Part 2: The The Persuasion Paradox: How to Get People to Say Yes Before You Ask

This is the second episode of a two part series with Dr. Robert Cialdini, the godfather of influence. In the first episode, if you didn't get to hear it, he talked about the art of influence. In this episode, he's going to dive into pre suasion how you can pre suede somebody different than persuasion. Persuasion is what happens after you meet them. Pre suasion is how can you influence somebody to say yes before they even know what you're going to offer them. And then he's going to dive into the small, big, the smallest thing you can do to have the biggest influence and he'll get. He's going to give you lots of examples of how to do this and what companies that are very successful are currently doing in this area. And then he's going to share with you something super exciting, a new course that he has coming out that'll teach you how to do all of this for your business. So you're going to love this episode. Let's dive in.

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How do you differentiate influence from pre suasion?

So this is really a good question. Influence is about what you put into a message in terms of the psychological character of what you say to it, right in that message that spurs people to move in your direction.

Pre suasion is about what you put in the moment before you ask people to move in your direction, in the moment before you make your request or proposal to them, to put them in a state of mind that is.

Favorable to the message you are about to send.

I love that. That's. You know, I don't know that I would even think of that had you not coined that phrase. Had I not heard it, I. I've heard you speak a couple of times now and I've never would have considered that. How did you consider that? How did this come up? How did you figure out or think about or decide on persuasion?

So I had been studying the infamous process for a while. I written my book and it turns out to be more successful than I could have.

Conceivably expected at the time that I wrote it.

And there's a knock on my door one Saturday and it's the guy who's asking me to contribute to.

After school programs for children in my school district.

Now he doesn't. He didn't show me any credentials he had from the school district. I hadn't heard about any buzz about after school programs being considered.

But I gave him more money, maybe twice as much as I normally give to legitimate charities that come to, you know, come to my door. And after he left, I remember closing the door and thinking, what just happened here? Because he didn't use any of the seven principles on me.

But he still got me to give twice as much money. What did he do?

He didn't, for example, compliment me on my landscaping to use the liking principle. He didn't use social proof and say all your neighbors have been giving. He didn't use authority in saying the best experts in the field of education say after school programs are very important. He didn't use scarcity and say we have to get enough money before the start of the next school term in order to build these programs. He didn't use any of those. Here's what he did.

He brought his six year old daughter with him.

And he focused me on children.

And the needs of kids.

And that's where my mindset was when then he asked me to help kids in their education. I was already there. He had pre suaded me, right?

And I did, I did.

Because he brought to mind.

Is the core element of the message he was about to send before he sent that message. So this is what persuasion, it's the ability to move people in the direction of your message before you send.

Sounds like some kind of magic, right? How can you get people to say yes to something that you're going to ask of them before you've asked.

Sounds like magic. It's not magic. It's solid behavioral science because you know what your message is before you send it. So if you reverse engineer the process and you go to the moment before you send the message and put people in that state of mind.

They are readied for the message before they've encountered it.

And I've Heard you tell. And I've repeated many times the study of. About the guy that walked into the bar.

And asked the girl to go if they would give him their number.

And so if you will tell that because that's the easiest one, at least for me to. When somebody's asking like what's this pre suasion thing? That's been the easiest thing for me to say to have them quickly understand it.

So I'll, I'll take it out of the bar because there was a study done that was done actually on city streets in France.

Researchers had a pretty girl walk up to a guy who was walking alone and asked for directions right to a. She showed him a map and okay. And then she got her directions and he left and he was walking another hundred yards or so. And another pretty girl came up to him and asked for a much larger request. It was, excuse me, you see those four guys over there? And he pointed. The four tough looking guys, they took my cell phone and they won't give it back to me. Could you, could you go get it for me? Well, the great majority of guys.

Said no, I don't know you, I don't know if that's your phone. And even if it is, I'd be outnumbered four.

Four to one. So almost nobody helped.

Unless.

The, when the earlier young woman asked for directions, it was to Valentine street.

