Dr. Robert Cialdini’s Top Tips on Using Social Proof to Win Over Any Audience

I want to talk about the newest research that I've done. When Alex did that Cartesian wordplay earlier.

I dash therefore I am.

I put in there, I research therefore I am. So I want to let you know what the latest data suggest about the influence process and how we can leverage.

It for positive outcomes.

You know, it's the case that this book Influence that I wrote has been very good to me, sold a lot of copies, appears in a lot of languages. I was in Poland a while ago and I have a colleague there, Professor Wilhelmina Vosinska. She said, you know, Bob, your book Influence is so famous in Poland, my students think you're dead. So it's been good to me. But there are limitations to those principles that I talk about, especially the one called social proof. The idea that people decide what is legitimate, what is a good choice for them to make in a situation by looking around them, at people like them, what are those like me around me doing, what are they believing, what are they choosing, and so on. That'll probably be a good choice for me. There was a study done in Beijing that showed that if restaurant managers put on the menus of their restaurant a little asterisk next to certain items, they immediately became 13 to 20% more likely to be purchased. Now, what did the asterisk stand for? It wasn't. This is our special for tonight. If you've read any of those Kitchen Confidential books, you know that tonight's special is what was left over the previous night and the chef is bringing it to us in that form. And it didn't say, this is a specialty of the Hausen. It said, this is one of our most popular items. And because it was popular, it became more popular for its popularity. So this is a very powerful principle. But when I talk about the six principles of influence in that book and I come to Social Proof and talk about popularity, I often get a question that goes something like this, but I've got a new idea, or I've got a startup, or I've got a product that isn't the most popular yet, but it's great. How do I use Social Proof? I don't have the great sales numbers associated with it. I can't claim that sort of top of the line popularity. What do I do? And I always had to say, well, thank goodness there are five other principles. Don't use it if you don't have social proof. Use scarcity or use authority, or use one of the others that's available to you. But then I was reading a book it's an old book, and I like to reread books that I've always liked. And this was a book on the psychology of gestalt perception. The idea that we very often, especially in this country, we tend to focus on the thing that's in front of us, a point of information, what's focal in our visual field, and we pour our attention there and we miss the context, we miss what else is there that would allow us to leverage that particular point of information better. And the book was talking about something in the theory of gestalt psychology called the law of continuation. It's that if you present to people at least three data points that have some kind of function like this, or like this, or like this, they project the next data point as a continuation of that function. If you've got this, this, this, they never suspect the next one will be this. Or if you've got this, they never suspect that the next one will be this. Often that's the case, but they project the trajectory on into the future. And it seemed to me that that was a solution to the problem that people had been confronting me with about social proof.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video. And I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out, and if you'd like to.

Get it absolutely free, there's a link.

Below in the description, or you can wait till the end of this video, or you can simply go to Joe's free book and you can get a copy there.

That is if instead of simply presenting someone with information that says, well, we're in the minority now in terms of sales or market share, you presented someone with information that you have advanced to that minority, you've moved. They're going to project into the future that you will be in the majority. Well, this is worth testing. So here's what we did. We brought people into an experiment. We said it was going to be two experiments. The first one, we wanted you just to read some articles about the importance of conserving water in the home. People read these articles, and then we asked them to rate various things about the articles that they read. That was the control group. There was another group that said, here are these articles. And right now, 30% of homeowners do make a regular attempt to conserve water in their homes. And then there was a third group. They read the articles and we said, two years ago, 20% of people conserved water in their home regularly. Last year it was 25. This year, 30%. It's the same 30%. Right? Then we said, here's the second part of the study. It's actually a consumer preference study. We've got a new tube of tooth, a new brand of toothpaste. We would like you to try it, rate it while we leave the room, and then that will be the end of the experiment. So we gave them a tube of toothpaste, a toothbrush, and we said, so brush your teeth right at this. And we measured how much water they used. There was a basin underneath. Here's what we found. Those people who were told 30% of people conserve water on a regular basis used more water than the control group because they could do the math. If 30% were doing it, it means 70% were not. Social proof was on the side of not conserving water. But those individuals who saw the trend to 30%, they used significantly less water.

