Persuasion Mastery

The best way to ever persuade is always through metaphor. If you get someone to understand or connect with a simile or a metaphor and they verify, they, they believe in that metaphor, they will believe in your suggestion. Foreign hey everybody, it's Brendan Burchard, founder of Experts Academy and author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, the Millionaire Messenger. And today we're here to talk about persuasion training. Lots of people struggle with this topic. They're trying to persuade an audience to believe in them or give them a standing ovation. They're trying to persuade an audience to buy their stuff. They're trying to persuade people to follow them or believe in their ideas. And. And yet they struggle. And time and time and time again, they can't get through to their spouse or their partners, the people they care about. Time and time again they feel like their teenagers don't listen to them. Time and time again, they don't feel like their team is following through. Time and time again they feel like they're putting out all these ideas, but they're never landing and happening. And the central sort of through line of all those problems is usually the person just lacks persuasion training. They don't know what to say to make an impact, but they honestly don't even how to think through a persuasion situation. So my job here today is to share with you insights that I've gained over the last 20 years in studying communication to help you understand how to persuade better. You know, many of these concepts I'll be sharing are things that I've seen in actual situations of persuasion or I've done, whether it's me some selling something online where we generate $4 million in six days, or it's me being in a room and watching one of my clients seal $100 million plus deal, or it's me having. When I first started in the industry, in the consulting industry, I got to see a billion dollar deal get signed. And I remember seeing the person and all the persuasion that went into that billion dollar deal. This all applies. But also for those of you who are just like, I'm trying to influence my teenager better, this will apply to you too, because persuasion is any time. Persuasion is basically the science and the art of influencing somebody to do what you hope they will do. Now, recognize lots of people will say, well, persuasion, you know, can feel, you know, I don't like persuasion because I think it's manipulation. No, persuasion is ultimately just, just one subcategory of influence in general. Right? Persuasion's a subcategory of Influence. But with persuasion, you're clear about what you want to happen. You're clear. You know you want them to buy. You know you want them to clean the house. You know you want them to go to school. You know you want them to implement your initiative. You know you want them to hit. Like, when persuasion is at play, you have a stake in the outcome. You know what you want. And to get there, you've got to have a conversation with others to make them raise their hand or say yes or follow what you're suggesting. And I don't pretend that's easy. That's why as we go into this, you see today, as we talk about persuasion, I'm going to go into a pretty complex framework to help you think through all of this. Now, I'm not going to have the answers for everybody. I don't know what your situation is right now, but I want you to know what your persuasion situation is. So think about somebody you're trying to persuade to do something. Think about something you need to persuade an audience to do. I'd love for you to have a case study of your own in your mind as we go through here, because here's what I promise. There is something behind one of these doors, Vanna White, that you have not yet thought about. There's something here that you've been missing, something here. You're like, that's why they won't listen to me. That's why they're not saying yes. That's where they're not buying. And so it's my job today to give you all of these different elements of the framework so that maybe you can identify something you've been missing or identify something that will be really helpful for you to think through in the future. I know that persuasion is not easy and lots of people are frustrated with it. And usually it's those who are new to the topic itself that start thinking it's manipulation. And manipulation is its original connotation was to skillfully handle or control something in social realm. That word kind of got the connotation of that became. Well, it's when you're doing something unscrupulously or unfairly, you're doing something, you know, you're manipulating the situation to only get what you want and not listening to what others want. Well, that's not what I'm talking about today. I really believe that all persuasion has an element of negotiation, too. And, you know, persuasion without negotiation equals manipulation. But when you're in conversation and you're negotiating terms or you're Negotiating through the conversation of helping people think through things, even to get what you want or to get what they want, there's still a lot of influence, strategies and tactics that make that possible. That's what we're going to be talking about here today. So I would encourage you to kind of draw out what I've drawn here. We're going to talk about the pre work that you would do before a persuasion conversation. Okay. Convo stands for conversation. Okay. And then we're gonna talk about the follow up that you can do to either solidify the deal or close the deal or get someone to do what you want. Now