And Valentine's. The name Valentine's is connected to romance.

And those guys now help twice as much as anybody else in the study because romance had been put in their mind.

There was another study similar to that where the guy walks up to a woman who.

And asks for her phone number and it's in a shopping mall and in front of like a pastry shop or a boutique or shoe store, clothing store. The answer was no. Most of the time. Just 12% of the time did this guy get a phone number. And he was selected to be a very handsome guy. But.

If he approached her in front of a flower shop.

Now 24% of them get the number because flowers are associated with romance. So the, the larger point here is that.

You, if, if you're, if you're interested in romance, have something related to romance. Can be Valentine's Day, it can be flowers. There was another study, I love this research. Guy walks up to a woman, this was in a park and asked her for a phone number and the answer was no. Most of the time like 11% of the time they got a number. But if he was carrying a guitar case, the number doubled because music is associated with Romance. So it's the association to something that will come later in your request, but if you put it in first, people are readied for that idea and are more favorable to.

And the one I heard you talk about before was asking if they were adventurous.

Oh, yes. Okay. So there's another study like that. Yeah. So if you ask people if they are ad adventurous. Right.

94%, the great majority was in the 90s say yes.

Yeah.

And then if you ask for their phone number or ask for a favor. Right. A risky favor, they're significantly more likely because you've put adventurousness into the. They've. They've thought about themselves. And everybody said, yeah, I can remember times when I was adventurous.

Yeah.

Yeah, go. Go ahead.

Same thing with helpful. There was a study where people were asked, do you consider yourself a helpful person? And, and if they said yes, and most of them did, then, well, could you help me with this survey now? They're significantly more likely to say yes.

So how do you determine?

Well, that first question. Do you have a term for what that first question is? Is that like a pre suasion question or is there. Have you coined a name for that?

The opener. The opener. It opens people's mind.

To the thing that you want them to consider.

Before you ask them to consider it.

How do you determine which opener to use?

Well, again, what you, you. You can do it in terms of. The most ethical way to do it is in terms of, well, what is it that you have to offer that would be wisest for this person to consider when they're thinking about your.

Your product or service or idea or opportunity? Right. And once again, I'll give you a study to, to, to illustrate what I'm talking about. This was done with an online furniture store that had very. They specialized in sofas. And one period of time, half of the people who went to their landing page.

Saw fluffy clouds in the background of the landing page. The other half saw small coins, pennies in the background of the landing page. Then as they went through.

Those who saw clouds were more likely to search for comfortable furniture. Those who saw pennies were more likely to search for inexpensive furniture.

Okay, now how, how does this. And, and by the way, they ultimately preferred to buy comfortable or inexpensive furniture, depending on the first thing they saw that put into their mind the concept of comfort or the concept of cost. Right. Okay. Here's what I would say. What, what is your strength? What, what is the thing that you have that would make it wisest for people to purchase?

Is it reliability? Is it Scientific evidence, is it durability, is it value, is it cost, is it comfort? Whatever it is that you have, that's yours, that would give people the best reason to move in your direction. The wisest, the wisest move for them to make would be to move in. Right. Because that's what you have for them.

Put that in their mind before they go to your.

And they will get, they will focus on the thing that's wisest for them to consider about your offer. Ah.

So it's almost like you're saying.

I know you need this and you're probably going to make your decision based on one of those. So let me put you in that frame of mind. Be with the one that my product or service has the best of.

Exactly.

Right, yeah. So if it's a Toyota, let's just say you want to focus on reliability.

Exactly. So you put Right. And if it's a pharmaceutical product that has great research and so on, you want to focus on science or, you.

Know, because that's how they'll make their decision. So. Yeah. So the focus of.

Influence, the focus of persuasion is how can we help them actually make a decision to take action?

The best one for them. Yeah. And they would be spurred to do that by, by what we've, we've said. And so we want to make sure that they get the best one, the best outcome. Yeah.

