Posts

Storytelling 101: Five Ways to Persuade (Part I)

Storytelling is one of the oldest, most effective forms of human communication. Long before Twitter, Facebook and even the printing press, humans informed and instructed others via stories for thousands of years.

Why has storytelling as a communication art form stood the test of time? Because it’s compelling. Just try listening to only half of Jim Croce’s “You Don’t Mess Around With Jim,” Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” or Harry Chapin’s “Cat’s in the Cradle.” It’s almost impossible. Even if you’ve heard those songs before, you still want to know how the story ends.

Stories also can be instrumental in helping you convince others — a colleague, a potential customer, maybe even a complete stranger in an elevator. I call them “situational persuasion success stories.” These are pre-created retellings of how you previously helped improve someone’s condition in given situations. This elevated skill-set can yield tremendous results in your persuasion efforts and will accomplish five things. You will:

1. Create a nonthreatening way to share information.

In many persuasion situations, your target can be on hyper-alert, wanting to avoid feeling uninformed or ambushed. And if the conversation is focused on him or her, personal defenses are often heightened. But if you attempt to make your point with a story that does not involve the individual to whom you are speaking, it’s much easier for that person to relax and focus on the discussion.

2. Allow your targets to insert themselves into the role of your situational success story’s main character.

The best situational persuasion success stories are ones in which the main character is someone other than you or the other person. Inserting yourself into the lead role could send the wrong message — suggesting that you are self-centered and your story is contrived. So don’t be the hero in every story; make the main character someone else, such as a friend or colleague.

3. Make the discussion an effective one.

Everyone enjoys a good story now and then, and situational persuasion success stories contain three subtle yet distinct objectives: to inform, to educate and to persuade. When you inform someone, you make that person aware; when you educate, you bring about understanding; and when you persuade, you enable the other person to embrace a particular point of view. Yours.

4. Provide a “social proof” component.

As one of my professional heroes, Robert Cialdini, Regents’ Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University, claims, “We follow the lead of similar others.” When we hear that “all the kids are doing it,” that has a profound impact on us. Using situational persuasion success stories leverages this idea of social proof, or informational social influence, and makes what you’re talking about even more convincing.

5. Break through the surrounding informational noise.

In his book, Data Smog: Surviving the Information Glut, author David Shenk states that the average American in 1971 encountered 560 daily advertising messages. By 1997 (the year Data Smog was published), that number had swelled to more than 3,000 per day. And the Newspaper Association of America proclaims that now the average American is exposed to more than 3,000 advertising messages before breakfast. There’s a lot of noise out there; to cut through it and convince someone to listen to you, you must have a compelling story to tell.

Sharing stories is a critical component of the Persuasion Equation, which is why next time, I’ll share elements and examples of compelling situational persuasion success stories.

Do You Know the Difference Between ‘Persuasion’ vs. ‘Influence’?

Last year, I wrote a book about persuasion, in which I stressed that we all use principles of persuasion daily in our personal and professional lives. But what, exactly, does “persuasion” mean?

It’s a question I bet most of you haven’t spent a lot of time asking yourselves. “Persuasion” is ethically winning the heart and mind of your target. Whether you want someone to buy your product, agree to your new idea or take you up on your offer — if you are seeking a “yes,” you are engaged in persuasion.

“Influence,” on the other hand, can be defined as the capacity to become a compelling force that produces effects on the opinions, actions and behavior of others. Think of influence as your professional and personal credibility, your organizational political capital, your corporate “sway.” If persuasion is an action, influence is a state or condition.

Persuasion is not psychological manipulation, nor does it involve using bribes or trickery to get what you want. You should always be operating with the best interests of your target in mind.

Could you use persuasive tactics in a manipulative and self-serving manner? Sure. Will you reach agreement? Absolutely.

But only once.

After that, your persuasive powers are dead. Manipulation does not help build long and lucrative careers.

(Photo by Gratisography)

What Are You Drinking? How Senses Affect Persuasion

 

Did you know that the type of beverage you drink, the surface of the chair on which you sit and the color of your clothing all play a role in getting to “yes” (or “no”) faster?

Thalma Lobel, a Ph.D. and director of the child development center at Tel Aviv University, claims that decisions, judgments and values are derived as much from outside factors as they are from our brains.

