How To Be More Persuasive in 17 Minutes | Power Moves

Good morning, Believe Nation. Today we're going to talk about how you can be more persuasive. Rule number 2 is my personal favorite, and I'm curious if you're growing— which one you guys like the best. And as always, guys, as you're listening, if you hear something that really, really resonates with you, please leave it in the comments below and put quotes around it so other people can be inspired. And also, as you write things down, you're much more likely to keep it in here as well. Enjoy.

What I want you to get is that the single most important skill in life— we hate the word selling, so I'll give you a word that it really is. That doesn't have the negative connotation. It's the word that all leaders have. What would that word be? Influence. What changes companies is leaders. The only way to change a company is leadership. If I want to change a company that I own and I want to make a shift in that company, the number one thing I'm going to do is shifting leadership. That might be taking leaders to a different level. That might bring new leaders in. That might be new leaders of new voices with new perspectives. With new skill sets, new directions, but we need to take things to another level. Leaders solve problems and leaders maximize resources. If you're going to solve problems, you can't do it yourself or it would have already been solved. You have to get others to help you to do it. That requires influence. True? If you're going to get people to maximize resources, that requires influence. If you're going to get people to partner with you, provide you resources, capital, Suppliers, anything that requires influence. If you're going to have an impact on your kids or your community or the world, that requires influence. There is no more important skill of leadership than influence, and yet most of us think of it like selling, and as a result, we don't master influence. Because I know that if you can't influence, you can't lead. But if you can influence powerfully, intelligently, With integrity, there's no limit to whatever you can envision and what you can make real. And if your influence becomes not just you as the influence, but you're able to influence systems, people, company, culture, if you can turn other people into influencers, now whatever you vision about can be made into reality.

So let me give you a hypothetical. Suppose that you're a parent and you have a daughter, say a teenage daughter. Whose room is an absolute mess. It just looks like a bomb went off in there, and you want your daughter to clean your room. You're trying to sell her on the idea of cleaning her room. What do you do? Well, you could try to bribe her, and that might work in the short term. You could try to threaten her. That might work in the short term. You can try to exhort her. You can try to, you know, tell her about the meaning of clean rooms. But there's actually a technique from actually the counseling literature really crystallized by a fellow named Mike Pantalon of Yale University, called motivational interviewing. And what you can do more effectively is ask two irrational questions. So let's say that you have a daughter named Maria, and Maria has a messy room, and you want Maria to clean her room. The two questions you could ask Maria are this: Maria, on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 meaning I'm not ready at all, 10 meaning I'm ready to do it right now. How ready are you, Maria, to clean your room? Now, Maria's room is a pigsty, so she's not going to give you a 10 or a 9 or even a 5. Maybe she'll give you a 2. Okay, so she says, "Dad, I'm a 2." Well, here's where the second question comes in, and it's a really interesting, counterintuitive question. You say to Maria, "Okay, Maria, you're a 2." Why didn't you pick a lower number? Now our instincts as parents is to say, as a parent of 3 kids, I have this instinct very strongly. If my kid were to say to me, I'm a 2, I would say, what, why are you a 2? You should be a 9. But you say, why didn't you pick a lower number, Maria? So here's what happens. Maria has to explain why she isn't a 1, okay? And so she says, well, you know, I am 15 and I probably should get my act together. You know, if I had my room cleaner, I'd be able to get to school on time faster and maybe see my friends a little bit more. You know, you and mom never know where anything is anyway, so I'm kind of wasting my time asking you to help me. What happens? With that second question, why didn't you pick a lower number, Maria begins articulating her own reasons for doing something. And this is really axiomatic in sales and persuasion. When people have their own reasons for doing something, not yours, their own reasons for doing something, they believe those reasons more deeply and adhere to the behavior more strongly. Now suppose Maria says, "Dad, on a scale of 1 to 10, I'm a 1." Okay, that makes things a little more complicated, but it's actually really, really important to understand this. If you say to Maria— if Maria says, "Dad, I'm a 1," Here's what you say to Maria. Maria, what can we do to make you a 2? And what often that does is this. Maria will say, well, maybe if you and mom help me for 15 minutes to get this started. Maybe if you maybe not set the table and take out the trash tonight, that would free up some time for me. Because usually when people are a 1, it's often because— not because they're purely obstinate. It's because there's some kind of environmental obstacle in front of them. And if you— if someone says they're a 1, find out what that obstacle is, try to make them a 2, and that might give you some more momentum. The example I just gave had to do with parenting, but you can use this more universally. Now, you can't whip it out at every single persuasive encounter, but you can use it to persuade your boss. You can use it maybe to persuade a reluctant prospect in an actual sales encounter. You can use it with someone, your neighbor, who's resisting moving his garbage cans or something like that. The key here, and again, you gotta go back to first principles here, the key here is that we tend to think that persuasion or motivation is something that one person does to another. And what the social science tells us very clearly is that it's really something that people do for themselves. And your job as a persuader, as a motivator, is to reset the context and surface people's own reasons for doing something, because it works a lot better.