So pre suasion is different than how, how is pre suasion different than persuasion?

Well, persuasion is essentially the like influence. It's, you persuade them by what you say first. Right. But pre suasion is, it's different and there, it's a, it's a piece of persuasive real estate that exists before the persuasion. Persuasion process. Right. It's that moment before you send the message. We've, we've never thought about it because we always think about what, what's in the message.

That's the key.

Well, it is a key, but it turns out there's another one right before.

You know, there's, There's a great.

Chinese military mindsen Tzu is the. The Art of War. And he said every battle is won before it's fought.

What do you do first that arranges for you to be effective next.

Love that. Yeah. And which is, and again, I don't know if this is a fair question.

Which would be more powerful, persuasion or persuasion?

See, I don't think there's one or another that would be more powerful. You need both to optimize. Right. So you want to do both. Why? I Wouldn't want to limit myself to one or the other.

So if you are putting into your message how unique and uncommon and rare the opportunity is because you have this scarce opportunity for them, well put that in there. And also put the concept of scarcity, a rare rarity, diamonds or what, whatever is associated with the, with scarcity first. Just put that in, in an image.

You know, I, when I think back to when I was a dentist for, for 30 years.

If you start the conversation, one of the things I learned over time was if you start the conversation about what they want or need.

After you do the examination, it's almost too late. Yeah, you can't.

The key, this is what I found over all the years is the key word was whether somebody was going to move forward or not. Was the word ready?

I could not. If they're ready, I can do the worst of everything. And they're like, oh sure, where do I sign? Let's go. But if they're not ready, I could do the best of everything. Best exam, best communication, best this, best that, best presentation and they're not going to move.

I think that's exactly right. And what the idea of pre suasion adds to that is that.

We can make people readied.

By what we say or do immediately before we give them an opportunity to improve their outcomes.

Yeah, that's. And how I used to do that as a dentist was just, you know, what is it that you want? And then, then it was, sure, I can help you get what you want versus here's what you need. Let me see where you are and let me tell you what you need. Well, that's not what I want. So then I said, well, I wonder what it is they want. Well, let me ask them, what do you want? Yeah, okay, I can help you get it. So it's similar but different.

Yeah, yeah.

So then you took it from pre suasion to your next book, which just recently. When did your next book is the.

Small big now the, the latest book is actually from last year that we did a revision of the book influence where did 220 pages and. Yeah, so but there was an, the next one in the, in, in the sequence was the small big. Because of something that we, we've recognized. Whenever I give presentations on the influence process, if I ever say to people, you know, this principle that we're talking about, the principle of scarcity or the, you know, I'm going to give you the smallest thing you can do to get people to move to harness the power of scarcity. Right. That if you have that. Or I'll give you the smallest thing you can do to get the power of reciprocity to work in your direction. Right. If I ever say that, the room falls silent. Yes. And I get people's attention almost completely. Why? Well, ROI is why. Return on investment is why, if I can give you the smallest thing you can do to move people in a particular direction by using one of these principles. Everybody wants to know that because we, We. We don't want to have to spend a lot of time or energy or cost doing to getting there if we can do it with. So now one thing that we're doing with this new book, and we have a new program that we're. We're developing online, we're emphasizing the small bigs. The smallest things that people can do. Yeah.

Which I loved because when I saw you present, and that was a month or so ago, you had on the screen the four bottles of shampoo.

Yep.

Fascinating. Never thought of that, never considered it. And maybe you. Please tell the audience what I'm talking about.

So.

One of the things that causes people to like you, your products and service, is to associate those things with positive experiences and positive outcomes and all those positive connections, cause they, they lend themselves, they. They become connected to what it is you have to offer. And what's the smallest thing you can do to cause people to feel a positive association with you? It's a smile.

It's a smile. I. I saw, I heard an interview with a researcher who said if you.

If you. He did this study where he asked people who went into service businesses, you know, dental offices, medical offices.