In her 2014 book, Sensation: The New Science of Physical Intelligence, Lobel provides scientific evidence of how targets respond to common situations that, on the surface, appear insignificant. Here are some of her key observations:

  • People drinking warm beverages such as coffee or tea are judged by their targets to be more generous, caring and good-natured than those enjoying cold beverages such as soda or iced coffee. The concept of “warm” and “cold” extends beyond the drink and transfers to the individual drinking it. While what you say is important, so is what you drink.
  • That “warm/cold” mentality is at play in other facets of our lives, too. Take the chair you opt to sit in while making your pitch. Studies suggest harder chairs make people tougher negotiators, while softer chairs reduce their aggressiveness. Hmmm. Maybe you should add a soft and comfy chair to your office for guests…
  • Researchers found that men consider women who wear a red blouse (opposed to a blue, green or gray blouse) consistently sexier and more attractive. That kind of social proof can easily transfer to persuasion situations. Red represents strength, power and energy, regardless of gender. Wear it when you need to hear “yes.”

 

Building Epic Credibility: Be as Honest as Abe and as Brilliant as Einstein

Why is credibility so important in today’s workplace? Well, consider what having credibility enables you to do:

  • Persuade people more easily
  • Influence more people
  • Reduce conflict
  • Complete projects successfully
  • Improve your team’s reputation

Easy to lose and tough to build, credibility ranks as one of the primary characteristics of a successful project manager and leader. A basic determination of credibility can be found in the way you honestly answer this question:

Do people believe what you say?

Here is a systematic approach to determining your own professional credibility:

1. If you and your abilities are unknown, and you therefore have low credibility, spend time building relationships.

That’s what nearly every startup company has done. Find a niche and develop a smart customer base. New employees in new industries must do the same thing. Discover what customers value, their personality traits and how they process information. Cater your strategies, conversations and behavior to them, and back up your insights and recommendations with third-party data such as articles, books and outside experts.

2. Despite being well known among your customers, perhaps a recent incident has resulted in your low credibility.

Rebuild the relationship. Start small and make that phone call. Demonstrate your abilities, keep your promises and communicate. Communication is at the core of leadership credibility. One of the highest-profile examples of this happened five years ago, when the on-demand streaming and DVD-by-mail service Netflix relaunched the DVD side of the business as Qwikster. This news came after customers overwhelmingly criticized a recent price increase. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings took to Netflix’s blog. “I messed up,” he wrote. “I owe everyone an explanation.” Less than a month later, he blogged again, announcing the quick end of Qwikster. Today, Netflix has more than 81 million members in over 190 countries enjoying 125 million hours of TV shows and movies every day.

3. You and your abilities might be unknown, but you still pack high credibility — either because of significant word of mouth or your connection to a popular brand.

If Best Buy were to name a new CEO, for example, that individual might (or might not) have name recognition, but he or she would still need prove himself or herself in the new position — despite being affiliated with one of the highest-profile retailers in the country. In your case, you may have built a reputation of being knowledgeable and dependable even by customers who don’t know you! While this is unquestionably a desirable situation, don’t consider it a free pass to great customer relationships.

4. If customers know you and your abilities, and you therefore have high credibility, congratulations.

This is what everyone should strive to attain, because it means that a customer or coworker has dealt with you before and realized positive results. It means that people trust your input and your performance so much that they ask for and heed your advice wholeheartedly. Steve Jobs had that kind of pull. He created a demographic of computer consumers that wait in line for an entire day to purchase a product they have never touched or even seen up close, simply because it has the Apple logo on it. But beware: Customer and colleague relationships are precious and should never be taken advantage of by abusing credibility to sell unnecessary, unwanted or low-quality items. Remember Apple’s short-lived MobileMe subscription service? That was a disaster, and Jobs had the credibility behind him to admit it.

How Telling Stories Can Help Convince Customers

I love to tell stories. Why? Because stories are the key to persuading others.

In a selling environment, I call them “situational sales success stories.” Or S3 stories, for short. These are pre-created retellings of how you helped buyers or colleagues improve their condition in given situations. Here’s an example:

“What you’re saying is exactly what Steve Buyer said, not more than two months ago.
[Grab your listener right away with a relatable opener.]

“His company was struggling, its stock value had sunk, key managers ditched the organization, and all rational indicators told him not to make any big decisions. Then, his firm experienced a product recall. That’s when Steve and his colleagues decided to invest in their business, instead of cutting back.
[Include at least one element of surprise.]

“We put together a performance initiative designed to keep revenue flat but increase margins. Morale improved, the company attracted some talented new people, and now, although not completely back to business as usual, it’s well on its way — all because Steve and his team turned left when his competitors would have turned right.”
[Use a repeatable phrase for emphasis.]