throughout today, I'm gonna be talking about persuasion, usually in two categories. The category of requests, like you making a request for someone to do something. And I'll be talking about the category of sales, like making an offer and trying to persuade somebody to take that thing or buy that thing. My job is to give you generic enough categories that you get the concept of persuasion I'm teaching you about and then you apply it to your specific situations. I'd also suggest to you, make sure you take copious notes because the reality is a lot of this might not apply to the situation you're in right now. You might need very simple persuasion situation situation right now. Getting the kid to do their homework right there's persuasion going to happen there. But I'm going to go at a very, I would say more elevated level here to address complex phenomena of persuasion. Like when you really got to make the case for something, this is what's at play. When it's simple, you might only do a few of these. When it's complex, especially in a sales situation, you'd have to do all of these. Okay? So I hope that that serves you in thinking through this. I've got three columns. Pre persuasion, conversational persuasion and then post persuasion. And we're going to walk through this. Now. I don't think that this is the answer to all persuasion questions you might have. It's just a very sort of straightforward framework that will help you think through it. I don't have the time to go into a nine week course on persuasion right here. Okay. But you'll find that we basically cover that much of material. So get ready, I mean, put your pants back on, get your journal and ready to go. Because we're getting doing some adult work right here. We're starting some adulting here. Pre suasion. Here's what I want you to think about. Okay? Some of this is gonna be common sense, but I Promise. It's not always common practice, so do take notes, my friends. Number one, everything you should do should operate from this number one thing, and that is you need to have clear outcomes for what you want the other person to know, think, feel, and do. What do you want the other person to know, think, feel, and do? And I want you to always think through those categories. Never go into a persuasion kind of conversation without having done that. Even if it's as simple as, I just want my spouse to clean up the house. Okay, what should they know, think, feel, and do? Because if you haven't thought through that, you're just bumbling in and being a child making a request. I want you to be an adult putting out a persuasion plan. I want you to be somebody who's more intentional with your communication than you've been. Because isn't it true that so many times in our relationships where it just falls apart is when we just bumbled in and made a stupid request? Isn't it true a lot of times you negatively react to a team member or your spouse, it's because they made a dumb request that they didn't even think through? Isn't it true that so many times you get frustrated with people is because they weren't more thoughtful about your side of the story? Well, if that's true, then we need to get very clear on what is it. If I'm trying to persuade someone to do something, what I want them to know, think, feel, and do, even if I'm just trying to get them to follow me on Facebook or on Instagram, what should I be thinking about? How do they want? What should they know about me? What should they feel about me? What should they be thinking? What do I want them specifically to do? And why would they do all of those things? That's like step one, and most people don't even do that. And then they don't do any of this, and they're wondering why they can't get someone to do something. They don't even do that. Common sense, not always common practice. And that's why so many potentially great people fail to reach their potential. We got to get you thinking in advance, more diligently, with greater discipline, with more consistency. That's going to help you reach that higher performance level of persuasion to make you the best. I can't tell you how many people say, brennan, can you help me with my negotiation? I say, sure. I go in. I go, what do you want them to know, think, feel, and do? And they can't even answer the Question. We're like, I just want them to buy my stuff, dude. I go, well, we might need to be a little bit more thoughtful in that regard. Okay, clear outcomes of what you want them to know, think, feel and do. But I want you to also have clear outcomes for you after this persuasion conversation. What do you want to know, think, feel and do? Let's say you're about to have a, you know, a real difficult sit down conversation with somebody that you love and you've been waiting to have the conversation, but now it's time and you go to have that conversation and you know, you're so concerned about them or hurting their feelings or saying the right thing that you never thought of, like, how do you want to feel after that conversation? You know, I recently talked to a friend. He went to lunch and had to communicate some very difficult things to a team member. And he was so thoughtful about what he wanted that team member to experience, but he never thought of, well, after lunch, how does he, he want to feel? What does he want to know about that team member? How does he want to feel about that team member? What does he want to do with for that team member afterwards? So often if you're a giver, you constantly think about everything that you want the other person to do or feel or sense. Or if you're a salesperson, you