You know, gyms, yoga studios, financial services, offices, when you walk up to the desk, what's the thing you most want from the person who's behind that desk? And it wasn't competence or skill. It wasn't know how it was. I want to smile.

That smile tells me that I'm approved, that I'm welcomed here, that I'm liked.

Okay. So of course we should make sure that anybody that our people interact, that our, our customers or prospects interact with should get a smile from our team. And it should be a genuine smile. It should not be a fake smile. It should be. You should ask your people, find a reason to smile broadly at this person. So it's a genuine smile. Okay, well, that's fine. But is there something that's even smaller than a smile that still works? It is. It's the shape of a smile.

And the study that you're talking about showed people four bottles of a shampoo. Right. And they were identical in every way except that at the bottom of the label there was a line that either had an upturned edges or a straight line or there was no line there at all or had a downturn frown like looking edges.

And then they were told, which of these bottles would you choose? By far, they chose the bottle that had a smile.

At the bottom.

For the same product. And they didn't even realize that that's why they did it. They didn't even know that that's why they did it. So something as small as that, it's a small, big.

We can put smiles on our packaging, on our.

On our business cards, on our signage, on our logos. Why not? We like the people who come to us. We should show them that we like them if they interact with us. Here's another example of this. Online.

You could do this. There was a study of 6,700 online commercial sites where they did a B tests where the inclusion of one factor was either there or not. And they looked at 29 different factors. Some were like economic factors. Is there free shipping? Some were technological. Is there a search function within the site where you can go wherever you want? Some were kind of sales related. Is there a call to action line at the end of your.

Pitch?

None of those was as effective as the seven principles of influence. And one that used the liking principle was also a small B. It wasn't a smile. But another thing that made people feel approved when you went to their site. If there was a welcoming statement on the landing page, you got significantly more conversions than if there wasn't a welcoming statement.

Hello, welcome. We're so glad that you're here with us. We want to show you what we can offer. The way you would welcome somebody into your home. The way you would welcome somebody into your brick and mortar operation. You would you just welcome them small, big, small, big.

I love it.

So now we're focused on when we talk about these principles and how they can be applied. We're focused on making sure that people get at least one or more small bigs with associated with each of these universal principles of persuasion.

So that leads me, perfectly perfect lead into what I was going to ask you next. You've got a course coming out, you've got a way. Because if I was listening to this right now, which is what happened to me actually is I was listening to you being interviewed by Joe Polish and I was like, how do I get that? How do I find that? How do I apply that? How can I use that in my business because you have so much to offer from the smallest, you know, the, the small, big to the seven principles. How can, what, what have you developed now to allow people to use this, understand it, implement it?

We're about to launch next month of online on demand program where people can go and get information about how to apply these principles ethically in business situations.

And.

Until that point, we have a newsletter that we will send every week to give you a new tip as to how to, how to use this. And you. It's at your influencenews.com if you go there, sign up for our newsletter. You'll get all the information about this new program that we've got, this online on demand program as well as a tip that is based in scientific research every week about how to increase your outcomes as a communicator.

I love that. And so for those of you listening, I did this a while ago. I signed up, but I got something today that I needed to verify, so I went and verified it. But what the reason I'm telling you that is when you go sign up, notice the little things that they do that Dr. Cialdini does and his team that make a big difference. Little things like when you put your name in, how it says, hey, nice to meet you.

Yeah, it's a welcome.

It's a welcome.

And by the way, our, our, our logo, logo for it's called the Cialdini Institute, has a smile next to it.

We. Yes, we. So I told my, I showed. By the way, I've showed a lot of people. You don't know this, but when you were presenting, I took a picture like a lot of people did, of the bottles of shampoo, the four bottles of shampoo. And so I've shown that to a lot of people, including my team. And so today we were redesigning one of our logos and one of our team members came up and showed her version of it and said, what do you notice about this? And so she had put a smile on that logo because of what you said. And you gave a lot of examples, by the way, of other companies that are already doing this. And maybe you can mention a few of those that most people would be familiar with.