The following are five must-have situational sales success stories to keep in your arsenal at all times, regardless of what you sell or who you’re trying to persuade. I’ll provide the bones; you flesh them out:

  1. A buyer who never used your company’s products or services is now one of your biggest fans.
  2. A client who faithfully used the “other brand” until you showed him the light.
  3. A customer who was loyal to only one method until you showed him another option.
  4. A buyer who couldn’t afford your best offer, but you helped his company figure out a way both of you could still do business together.
  5. A customer who initially wanted to delay purchasing until you proved why buying now was a wiser decision.

Now that you have some ideas for situational sales success stories, consider ways to refine them and make them more exciting. Take the above example and create one powerful, truth-based story for each of the five situations, and then write them down. Make them all capable of being told in less than 25 seconds. Require every salesperson on staff to learn the five stories and be able to recite them. Test employees and help them internalize high-quality S3 stories.

Remember, you can share these stories face-to-face in one-on-one situations, in larger group settings such as a business meeting, as videos, via e-mail, blogs and text messages, on social media (Twitter should challenge even the strongest tellers of S3 stories) and by using that old-fashioned device everybody once called a telephone.

Why You Must Improve Your Persuasion Skills Every Day

While persuasion is crucial to people’s success for many reasons, they actually spend very little time and effort improving their persuasion skills.

If you’re going to thrive in the eat-or-be-eaten contemporary workplace, you must be able to effectively persuade others. This will provide you with a competitive advantage, because your competitors are more than likely not focusing on their own persuasion skills.

Why?

I call it the “Persuasion Paradox.

The Persuasion Paradox can be summarized like this: At best, many professionals take a mindless approach to persuasion. At worst, they abhor the practice of persuasion, striving to avoid it.

The mindless ones, either consciously or subconsciously, assume that just because they’ve heard people say “yes” to them — and they’ve given the same response to others — they understand the complexities of attaining agreement. This supposition couldn’t be further from the truth. The act of persuasion remains a significant obstacle for many professionals, and they might not even be aware of it. However, like failing to check your blind spot before darting out into the oncoming lane on a narrow highway to pass a slow-moving truck, ignoring this obstacle can lead to disastrous results.

The ones who abhor persuasion want nothing to do with it. They think it smacks of the dreaded word “sales” and conjures images of white shoes, plaid jackets, and glad-handing used-car salesmen. But successful people — who are neither mindless nor abhorrent, incidentally — don’t see persuasion that way. Professionals at the top of their game understand that not only is it is okay for them to promote their ideas and issues; but that it is incumbent on them to do so.

Having someone say “yes” to your ideas, offers and suggestions ranks among the greatest achievements in the business world. It represents validation, respect and acceptance among your peers and others. In author Daniel Pink’s survey of American workers, “What Do You Do at Work?” for his book, To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth about Moving Others, he discovered full-time, non-sales workers spent 24 out of every 60 minutes involved in persuasion efforts. To say effective persuasion is merely important is to make an extreme understatement.

Persuasion requires intellectual heavy lifting. Understanding your target, knowing how to increase the value of your offering (or, conversely, decrease the resistance of your target), choosing the right words, and determining the timing of your persuasive efforts all are prerequisites of effective persuasion.

So to stay ahead of your competition and succeed among your peers, work on your persuasion skills on a daily basis. Here are some terrific places to start.

12 Better Ways to Use Your Language Skills

Superior language skills build the confidence to engage and persuade more people. Here are 12 ways to put those skills to work while convincing others that your way is best:

  1. Teach the vernacular of your business to others, and they will feel more included in the overall experience.
  1. Use the language of your industry to give you “insider’s prestige.”
  1. Recognize that a superior grasp of language is one of the dominant factors in sales success.
  1. Use language to generate empathy.
  1. Lose the tired questions (“Do you play golf?”) and replace them with interesting ones (“How will the recent fires affect your expansion plans in Canada?”). You’ll be more interesting to your buyer and learn crucial information.
  1. Control conversations by strategically including terms like “recommend,” “suggest” and “advise.” Others will follow your lead.
  1. Use permission questions to soften your approach: “May I ask you a question?”
  1. Use adjectives to make your descriptions more vivid: “elegant design” and “compelling point.”
  1. Find relevant examples to prove your points.
  1. Metaphors, similes and analogies remain the bedrock of effective language skills.
  1. Use appropriate language; slang coming from an executive sounds silly.
  1. Practice saying things three different ways. Think basic, intermediate and sophisticated. To that end, I hope you found this blog post helpful. I anticipate you will find instructive ways to implement this material. And perhaps I have assuaged your anxiety about speaking more eloquently.