Every phone call you make is recorded. There's no single phone call that goes in and out of North America that they don't have a recording of, and they can search by word, by tone, by tempo. They can even recognize voices now. There is no such thing as privacy. Everything you've ever put on the internet is there forever, and people know it and can search it. The way you write is searchable now. You can not sign your email. You can put it on somebody else's email, and the structure of your language and the way you influence things can be studied at this level. So the good news about that is manipulation as an ongoing tool for success is over, but adding value will never go out of style. Truth will never go out of style. So influencing with integrity is the secret. But what really influences people? Do facts and figures? We give you enough facts and figures out of a core story, is that going to influence people?

No.

It's the weaving of that story together in a way that produces what shifts people, and that's human emotion. Ultimately, the big game here is emotion. You have to influence emotion. You have to influence the emotion of your people if you're going to maximize resources. And if we all agree, as we talked about the other day, it's not a lack of resources, it's a lack of what? Resourcefulness. If you're creative enough, if you're playful enough, if you're determined enough, if you're focused enough, You can find a way. If you're giving enough, if you're generous enough, if you're honest enough, if you're courageous enough, you will get people to help you. You will find the way. You will make that thing happen. You'll access the resource. You'll get someone to coach you, teach you, loan it to you, let you try it, drive it, experience it. So it's the ability to influence emotion, because that's what affects our intellect. That's the bottom line. A core story is only there to give you a set of facts to educate someone that will make them emotional enough to make a decision. And what they do is they go through a series of things that you have emotions about that may say them in a non-emotional way, but the only reason they work is because you know they're going to open the person's emotion. How many agree with me on this? Say, "Ahh." So as leaders, we can never forget that humans are emotional creatures, including ourselves. And to influence other people, We have to know what already influences them. We can't ever forget what truly influences them. It's going to come down to our ability to connect with them at a deep emotional level or get others to do the same.

Men and women with charisma and personal magnetism almost invariably have a clear vision of who they are, where they're going, and of what they're trying to achieve. And you can develop this as well. Leaders in sales and management have a vision of what they're trying to create and why they're doing what they're doing. They're focused on accomplishing some great purpose with their lives and their work. They're decisive about every aspect of their lives. They know exactly what they want and what they have to do to get it. They plan their work and then they work their plan. You can increase your charisma and the magnetism of your personality by setting clear goals for for yourself, making plans to achieve them, and then working on your plans with discipline and determination every day. The whole world seems to move aside for the person who knows exactly where he's going. In fact, the clearer you are about your purposes and goals, the more likely people will be to attribute other positive qualities to you. When you're clear about your goals, people will see you or perceive you as being a better and more admirable human being. And when you have clear goals, you begin attracting to yourself the people and opportunities necessary to make those goals a reality.

In Robert Cialdini's book Influence, he says a well-known principle of human behavior says that when we ask someone to do a favor, we will be more successful if we provide a reason. Here's an example from that book. Listen to Listen to this. A woman was standing in line for a copy machine and she said, "Excuse me, I have 5 pages. May I go ahead of you and make my copies?" 60% of people said yes. Now listen to this. She tried asking a slightly different way. She gave a reason why. This time she said, "Excuse me, I have 5 pages. May I use the copy machine because I'm in a rush?" And this time 94% of the people said yes. That's 1.5 times as many. That is a lot of persuasion. Now there's more to that study and you can check it out in Cialdini's book. But the point here is that when you give people a reason why you're asking for something, they're more inclined to give it to you.

How do I add more value so that I can get paid more, so that I can have more influence, so that I can make more of a difference where I'm at? You always hear it all the time, right? Add more value. Well, how? How do you add more value so you can get paid more and have more influence? Part of adding value is helping people reconnect with some emotional side of their lives, right? I know that sounds so simple in some ways, but also philosophical, that a lot of what we experience today in this world is, is, is just so cheap and so commoditized and so technically driven that it's our job if we want to add a lot of value, to bring back in humanity, to bring back in the emotion, to bring back in the color, the flair, the joy, the vibrancy, the real hues of human emotion that are often missing from everything. If you bring that back into everything that you're contributing, you'll go to a level of adding value that most people never understand. And people won't just follow you because you're the person who asks the question— best questions. People won't just follow you because you're the person who knows the most people. People will follow you because you're an inspirer and you're a leader, because they can see within you that you have true energy, true engagement, true human emotion with everything that you're contributing. And because of that, they know that you're somebody they want to follow.