think about what you want them to do, but you're not even thinking about their feelings or your feelings. We just need to be a little bit more strategic in complex persuasion situations. That's what we're mostly talking about today. But I'm sure you've sensed that in your own family life, in your own personal life. Too many folks are bumbling into requests at home without thinking about the other or themselves. They're only focused on the content of the request. I want you to do X. But if you're only focusing on I want you to do X, you're never going to be a strong persuasion master. You're never going to really hone that skill in where you can do the bigger deals, where you can do the bigger sales. Like this seems so basic, but it takes a lot more thought than most people have been given it. Number two, I want you to think through what is the actual offer, okay? Now in persuasion in sales, you know, you want to have that irresistible, unbelievable, crushing, amazing, super generous, great deal offer, right? If you're going to try to persuade someone to sell or do something, you want them to say, that's a great deal, or I would feel great doing that investing in that, believing in that, buying from that. What is the offer that you are particularly selling? Okay, is it a request? And if they do the request, you're going to give them these things? Is it a sale where if they buy it at this price, they get these things from you that are amazing. What's the actual offer? And I think this is important too. If you're going to try and go and persuade your kid to be better at math, you really got to think through what's the offer? You can't just go in there and go do your homework. That's just not going to be the best persuasion strategy. Like, what's the real offer? What is it? You are offering that kid to do math, right? And you can't just say, well, let them continue living on the earth. That is not where you should be thinking. You should be thinking, what am I going to give them? What are they going to get for their investment in doing math homework? What am I going to offer them? Then in the sales side, you have a real clear offer. I often tell, I know a lot of you guys are entrepreneurs and I tell entrepreneurs all the time. I go, look, stop thinking about all this branding stuff. Stop trying to build the website, stop trying to start social media. Number one most important thing that an entrepreneur has outside of their own passion and guts and hard work ethic and mission values to add value is the offer. No offer, no sales, no money, no message. So you have to first and foremost go, what is the offer that I have and why would they want it? So simple, right? What's the offer you have and why would they want it or want to do it? If you want your team to do something, they've been resistant. I'm telling you what you need to have an offer for, why they should do that. If you want somebody who is at home with you to do something and you've made that request 50 times and you're stuck in a situation, well, they just won't listen. They'll never do what I ask. But you keep asking. You need to change your persuasion strategy and sweeten the offer. Sometimes people do a lot of good stuff in the conversation. They're, you know, they're kind, they're patient, they're thoughtful, they ask those great rhetorical questions. I mean, they're just absolutely doing the Socratic method. They've got it all down. But their offer sucks. And if the offer sucks, you're dead in the water. So get that offer, make it really clear. Why would they want that? If you don't know that you are not even in the game of persuasion. Third big one, why you? Here's what I like to tell salespeople. Often if someone's going to buy from you, the reality is they could buy from somebody else, too, right? Whatever you're offering, usually other people are offering it. I mean, in some ways, we are all commodities in the modern world, okay? Everyone's got other choices beyond you in your marriage. Other people have choices beyond you. At work, they could go work for somebody else. Other people have choices for you in the marketplace. They could buy something on Amazon versus your website. So the question we have to know before we even enter this conversation is, why you? And here's what I like to have you think about is when you think about why you, you have to think about who else. Isn't true. If I want somebody to buy something of mine, I have to go, well, why would they buy mine? And if I'm going to answer that intelligently, I have to think about, well, who else has it? In other words, why wouldn't they go with somebody else? Have you answered that? Why wouldn't they go with somebody else? In any persuasion situation, you're asking the kid to do their math homework. Why wouldn't they just play a video game instead of doing math? They want to go out and play with their friends. Why? Who else is their friends? Why should they listen to you versus listen to their friends? If you don't know why people should listen to you, buy from you, invest in you specifically, vis a vis, who else? You're not even in the game yet. You haven't even started thinking about this. There's no thought. There's no preparation. There's no strategy. Without these things, there is zero strategy. Okay? It's just bumbling by and being of good luck. Now, if you're like a person who says, well, Brendan, I haven't done these things and my life is going pretty good, I'm like, oh, you're just getting weaponized now. Then your life's about to become extraordinary when you start doing this stuff more. I literally meditate