Water.

Brushing their teeth. Right. Because they saw the potential of this idea. Two things about this that I like, and then I'm going to finish here. First is it was the same 30%. If you have a new idea, a breakthrough idea, it's got traction. Don't just say, here's the number where it is. Tell people how it got to that number. If it has merit, it deserves that presentation, that characterization of it.

Right?

That's one thing. It's the same 30%, but it gets a very different response depending on the context in which you place that number. Second reason I like this is this gets the attention and the response of two kinds of people. Because what we found when we did what's called a mediational analysis of our data was that the thing that produced this jump in those who saw the trending norm was their belief that it soon would be the majority. That's the thing that caused them to use less water. Right? So you finally get something that appeals to two kinds of people that we've all known about. Those people who want to be with the crowd and those people who want to be ahead of the crowd. They're both attracted to this trending norms idea. So this is my recommendation based on this new research. And by the way, Joe's right. Nobody else knows this research. Nobody else. This is the principle of scarcity, another one of the principles we talk about. Nobody else has access to this research. So a little value added for being part of the Genius Network. Thank you very much for your kind attention. I think Joe's going to be out here in a second. He wanted me to maybe take some questions from the audience. So let me ask if he's going to emcee that, or I should just entertain questions that people might want to ask at this point. Yes, we have someone right here.

My name is Chris Murray. I recently have done my own research on your beautiful premise of reason why. And I want to ask you why you think humans are so much more willing to follow a leader or a marketer when you give them the reason why. It's amazing. My clients, they might be misbehaving or not following my rules. If I'm running a big event, which I did last week, and I give them the reason why, and it's magic. So I just wanted you to talk a little bit about reason why. It's been so effective for me as a business owner, with employees, with clients, as a marketer. If you give people the reason why, it's like a magic to their brain about decision making. So if you could speak to that, I would love it.

People need reasons before they act. There's a good evolutionary account of that. We don't want to see ourselves as moving about in some sort of impulsive, spontaneous way. We want to see ourselves as having a rationale for what we do that's consistent with our self concept. So if we give people a reason, and so sometimes the reason why we give them can be nonsense, but they still move. If there is a reason offered in addition to a recommendation itself, we have to give them that justification for it. And it satisfies that primal need to move forward. Only if you have a strong reason to undertake that step. Right.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video. And I want to let you know that I have a new book that's coming.

If I want to be, if I want something, one cue that I have is how emotionally I desire that thing. So I'm not going to say that. Just that because it's emotional, it's off. It's off limits. Here's what I would say.

I guess what I'm asking is, is there any limit to the amount of emotion you bring into the influence or to the persuasive conversation? Just as much as. Yeah, I mean, can you just bring as much as you can to get the outcome you want or do you check the outcome along some value set?

Yeah. So here's what I would say. Emotion is one way people decide what to do. If we just come in there and get them emotional and then lead them in the direction of this product or idea, then I have some problem with that. But if we decide ahead of time what we have is valuable to them, if we know that they will increase their outcomes as a result of the merits of the case, not the emotions supporting it. Then I'm okay with getting them excited about this because they're still going in the direction of a properly made decision based on the merits, not the emotions.

Got it.

Thank you.

You know what?

Since she just.

I'll just do this.

First off, this is. What do you think of Robert? So good. So I'm going to see if I can find this because I want to get your advice on this if I can do it real quickly. So Annie is an amazing love coach and we actually did a podcast episode called Marketing to Find True Love. And so she helped me draft a singles ad.

Right.

And I want to read it to you and get your opinion on if this is persuasive or not. So I'm not interested in changing you. I want you to relax into being who you most want to be. I'm here to protect and encourage the parts of you that are creative, intelligent, fierce and tender. I'll be your sanctuary and your trampoline. What I want is a woman who's devoted to something so important, she's dedicated her life to it. I will devote myself to supporting you there. Your growth and expansion will become our priority. I once read you don't fall in love with another person. You fall in love with who you get to be around them. I want you to feel the most yourself when you're around me. This will inspire me to do the same. I'm a successful entrepreneur with a wide array of passions, committed to personal development and growth. I aim to add value to every person I meet. I create connections between powerful leaders and build networks of collaboration. My high paced, intense lifestyle requires a strong woman who knows how to represent her needs and capitalize on once in a lifetime opportunities. If you're proud of the way you love others, remain tender in moments of fear, and feel confident in your ability to hold the pain of another, then will resonate well. It takes courage to be sensitive and honest when life feels challenging. I need someone with this kind of courage. If you're in the top five most extraordinary women you've ever met, then I want to meet you. I promise I will treat you like a queen. But you have to already know that you are one.