Certainly probably.

There are many. But for example, Kraft Foods has a smile.

And.

There are so many, it's hard to. But ConAgra, which is a big agricultural firm, has this. Dan and Yogurt has it. They all have. Yeah.

The biggest one is Amazon.

Amazon is absolutely the biggest night. Here's what I like about this is what I tell people when I. When I talk about this. Do you know how much money Amazon spent to come down to that logo with a smile on focus groups and designers and surveys and interviews and hundreds of thousands? And they came down to the smile. It didn't cost us a cent. We just looked at what the research said, like that study of the shampoo bottles. That's all we needed. There was no cost associated with it because we had the scientific evidence that guided our choice.

I love it. Yeah. So if you look, I don't think for you listen, for the listeners, you may not even be aware of what you're looking at, because I wasn't when I heard you say that. I didn't realize that Amazon, all they have now is that little smile. Yeah, they don't have anything past that. If you look at their trucks, on the side of the truck is just that little smile. And I don't think I would have noticed it or seen it the way that you talked about it until I heard you say that. Now that's all I can think about.

Here's something that I didn't realize until I saw this evidence, and that is if you ever see an ad for wristwatches in the newspapers, magazines, online and so on.

The configuration of the hands is a smile. It's 10 and 2. It didn't used to be that way, but they did a lot of research and they found that people not only like the ad more if the face of the watch had a smile on it, they liked the watch more and said they were more inclined to buy that watch. And again, without realizing that had anything to do with a smile. It was just unconsciously resonating in them that there was a smile there.

I am not sure if this is true or not, but I feel like I've seen it somewhere where I saw two watches compared to each other and one was the smile and one was a frown. Yeah, I don't know where that was, but now it makes sense. You know, one had 10 and two and the other had whatever that would be six in or seven and seven.

Or something like that.

Yeah, yeah. And now it would make a lot more sense.

Exactly.

Tell us more about the course that you have coming up and what will that provide to people?

So, first of all, it's a online course, and because it's on demand, it means you can go in and out of it at any time and you will see a set of examples and I will be pro narrating it and talking about the principles of influence, about the small bigs that can be used and how to employ them ethically. This is, I can't tell you, it's how grateful people are when I speak and I talk about the importance of ethics. Some, at least one or two people come up every time and see, thank you for that. I want to be able to be successful without having to feel like a worm. You know, I want to be able to be successful and make it right for people. And so what we say is that it's about scientifically based evidence. It's about application of that scientifically based evidence to business.

Choices, and it's about the ethicality of those applications. We can, we, we only can do this in ways. And we point to the ways that you can harness these principles in entirely ethical ways. So, so those are the three features of it. And then for those individuals who pass at a certain level of it, we give them an evaluation to make sure that they understand all of the material. We offer them the opportunity to be coaches for those who have yet to go through and who would want some guidance and coaching expertise in helping them stay true to what they've learned as they go forward.

So more and more of this is going to allow you to know that people are implementing it the right way.

Right, Exactly.

Neil, why did you decide to do a course?

I'm a teacher, Gary. I grew up wanting to be a teacher. And what I recognized is that my reach was very limited inside the classroom or even inside a presentation at an event. But in line with a course, I increased the reach of this information. And the idea again is, you know, I want to, as you nailed with the Y test for me, I want to contribute. And so this allows me to contribute to a greater extent by increasing, increasing the scale and reach of the information.

It's funny because before you said what you said a minute ago, I had already written in a big box around it the word ethically because. And then you started right into it. I was going to pick up my iPad and show you because I've got about, I don't know, 10 pages of notes from what we've been talking about. But that's. There's no real way for you to guarantee it's ethically other than to teach it that way.

That's right. That's right. To teach it that way. And the, the difference for us is you point to, to something that's already there in the situation. True social proof, true scarcity, true authority, whatever it is, which educates people into ascent. You, you never trick them. You, you are just raising something that's truly there to consciousness and then that steers them in the right direction because it's truly there. There is authority and opinion. There is popularity and so on. Yeah.