How ‘Thank You’ Can Boost Your Persuasive Power

Nothing is more powerful in the world of B2B or B2C sales than a face-to-face encounter between a satisfied customer and a credible sales professional. This is the kind of human exchange in which influence can be wielded for the good of both individuals. When a customer or client says “thank you,” for example, you must be able to leverage those words — or risk blowing a major opportunity to take that sales relationship to a higher level.

Here are three things to do when you hear “thank you”:

1. Don’t waste words.

What’s typically the first thing out of your mouth when a customer thanks you? “No problem. That’s why I’m here.” A coworker thanks you for your assistance, and you say, “Sure, it was easy.” A supplier sends a note of appreciation, and you leave it at that. Not only are these relationships not furthered, but you actually also may be damaging them with the responses you give — or don’t give. Making someone feel unappreciated, incompetent or unworthy of a response is a surefire way to not increase your influence.

2. Drop the arrogance act.

Another potential problem is when the thank-you exchange is framed in such a way that the other person feels like he or she has just done a favor for Vito Corleone (“Someday I may call upon you to do a service for me.”) If you respond with a defiant, “And now you owe me one!” you’re just asking for animosity and opposition.

3. Rethink your response.

So how can you avoid under-responding or overreacting to a “thank you”? By using influential language. Robert Cialdini, author of the seminal work Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, suggests saying something like this: “My pleasure, because I know if the situation were reversed, you would have done the same for me!” Then watch as the other person nods furiously in agreement.

That’s how you use language to expertly and subtly earn a “chit” — an informal influence credit. Practice this approach until you’re comfortable using the language of Cialdini or similar language you develop on your own to create compelling yet conversational and influential exchanges.

(Photo by Gratisography)

How Apple, Lexus and Harley-Davidson Can Help You Persuade

Think about why the Apple, Lexus, and Harley-Davidson brands have such magnetic appeal. Why do consumers so unequivocally believe in them and profess unwavering loyalty to them? Because those objects conjure emotions that convince buyers the iPhone 6S, the LX and the FLHXS Street Glide Special are in some way superior to competing products.

In essence, they represent the epitome of “cool” in their specific product categories as perceived by their particular (or potential) users.

Researchers Caleb Warren, assistant professor of marketing at Texas A&M University, and Margaret C. Campbell, professor of marketing at the University of Colorado, Boulder, conducted six studies to determine what makes consumers perceive brands, companies and even people as “cool.”

Published by the Journal of Consumer Research in 2014, their findings suggest that individuals gravitate toward objects of autonomy, meaning that the companies behind those objects eschew pre-existing norms or status quo expectations in pursuit of their own vision. “Although cool brands are typically desired, coolness and desirability are not the same thing,” Warren and Campbell wrote. “Consumers prefer cool brands only when they want to stand out rather than fit in.”

When your persuasion situation involves an idea focused on a specific brand or product, recognize that the emotions conjured by that brand or product can create an irresistible urge in your target’s mind to say “yes.” Part of the work has already been done for you.

Why More Than One Point of View Is Critical to Persuasion Success

The weather in Wisconsin is finally turning spring-like, and this past weekend’s 80-degree temperatures reminded me of a funny story about persuasion:

Although my wife and I enjoy fishing together, we are the antithesis of Bassmasters participants in that we fish from a pontoon boat complete with snacks and frequent naps. We basically put our living room on the water and call it sport. The one thing we do share with the pros is fancy “fish finder” technology. We, too, have one of these expensive black boxes that provide sonar‐created pictures of what’s under the boat.

Fast‐forward to a warm early-June morning as Amy piloted our pontoon living room through a tight channel on Wisconsin’s Whitewater Lake. While she kept a careful eye on the finder, I busied myself preparing the tackle for our day on the water. “Mark, we need to stop here,” Amy said excitedly, “I’ve never seen so many fish!”

“But we never fish here,” I growled like the character Quint in the movie Jaws, as I made my way to examine the sonar image.

It was an unbelievable sight. The underwater world around us was exploding with fish. Big fish, little fish and the most picturesque drop‐offs and covers. It was amazing. This was going to be a great day.

After two hours of fishless‐fishing we couldn’t understand what we were doing wrong. I studied the finder, still teeming with aquatic life.

We were fishing the simulation.

Yep, we had just spent two hours fishing the computer‐generated quintessential fishing paradise created by the marketing geniuses at Garmin!

All of which brings me to this: If you want to hear “yes” more often, you need to have the right “read” on the territory. To do that, practice convergent validity — that is, the idea of getting three points of view before you make a decision or take action. Don’t just take one customer’s viewpoint on your new product or service; get input from three customers. If there is a performance issue with your sales process, observe it for yourself, ask a customer about it and then go to someone else, too.

Trust me. The fishing will be better.