Wow.

No, that's Annie Lala right there.

That's great. I'll tell you what struck me as especially powerful about that.

When you go into a new relationship.

There'S a lot of uncertainty and you wind up fearing that you will be hurt. The first part of that said, look, I like you, I want you, your authentic you. I will be supportive of that element that I see in you. Well, great. That's like what I always claim about the sales process. Every time I attended any sales program, they tell you the number one rule of sales is to get your customer to like you. I think that's the number two rule. The number one rule is to come to like your customer. And when they recognize that you like them, all the defenses come down. Because you're there as a teammate, you're there as a help mate, you're there as eventually a soul mate. Right. That's the sort of thing that would get people to move in that direction. So I thought that was great.

And so influence is way more important than just selling things, products and services. And in your business, I mean, your. What are some of the. You've done more research on this subject than anyone in the world. You're the most cited living social psychologist. What, what is some of the most surprising things that you have discovered about human behavior and what they respond to and what they don't do in all of your research that you've not talked about?

Well, I think what I mentioned and what got me to write the book Pre Suasion is a good example. People don't recognize the extent to which they are influenced by in a particular direction before they receive the influence appeal. I'll tell you how it came to me, Joe. I had written this book, Six Principles, and there was a knock on my door one Saturday morning. The guy, he appeared, he wanted me to support a good cause, after school programs for children in my district. He didn't show me any credentials to indicate that he was with my district. I hadn't heard anything from the school district about this after school program idea, but I gave him more money than I normally do. To people who come to my door, actually like, almost twice as much. And after I closed the door, I remember leaning back against it and saying, what just happened there? This guy didn't use any of the six principles that you've built your reputation on. And you just gave him more money by twice as you normally did. He didn't use the liking principle. He didn't say, oh, he didn't compliment me on my landscaping. He didn't use the social proof. He didn't say, oh, all your neighbors are already giving. He didn't use authority, didn't say, all the experts say the importance of after school programs. He didn't use scarcity. He didn't say, we only have a Limited amount of time before the semester starts to get this program. No, he didn't do any of those things. Here's what he did. He brought his seven year old daughter.

With him and he focused me on.

Children and he focused me on the needs of children and the challenges of children. And he had me pre sued that when he then launched into his appeal about the need for kids, I was readied for it. What I think the biggest thing we fail to recognize is that there's an entire persuasive arena that exists before we send our message. What do you build on in that arena? You build a launching pad for your message. People don't understand that it's there. And that's why almost no one recognizes what that they've been persuaded. Because they never look at what happened before, just what happened in the message. Never recognizing that there was a teeing up of their message that produced their questions. Why did I give so much to this guy?

So let me ask you this, Chris. So what's the most valuable negotiation technique or strategy that you've ever learned? Why is it so valuable? Because you know a lot of them.

You know, one of the simplest ones. All right, let's go with simplest. Mirroring. Repeating the last three words of what someone just said.

The last three words.

Yeah, you know the last three words. Just repeat the. Nice job, Dean. I know what you're doing to me. For it right away without even how dare you put me on me. Nice. No, if you can master that skill. Because a lot of times you just need some time to think. You know, everybody says, boy, you know, now that I'm thinking about it, I know what I wish I would have said. And now that I'm thinking about it, now I see what I missed. That mirror technique, the last three words buys you that time in the moment without the other side realizing that's what you're doing. Because they're going to go on, they're going to talk some more, they're going to add a lot in. One of the crazy things about the mirror technique is it's a preferred move of the people that possess both a high IQ and a high eq. Now, I cannot explain why that is the case. I can speculate on it. I think if they are high in both areas, they love the simplicity of it and, and the lack of effort and the data loving people. So they, they love how little they have to do to get a bunch of information out of the other side. But that's, that's, that's probably the single Most valuable thing that you could learn. Simply.