So you have studied quite a bit. And I mean that's what you've done the last many, many years. What are you studying next? Or is that a fair question?

Post suasion.

So we've got pre suasion, we've got persuasion and we've got post. What's post suasion is what do you say after someone has said yes.

That keeps them engaged and part of your brand, part loyal to the choice that they've made.

Right. Part of your.

Yeah.

So they stay with you so that the, the change that you've created isn't temporary, it's durable.

Wow. And we. Well, I don't even want to go there because the next thing, for really if this, for for all you that are listening, if this is.

So what I did after I heard you speak multiple times now is of course I bought all your books and I have. And I bought them on.

From the Kindle as well as the audio so that I can listen as I'm watching as I'm reading and super valuable, super valuable stuff. And we're, we're implementing lots and lots of it, which is just fascinating because this gives me and my team.

Language.

Around what to. How to design different aspects of our clients or prospects interaction with us. But I don't know how I would have had these conversations otherwise. I don't know how my team would have been ready.

The thing about it, it's brilliant that you bring your team into this as a learning experience because you gain a shared language for these things so that you do all resonate to the same concepts because you have the same terms now and they all mean the same thing.

Yes.

As a result for you, what is social proof?

What's social proof?

You know, what is that? You know, well, what's unity? What does that really mean? Well, you know now what it means and you can say that word and it produces a set of associations to exactly what you're. What you want to accomplish.

Yeah. It's fun to watch them engage with each other that way and incorporate it in what we're doing. Knowing where it came from, knowing that just showing them that one little study with the smile.

Yeah.

Changed so much of what we would never even have considered. That wasn't no chance that would have been in our thinking had I not seen that. And I'm sure you have so many tips like that in your course coming up. So many examples, studies that stick with, I think it's the studies that really make it usable.

The nice thing about studies is that you have data. You, you have, well, this is how you do it without that statement. This is how you do it with the because or you know, you and, and now you get the difference between 60% and 93%. Well, that's.

That'S.

Believable, that you can have confidence in it then.

Okay, last question for you. I know we've been going for quite a while. Last question. What's the best piece of advice that you've ever been given?

Here's it, here's what it, I think it is when you go into a new situation where you don't have previous experience with the people in that situation.

Think the best of them.

Because.

It allows you to be generous with them.

And that has two very powerful consequences associated with the principles of influence. If you are generous with them, they will be generous with you by virtue of reciprocity. Secondly, if you're generous with them, they will like you. And people want to do business with those they liked.

So. But you have to think well of them from the start, even if you don't know them. Now, I'm not saying that if, if you're, you know somebody to be a cheater, you shouldn't be generous with them, but it's when you don't know any, but give them the benefit of the doubt, be. Think well of them, that allows you to show your generosity and it will flow back to you along with positive regard.

I love that. Okay, so if people are listening and they want to connect with you, follow you, be ready for the course that's coming up. How can they best connect?

Again, the best way would be to go to our newsletter, which will give them all the information about that course, how to sign up for it, and so on. And also these tips. And it is yourinfluencenews.com all one word. Your influencenews.com awesome.

Thank you so much for being here today, Dr. Cialdini. I've been looking forward to this for, since, since we talked and you've, you know, the stories, you've shared so much, great knowledge that's usable and implementable. So thank you so much for being here.

Well, you know what, Gary? I really enjoyed this, this session that we had because it wasn't an interview, it was a conversation. And I learned from the insights that you provide. It was, it was great.

Yes, thank you. And I look forward to staying in contact with you as we both are on our journeys to change the world. So this was great.

All right, so long. For now.

I really hope you enjoyed today's episode and that through today's guest, you heard how important it is to know your why and how impactful it can be in your life and the lives of those around you. Be sure to head over to why institute.com and discover your why today. Remember, the more you know about yourself, the more you'll know about others. I'm Dr. Gary Sanchez, and I'll see you on the next episode.