on all of these things before I ever begin a conversation. There's no way I would ever think of a serious persuasion situation without thinking through all of this first. So be thinking through this. And number four, you have to have what we call objection. Killer metaphors. Okay, Objection. Killer metaphors. What does that mean? Well, first, as you already know, you need to think about the objections that someone's going to have when you try to persuade them to do something right. Honey, take out the trash. What are you talking about? House of cards is on, right? That's an objection. House of cards is on, right? When you ask somebody at work to do something. Well, I've got this other project that I'm focused on right now. You ask them to buy something, they say, oh, well, I think it's too expensive. They're going to have objections, okay? And here's the thing. I really want you to listen to this. The best way to ever persuade is always through metaphor. If you get someone to understand or connect with a simile or a metaphor and they verify they. They believe in that metaphor, they will believe in your suggestion. Give an example. And even when it's esoteric concepts, think about how Einstein explained his theory of relativity to the world, okay? He couldn't just sit up there and do all the math on the board for everybody because we didn't understand that he had to use metaphors. A bicycle ride, a train ride, an elevator ride. He used those as metaphors for us to understand how we perceive the time of light. He had to explain things that we couldn't necessarily understand on our own. But he used metaphors, right? The best thing you can ever do is use metaphors. I learned this from a great trial lawyer. What was considered America's trial lawyer, Jerry Spence. I remember him. He was trying to convince a judge and a jury to free his client. And instead of talking about the client and the 50 reasons they should do that, instead he pretended he had a bird that was caged in his hand, and he talked about the cage and the bird, and it was a metaphor for the entire trial. And he talked through that. But at the end, he said, but today you have the ability to. And it was like he won the case. He brought a metaphor into it. It's visual or it's simile. I always say, if you can't explain your persuasion without a very visual metaphor or simile, then you're not in the game. But here's the masters. This is what master negotiators do. Master persuaders. They think of all the metaphors. Every objection, they think of a metaphor. You know, when someone says, well, it costs too much. Well, you can say, but here's the 50 reasons. It's worth it. And you just, you know, you try to intellectually win them over. Instead draw out a metaphor, you know, say, well, you know what? I understand that lots of people are always concerned about value, but haven't you noticed a lot of people have a gym membership and they've got that Gym membership, and they're paying every month. And maybe they might not use it right away, but they know they're going to use it and they feel good having that. Well, that's kind of like being in my monthly program. I'm telling you about when you're in that program, it's true, maybe you won't use it this month, but next month, when you finally get back to your commitment and you realize what you need to do, we're there for you. Log right in. Right. Just use an external metaphor or simile to sell your products and your ideas. Okay? It's really, really important that you do this. You always must take an objection, which means first you must know the main objections of any suggestion that you have. Then for each one, I want you to create a visual metaphor or simile. And if you have that, you'll win. I was blessed to be pretty good at debate in college, as you imagine. And every single time somebody crushed me, logically, I would come back with a universal metaphor and win the debate round. It was always my go to. Because you know what? People love that visual comparison. Simile, or a metaphor or an allegory. And when you give those things to people, they go, I got it. They understand it. It's almost like. And here's the strategy. I often tell people, do the apples to oranges metaphors, right? Now, if you were in debate class, you know that comparing apples to oranges is one easy way to call out a person. But most people never had any debate understanding at all. All. All I gotta do is make sure I compare this to that, and if I can get them to believe in that, they'll believe in this. Make sense? You need to do that for all of the objections that you can possibly imagine. Okay. If you don't do that, you're not yet in the game. Number five. Triggers. You need to think of, what are the things they're gonna trigger this person to say? Yes. Like, why do humans say yes or no to things? I'm gonna give you a list of them, by the way. I just want you to write it down for now. Triggers. Why do people do what they do in general? Right. What is it that people are trying to do? What people need in general. If you don't know that, make sure you read my book, the charge. Activating the 10 human drives that make you feel alive. Because those 10 human drives control every thought and decision you've ever had in your life. How's that for a promise? That's kind of how you make a number One New York Times bestselling book. Really, that's what you do. Number one, Wall Street Journal. The charge was because I said, this controls everything you think, feel and do, and everybody else, too. If you know those 10 human drives, you're ahead. I'm not going to go into those because