Very good. Very good. Well, so we've talked about this one before, but it's always so important because you've shifted, you've helped so many people just with this one. So why is the word no more important than yes? And if you could give an example.

Wow.

Wow. Yeah. Okay, so the key to negotiation, it's not about you. We hear this all the time. But here you hear no and you go like, oh, my God. Oh my God, I hate no. I hate being told no. I think we get that conditioned every child on earth, regardless of the language. What's the first word they learn?

No.

Because they get told no and they get pointed at them and no, don't do that. No, no, no. So we get it beat into a hardwired into us. So when we hear it, something horrible has just happened. But the flip side, the person who's saying it feels protected and safe and they calm down and they relax. They feel like they just protected themselves. The other thing too is you can say no when you're tired and then immediately contribute to the conversation and think things through really quickly. So it's completely different if it's about them. People love to say no. They feel. And they're gonna say a bunch more afterwards. You know, I got a couple no stories that I love, but I'll tell one of my favorites, Robert Herjavec. We're negotiate with Robert Herjavec's crew over how many tickets are gonna buy for one of our training events. I've already offered him one. His response for free. His response to the one for free was how many can we buy? Not how many more free ones can we get. I'm a huge Robert Herjavec fan based on my contribute to the conversation and things through really quickly. So it's complete interaction with them. I find him to be a generous decent human being. So we're going back and forth and the event is getting ready to sell out. And my son Brandon, who runs my company, he calls me on the phone late in the day. I'm in la. He says, you get Herjavec to commit. How many tickets are gonna buy now? Different if it's about them. People love to say no.

They feel.

And they're gonna say a bunch more afterwards. You know, I got a couple no stories that I love, but I'll tell one of my favorites, Robert Herjavec. We're negotiating with Robert Herjavec's crew over how many tickets they're gonna buy. For one of our training vow or they're gonna be sold out by the time the sun rises in New York tomorrow. Because my son's on east coast time. We're getting ready to sell the event out. And Brandon says, and if he doesn't buy any, I'm giving away. I'm selling a ticket that we're supposed to be giving him for free. So I'm like, all right, I got to cut this deal now. It's five cents. I've already offered him one. His response for free? His response to the one for free was, how many o' clock in la? When was the last time you tried to get a hard decision out of somebody at 5 o'? Clock? If we buy not, how many more free ones can we get? I'm a huge Robert Herjavec fan. Based on my interaction with them, I find him to be a generous, decent human being. So we're going back and forth and the event is getting ready to sell out. And my son Brandon, who runs my company, 503 and also an email at 503. I sent a two line email to Robert Herjavec. Is it a ridiculous idea for you to commit to buying three tickets now? He calls me on the phone late in the day, I'm in la. He says, you get Herjavec to commit. How many tickets are gonna buy now? Second line, are you against paying for them, Al, or they're gonna be sold out by the time the sun rises in New York tomorrow. Because before the business day starts in New York tomorrow again, we're three hours behind New York. My son's on east coast time. We're getting ready to sell the event out. And Brand says, and if he doesn't buy any, I'm giving away. I'm selling a ticket that was supposed to be given for free. So I'm like, all right, I got to cut this deal now it's five o' clock in la. When's the last time you tried to get a hard decision out of somebody at 5:00'? Clock? If the time stamp on his email response is 504, one minute later. No, we'll commit to the three tickets right now. No, it's not a problem. We'll pay for them right away. Send me a link. Will pay for them right now. Within the hour, I send them the link. We got the money at 523. 503. And also an email at 503. I sent a two line email to Rob, get people to say, no, you'd be Shocked at the responses you get.

Fantastic. So there's, there's some questions that people have.

Is it a ridiculous idea for you to commit to buying three tickets now? Second line. Are you against paying for them before the business day starts in New York tomorrow? Again, we're three hours behind New York.