So my take on this is if you want to be more persuasive, then you need to care more. You need to care more. And the care comes from two sides. Versus you caring more about it yourself, having more passion in it. When you have passion, when you're excited about something, people want to join you. People want to be around people who are passionate about something. You can gear somebody towards something because you have the passion for it. Sam Walton from Walmart used to say that passion is so important and that people will catch it like a fever. You have a fever, other people will catch it. You know, you have a cold, other people will catch it. You have a passion, other people will catch it. So if you want to be more persuasive, when you're saying these words that it's really going to help somebody, whatever it is, your product or service you're trying to promote, your book, your YouTube channel, whatever it is, if you are excited and it comes through in every word that comes out of your mouth, it's going to be much more persuasive to the people listening than if you're really boring and saying, yeah, I have a YouTube channel, you should check it out, there's some good stuff on there. It's just a different vibe. You don't want to go check that thing out. When somebody's excited, like, I want a piece of that, I want more excitement and passion in my life. And So I'm going to go check it out. And so that happens when you care more. So care more and tie into the why. And remember, before going into every conversation, why this is so important to you and to them. The second part of care is caring about them, caring about their best interests, caring about what they want to do in their life, in their business, in the result that they are trying to achieve, and how you can potentially help them. If you have a product or service that can help somebody solve a critical problem, then it's your responsibility to show your care to them. If they can feel that you actually care about them, that you're not just trying to sell them your product or service, that you actually deep down care about their success, they're going to be much more receptive to it. You're going to be much more persuasive to them. I think with all of this, it's not just about trying to convince somebody to do something that they don't really want to do. I think the ultimate persuasion comes from helping them realize that this is something that they want to do. That your product or service will actually help them. If you look at my YouTube videos, I don't care if you guys watch every video. I'd actually prefer that you don't watch every video. I want you to watch the videos that have the most meaning and impact to you and then go take some kind of action. The best thing from YouTube's perspective is spend all day long on YouTube watching my videos. I don't want that to happen. I want you to watch some videos and then go take action. Stop watching and go do something in your life or your business. And if you need to watch these videos as a way to get more inspiration, to get more motivation, to get more strategies and tactics and ideas to do something, that's great. Make that part of your daily routine. Amazing. And then go take some action. And hopefully you feel that care that I have for you guys. I deeply want you to be successful. I want— more than I want you to be on my YouTube channel, I want you to have success with your plan. I want this year to be amazing for you. I want you to get this thing out of your head and out into the world having a big impact, making a lot of money, having the life that you want to live, and reaching your potential. This is what fuels me. And so when I speak like that, when I connect with people in that way, they feel the care that I have for them, and it makes a huge, huge, huge difference. So my tip to being more persuasive is to care. Care more for yourself. Care more about the passion that you have for the product or service, the industry that you're in, and then care more more about the customer. Help them achieve the objective that they want to achieve and show them that you're not just trying to make a sale, you're trying to help them live a better life or have a better business. Care more. Thank you guys so much for watching. I made this video because Sushmita Ojha asked me to. So if there's a topic you'd like me to cover in the next edition of Believe Life, leave it down in the comments below and I'll see what I can do. I'd also love to know what did you learn from this video? What was favorite clip and why? How are you going to be more persuasive? Or do you have a tip that you'd like to share as well? Please leave it down in the comments below. I'm excited to see what you guys have to say. Finally, I want to give a quick shout out to Fabian. Fabian, thank you so much for the interview and for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word. It really, really, really means a lot to me, and I hope you're enjoying the read. So thank you guys again for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love, have an amazing day, and I'll see you soon.

If you do not know how to persuade people, it is virtually impossible unless you want to hit lotto. You get lucky, you can hit lotto. Or if you remember the Lucky Sperm Club, you inherited it from your, from your parents, right? Well, maybe, yeah, you can circumvent this, this, that, that process. But it's really about seeing the world as it is right now accurately, not worse than this, but seeing the world accurately then seeing the world better than it is, and then developing a strategy to get there. And one of the cornerstone strategies for that is being able to persuade, to influence, to make your thoughts known in a way that empowers people and gets you what you want to.