those are more psychological precepts than what we're in today, which is persuasion concepts. So make sure you read the book the Charge, because each of those chapters, if you use those human drives in your persuasion situations, you'll be much more effective. For now, let me give you many of the triggers that will be important in a conversation where you're making a request or you're trying to persuade somebody to buy something. Okay? These are huge reasons, and these are things I want you to think about, but you might also use throughout this. So let me give you maybe a better visual here. You're going to think about the triggers here, but they're going to go all the way throughout there. You're going to apply them and you're going to press them over and over again. Okay? So the more complex the persuasion situation, the more of these triggers you're going to press again and again in your messaging, right? If I'm trying to get somebody to buy something, these are things I'm going to keep pressing and pressing and pressing. Depending on how long it is I have that persuasion situation, sometimes I only have five minutes to persuade. I might not get to use all these cards, but I'm going to use one, two or three of them, right? Okay, so I've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight of these if you want to write down. So these are eight mental triggers of persuasion. And you'll recognize them because it's why you buy stuff. Right? So I won't spend a tremendous amount of time in these, but you'll get the idea as we go through here. Okay, number one, and this is important, why do people buy stuff? Right? If you, if you think about it, if you know when, when this phone came out, right? Why did you buy it when and if you didn't buy that phone when the other new phone came out, why did you buy it when the new camera comes out? Why do you buy it when the new fashion line comes out, why do you buy it when the new car comes out, why do you buy it when that new place to go, you know, sort of comes up on your Instagram, you think, I want to go there? I've never been there. Why do you go? Well, in my question was the answer why do you buy the new phone? Why do you get the new car? Why do you go to that new place? It's because of this one Novelty. People love to buy, consume, do and think what they have not yet bought, done, consumed, or thought before. Novelty. Newness is what this means. People love the bright, shiny new objects, right? And you need to leverage that in your persuasion. What's new? What's if it's not new, what's recent? What's cutting edge? What's thought provoking? What's here today that was not here years ago? This should be part of your conversation. And again, I realize as we're going throughout this, you're like, brendan, I don't know how that applies yet. That's okay. We'll get into the conversation. Right now we're in preparation, we're in strategic thinking. Is there anything new that the person you're trying to persuade could get, think or experience by doing what you're asking them to do? Is there anything new they could get? Maybe feel, think, maybe even experience? Like something new? They're like, wow, that's awesome. What newness can you bring into their life through your offer or your request? Right? What's new? A lot of people don't listen to. This is really important. A lot of people don't do an action you ask them to do because they're bored with the action. Why doesn't the kid do the math homework? They're bored with it. Why doesn't the spouse, you know, be more engaging at the dinner table? They're bored with you. Oh, I said it. I didn't, I didn't mean to, but it's true. You got to bring in new things to shift things up. Just like I shift the energy up right there. If we don't use novelty, we lose in the conversation. So what newness can you bring into the conversation or into the offer? If you're not selling new, you're selling old. And if you're selling old, new, your persuasion is always going to be weak. Okay, number two, big one. And I like this one. That's utility. People buy things because they're useful, that's all. Same with ideas. You have to kind of convince people that your idea is useful to them. Specifically, the kid doesn't do math because they're like, maybe, I don't know. Brendan was, when he was growing up. Is that weird? I just mentioned myself in third party. That was weird, wasn't it? Don't do that, Brandon. But this is what I did. I was like, brendan, learn Algebra. And I'm like, algebra. How does that apply to my life? And you know what the problem is? Nobody could meet my objection with a metaphor. Isn't that a problem? So many kids. I don't want to do algebra. It doesn't even apply to my life. And the parent or the teacher doesn't have a way to address that objection. I see it so many times, and it makes me sad. Honestly, for our entire generation of kids growing up right now, the education system is not just lacking sometimes in structure and support and funding and quality, but I would also say that it's also lacking in the ability to argue against the very reasons kids say, I don't want to learn. Isn't it true? Kids say, I don't want to learn this. It's not useful to me. Well, if someone says it's not useful to you, it's like, you got to have a better thing. I remember I had a science teacher. We were doing a bunch of advanced physics, mathematics, which for me was torture because that's just not how I thought, right? And I said, who needs physics, by the way, you should Google that one time. There's a lot of great videos out on there. But I was like, who needs physics? And