But what I'm going to ask everyone, save your questions. When we open it up for Q and A, I might ask you to repost them because it's sometimes hard for me to, to track everything and be present here too. So, Chris, how might an entrepreneur use these strategies and techniques that you teach to better understand and serve their clients?

Well, yeah, the time stamp on his email response is 5. I mean, first of all, in simply understanding them better will help you solve four. One minute later. No, we'll commit to the three tickets right now. Serve them, you know. All right, so let's say you're the favorite. I'll know. It's not a problem. We'll pay for them right away. Send me a link. We'll pay for them right now. And let's say that they're elf. They're not half they want within the hour I send them the link. We got the money at 523. Get people to say no. You'd be shocked at the responses you get. You to dial into them. You know, you, you want to be open to a better deal, which is.

Fantastic. So there's, there's some questions that people.

Have you tailoring your services to them so that it better serves them and it's more lucrative for you.

But what I'm going to ask everyone, save your questions. And when we open it up for Q and A, I might ask you to repost them because it's sometimes hard for me to track everything and be present here too. So, Chris, how might an entrepreneur use these strategies and techniques that you teach to better understand and serve their clients?

Well, yeah, because first of all, I'm going to presume that everybody on this call believes the same thing that I do, that you over deliver. So first of all, if you're over delivering, you were bargaining whatever you were charging anyway, which means if you tailor your service, you're good a service so that it's a better delivery for them, you're worth even more. Yes, you want to get what you mean. First of all, simply understanding them better will help you serve them, you know. All right, so let's say you're the favorite. Dude, no, don't, don't be greedy. Don't grab with both hands. But when you provide a service that's worth it, you are entitled to be paid. So the more that you listen to them and understand them, and I'm here to tell you there are ways that you can tailor whatever you're providing that would be easier for you to provide it, which means it would be more profitable for you and it would be better for them. So be willing to engage in conversations and be open to that. And then the other crazy thing is there might be something really counterintuitive that'll make it profitable for you in unexpected ways. And one of my favorites is, you know our mutual friend Dan Sullivan. He's talking about his book deal. He's talking about listening to me. Never split the difference. And we pay.

Sorry, I pushed the wrong button.

We pay people what they ask. No, I don't pound people on price. So Dan turns around and gives every dime of the book proceeds to Dan and Tucker.

Ben.

Ben and Tucker. Sorry. And then Ben and Tucker. Tucker says, dan got the last drop of my blood. When you're not greedy on the price term, what the other side gives you back might be worth 10 times what the dollars were worth. And those guys, I think those guys. I think Ben and Tucker would die for Dan.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's. See, the beauty of Dan, too, is. And I think it's one of the reasons, I mean, heck, me and Dan have done podcasts on this is we like reciprocal people. You know, we like people that are generous. We like people that are useful, and. And it's just so much easier to. That's what an ELF person is. People keep asking, what does ELF mean? Elf is easy, lucrative, and fun, and half is hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating. It's actually a term I got over 20 years ago from my friend Mark Schneider, who unfortunately passed away earlier this year, but I heard him say elf years ago. And I said, I'm going to develop that into something. Because I started thinking of all the different business methodologies you can use in terms of marketing and the stuff that me and Dean Jackson teach on. I love marketing. It's ELF marketing. It's automated, it's robotic. But then I started thinking, how do you. You can filter everything through an ELF filter. What are people? What are projects? What are things that you're doing? Are they easy, lucrative, and fun? Or are they hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating? Sometimes people can be hard, annoying, lucrative, and frustrating. Not all money is created equal. So ELF is a really great filter. And I'm super happy, Chris, that you're referring to that, because think it Just offers some framing. So, yeah, I mean, this is. Once you. Once you become skilled at utilizing what Kris is teaching and what he's talking about here, you will find a lot of things in your life that were difficult become more elf. And that's the whole goal, is to bring ELF to people in all areas of their entrepreneurial endeavors.

