground directly in front of the bay doors, police said, and the firefighters couldn’t see him over the hood of their 10-ton rescue vehicle. They stopped when they felt a “bump,” then got out and treated Lenox on the scene and later drove him to the hospital. Lenox, who’d been drinking, eventually recovered from his injuries. One of the firefighters told reporters, “We should have just walked out the door and looked.”