he was like, oh. And he immediately went to a metaphor. Immediately went to a metaphor. And if he had not done that, I don't think I would have engaged that. And here's what his metaphor. He goes, whoa. Well, you need physics. He's like, have you ever been on a playground, right, Going to a metaphor, notice he didn't make. He's like, well, physics is what smart people do. And if you want to get into college. He didn't argue with me. He engaged me with an objection killing metaphor. Who needs physics? Oh, have you ever been on a playground? I'm like, yeah. And I was young. I mean, very young at this time, probably, what, like seventh or eighth grade? And he goes, oh, have you ever been on playground? I go, yeah. I go, have you ever been around those things where you're trying to spin, you know, the thing? Like you're running a long thing and you're jumping on it? I don't remember what they call it now. And I was like, yeah. He's like, have you ever tried to make it go so fast it threw your friend off? I was like, yeah. He goes, I can tell you how fast you have to make it go for him to fall off. I'm like, physics? Yeah. He killed me with a metaphor. I was back in the game. One metaphor, back in the game. So, my friends, you have to have a lot of metaphor objections to overcome. When someone says, that's not useful to me, you know, honey, take out the garbage. Why, you better make it useful to them, right? Utility. For those of you who are selling something, there's got to be a function or feature of everything they're selling that is something that they want. And I know it sounds so basic, but we've all been taught, don't sell features, sell benefits. I'm like, what? No, no, no. You are selling features and benefits. You got to sell the feature as hard as you sell any other benefits of the overall product, right? Every little feature, you're selling it with a benefit. And the overall product, you're selling the benefits. But the features are the things. That's the reason you buy it. There's utilitarian value in that. Okay, next up, pride. Do you know why you can't change your spouse's mind? Pride. Do you know why you can't get her to listen? She's got pride. You know why you can't get him to listen? He's got pride. We all have ego in the game. We all want to believe that what we've done in the past is something that's important. We want to hang on to it. And you need to factor this into every. You never, never try to persuade someone without taking into account pride. Ever. By you offering something new, they're going to have to relinquish something old. By you suggesting a new action, they're going to have to question, why have I not done that yet? See, often salespeople don't realize this when they're trying to sell something that's so obvious to everyone. And they got all these people like this in the meeting. I'm not going to do it. And they can't figure out why. And I go, oh, well, the reason is because if they do it, they would have to admit fault for having not done it before. You have to address, why didn't they see it before. You have to address why haven't done. They done it already. And you have to give them the out, right? You have to give them the out. You have to honor them for not having yet done it yet, right? If you're asking the kid to do math, you have to make it okay that they have not yet done the homework. Instead of berating them that they haven't done the homework. Parents make that mistake and so do teach all the time. You haven't done your homework. Gee, that's motivating. Me, it's like, you know what? I think I might know why you haven't done your homework yet. Why? Because I think you're so smart that maybe this is easier, boring for you. Is that right? And that opens the door for that person going, well, yes, I am very smart. And now we can actually persuade them down the line to do the homework. Same thing. If you're a new CEO or you're rolling on a new team and you have to persuade them to go in a new direction, don't forget they got a lot of pride in the direction they've been on. If you're asking somebody to step into a new path, you've got to address that pride, that ego, that connection attachment they have with what has existed before. If you don't address it, you lose them. Too many people do a great job in all these other areas, especially with a killer offer, but they don't address why someone hasn't done something. I'll give you an example. When I'm teaching, like, marketing, and let's say I'm persuading and trying to sell Experts Academy, it's like a $2,000 marketing training for thought leaders, right? And if I'm trying to persuade, it's a $2,000 I have to address. Well, how come they haven't already been a thought leader? How come they haven't already built the website? How come they haven't already put up the opt in page or the sales? How come they haven't already started their social media accounts and crushed it? I need to address that so that it makes it okay, so that they don't enter the conversation with me with a wounded ego. Does that make sense? You really need to think about people's pride. Next up. This is huge. People buy and believe and act because of popularity. You need to have the who else is doing this? Conversation in your head before you have the conversation with someone else. Who else is doing this? How many people? Like, why is what you're doing and suggesting to people now fashionable? It's in because you know what? No one wants to be out. No one wants, you know, to experience fomo. Fear of missing out. And the way you stoke fear of missing out with people is you address popularity. Now, obviously, in everything I've covered here so far, all of these things, triggers included, can be used for good or ill, right? You could say, well, Brennan, I'm just going to start using these ideas and, man, I can just tell people, well, this is popular. You should do it. I say, well, we're Going to have a conversation about intention when we entered the conversation. I'm just getting your head in the mind. So for those who don't think I'm aware of the subtext of what I'm talking about, believe me, I've thought this through. Because this has been used recently to really affect negative changes. You know, popularity, that sense of belonging, can be used like a weapon for good or ill. And that certainly happens a lot of times. Like, you know, follow the crowd conversation, has been used throughout millennia by dictators or by people who are trying to sort of be manipulative. So I'm aware of the subtext that you might be concerned about, but I'm also here to share. There's a lot of very good things. Popularity as an example. If I'm thinking about a persuasion conversation, for me, I'm always thinking about human values, right? I'm going to try to tie whatever I'm trying to request or offer or suggest to human values. Popular human values. Because you know what we all want love and truth and fairness and freedom and unity and respect and. And responsibility and tolerance. We all do want that, right? That's part of the human stories. But I gotta make sure I tie popularity. Like, if you're convincing the kid to do math, remember, you gotta talk about other kids doing math too, right? It's important that you have that other conversation. Who else is doing it? When you do that really well, then people go, you know what? I don't want to miss everyone else's doing it. And I know you already know that. The shoes you're probably wearing, the clothes that you're wearing, the things that you buy have some degree of popularity. You know, you notice other people doing it, or you liked it, or you saw it and you thought, that's cool. That will make me in, that will make me fit in. That will make me belong. That will make me unique. So I should do that. That all ties back to a sense of popularity. I hope that makes sense. Okay, next up, I use sense twice in one sentence in different tenses with the two different senses. Okay, next up, an aspirational connection. Okay, Aspirational connection. Remember I said popularity. Popularity is about volume number of people, others doing something. I need you to insert who is doing this or buying this or part of this, who other people aspire to be. Okay? Who others aspire to be, model do things with. So let me give you an example. If a famous celebrity is using your product and you talk about it, that's really stoking this mental trigger of Aspirational connection or association. Right. But here's what I need you to know. Who are the other person's heroes? Who are they? And how can you get a story or a case study or an association with that person's heroes attached to your request? Right. How can you tell the kid trying to do math about the popular kids doing math? Or that, you know what, Johnny, you gotta do math and you know Johnny's in love with Sally at school. You find out about Sally doing better in grades then Johnny, that's somebody to attach to an aspiration. He looks up to her, he admires her, he loves her, he follows her. He believes he wants to be like that. You need to tie that aspirational figure to what you're doing. It's why every single financial planner who has ever sold financial planning, at least beyond the junior varsity level, mentions a Warren Buffett or Ray Dalio. Why aspirational figure? And if you don't talk about their strategies and what they're doing and why they find it, it's important, you can't do it. It's why every single person who talks about entrepreneurialism, often they will bring up like, well, Sir Richard Branson says this. Why aspirational connection? If you lack aspirational connections in your argumentation, your results will suffer. Think through this stuff. Now, I don't know if this is too heady for you guys, but I promise this would be kind of a master's class approach to it. It's a little more advanced, it requires you to do a little bit more work, but when you do it and you deploy it, boom, persuasion happens. Next up, benefit extension. If you've been through any of my training in high performance persuasion, high performance people skills, or even in my marketing training at Experts Academy, you know, I'm always talking about benefit extension. I believe I made up this word shortly after I started the Internet. And I thought it was funny, too. But nobody, nothing. Okay? Benefit extension is a phrase I coined in 1995, and it's a phrase that I was trying to explain to people that if you're trying to get somebody to do something, you need to extend the benefits beyond themselves. You need to extend the benefits to those around them, to the community and the world at large. There's three levels. Listen to that. The extend the benefits beyond the person to other people, to the community and the world at large. Right. This is my favorite tool. If you've been to, I'm sorry, High Performance Academy, you've probably heard me share the metaphor of trying to get a kid to do better in school, because I think that's such a good thing, a good metaphor to use with people. And if you're trying to get little Johnny to do better in school, we don't just tell Johnny, do your homework. We have to extend the benefit. And we can do that in multiple ways. We can extend the benefit to his sister, we can extend the benefit to his teacher. We can extend the benefit to his class. We can extend the benefit to his school. We can extend the benefit to the community. We can extend the benefit to me parent feeling better to the world at large having more learned people. But we got to find out what's the hook and how do we extend the benefit. And so you might tell Johnny, who doesn't want to do his homework. Johnny, I understand you don't want to do your homework. But, you know, as you see so many of the kids who are happy and liked by the teacher at school, you know, they're doing their homework. But what I've noticed is when you do your homework, have you noticed your teacher feels better and talks to you differently because you like your teacher? Right? Yeah. I bet your teacher thinks about you doing your homework. Don't you want the teacher to feel good about that, like she's doing a good job? Maybe? And now I've extended the benefit of him doing his homework to the teacher. And I'll say, you know, Johnny, if you've noticed your sister Susan, she's always watching you too, and she kind of looks up to you. And if you don't do your homework, then why should she do homework? And, I mean, you want Susan to be happy with school too, right? Oh, my gosh. And you want Susan's teachers to like her too, right? Oh, my gosh. And, you know, I'm always trying to do good things for the family and everything. And I know I'm not always around Johnny, but when you do it, it makes me feel like things are handled around the house too. I feel I feel better, and it helps me. When you're helping yourself and helping your sister and helping your teacher by doing your homework, that's benefit extension. Parents being helped, kids being helped, teachers being helped. That's a weaponized persuasion moment, Right? It's just like benefit extension. It's one of the most powerful tools in psychology and sales ever, and you need to use it responsibly and intelligently. But if you're trying to persuade, you can't avoid it. Right? Number one reason people don't persuade is they think they're persuading a single egoic individual person who only cares about their own pride, advancement, and health and life. They forgot all the other people. Because you know what? If I'm trying to persuade you to do something, I gotta talk about your spouse, I gotta talk about your community, I gotta talk about your team. If I don't talk about those things, it's gonna fall on deaf ears. Or listen, because people say, well, Brendan, I've done pretty good in my life without benefit extension. In my persuasion. I go, yeah, you've done a pretty good job of limiting your scale. That's what you did. If you really want to scale, you have to bring this conversation in. You need to talk about your prospect, your customers, your spouse's life in relation to other people and their community. That's called benefit extension. Okay, next up, scarcity. And you already know this one to be true, right? When things are less available, you buy more, right? That's why you have all those things leading up to a sales deadline or limited quantity or. Or, you know, limited time. Own the offer. That's why you see that in marketing all the time. But you need to do that in terms of working with other people. You wanna be thinking through all of this. What is it about the offer that is scarce or the opportunity that is scarce? That's a trigger for this person. Like, they're scared they're gonna miss out if they don't act now or do something now. Like, what is that? Why is there only so much to go around? Why is there only limited time if you don't have those? It's not that you can't sell. You're just not gonna have the same conversion. And that's okay, too. Cause you don't always have. There's lots of things I sell that don't have that much scarcity to them because maybe they're always available on the marketplace, but I always try to add that. I'm like, okay, is there something I could give to those who are there right now? That's scarcity. By doing that, it engages the audience differently. So I want you to be thinking about those triggers as well. I told you, you gotta have your journal for this. Cause we've been covering a lot. Last reason that people do a lot of things, fulfillment. What about your offer is going to make them feel great? Like, what is it? Like, how are they gonna be more fulfilled as a human being after they say yes to working with you, buying you, believing you, taking the action, fulfilling the request? Like, what is it about that? How Are they going to be more personally satisfied? Sense that they're making a contribution, all those other associative, sort of aligned things to fulfillment. So have you thought through their fulfillment of doing the thing right? If you're trying to get your team to start a new initiative when they're already busy, you have to think of how would you be able to do this with them so that they would feel more fulfillment from it. And if you can't make them feel more fulfillment from it, then they'll just go, oh, another task. You gotta find a way to make it fun or different or unique in a way. They go, well, that's different. Look at what I did today. Often you have to give people more power for them to feel more fulfilled. It's a funny thing. You have to give them more power for them to feel more filled. Not just tell them you should feel good about this, but allow them to have a little bit more autonomy and then they'll be more persuaded. It's almost funny. In persuasion, we think we have to control more. Sometimes what we have to do is let the reins out.