I'm going to jump in real quick because there's one more tangent I want to go on to on half and now before you fire your half clients. And we just shifted into this recently, we got a couple of deals that were proposed to us, and they were half deals before we walked away. And I had this conversation with my son Brandon and everybody else in our company. When it came up, I said, what's the counteroffer that would make this an ELF deal before we walk? Maybe they don't know that this is half. Maybe they don't understand it. And there's a pretty good chance of what, you know, the chances are that they're going to offer you a half deal because they don't know any better. They can't help themselves. There's a whole bunch of reasons. I said, let's counter with what would make this an ELF relationship. At that point, there's no doubt in anybody's mind what we're looking for. And they had the option to take it or leave it, and we have the option to take it or leave it. And we turned a couple of deals around with that by simply countering. Instead of saying goodbye so long, we said, all right, here's what would work for us. Here's what would make us want to do business with you forever and make us want 10 years from now look back on the last 10 years and say that was cool and we threw it out there. And the batting average is actually pretty high on that. You know, we don't counter offer their offer term by term. We construct what would be great for us and how we would love to do business with them before we walk. And you'd be surprised at how many people will embrace that because they just didn't know any better.

Do you ever have situations, Chris, where you look outside of the. The scope of what will be, the immediate terms that are on the negotiation to see, to draw in other things that might tip things some way or be an influence. I was just thinking about how, you.

Know, that's a great question, man. I'm glad you brought that up. We're trying for that all the time. And, you know, how do you know what you don't know what we'll do is we'll start to say, let's brainstorm.

This a little bit.

Like, here's some ideas that people have gotten in the past. Start throwing out wacky stuff that people brought up, and that will kick their brain into gear. So, yeah, try to kick them into a collaborative brainstorming process to look for how to get outside the scope. I mean, I love that question because that's absolutely what everybody should be doing.

When we talked, he said, is there anything new and exclusive that you could provide to our Genius network members? And I said, well, you know, I'm writing a new edition of my book Influence. And I have to say that book has been very kind to me, Sold a lot of copies, a lot of languages. I was in Poland a while ago, and there's. I have a colleague there, Professor Wilhelmina Vosinska. She said, you know, Bob, your book Influenced is so famous in Poland, my students think you're dead. And I thought that was an affirming, yet sobering observation on the excess of the book. And that's one reason I decided to write a revision, something new, because I wanted people to know I'm still kicking, I'm still thinking. And so I just finished writing the chapter on reciprocation, the principle of influence, that says people feel obligated to give back to those who have first given to them. And I thought, well, there were several new pieces of information I thought I could share. And as we go through it, I hope you'll think about these insights and see if they're. If they're available for you to use in your own businesses. But let me just provide a first example that sort of takes us through a validation of how this principle works. There was a study done in a candy shop in Southern California one day for half of the visitors who came in, the manager met them at the door, greeted them warmly, and escorted them to the candy counter. For the other half, he met them, greeted them warmly, gave them a small piece of chocolate, and escorted them to the candy counter, where they bought 42% more candy than those who didn't get a piece of chocolate. And you might explain that in ways other than the rule for reciprocation that people felt that they had to give back after they had received. You might say, well, maybe they liked the chocolate and they wanted more of it. But if you look deeper into the data, the majority of those 42% more people who bought chocolate didn't buy. Who got chocolate, didn't buy more chocolate. They bought some other kinds of candy. So it wasn't what they had been given. It was that they had been given something that caused them to change their purchase decisions up to 42%. So what we know from that is that the act of reciprocation triggered the act of giving triggers an act of reciprocation. But that doesn't mean that what we give is unimportant just because people get triggered. Here's what the newest research shows about what you can give first to your customers, your clients, your partners, your colleagues that will cause them to want to give back to you at the highest possible levels. That will cause them to be ready to give back to you, be standing on the balls of their feet waiting for the opportunity to give back to you in a major way. There are three things, three features. If what you give is unexpected, it's not just part of the normal exchange. You know how you get a holiday greeting card and you send one in return? That's not unexpected, that's just normal exchange. Right? Something that's a surprise elevates the willingness of people to want to give back to you. Secondly is if what you give is seen as meaningful by the recipient, that you've gone to a step to give something to them that's meaningful, right? Then they want to give something meaningful in return to you at a higher level. And finally, if what you've given is personalized or customized to their identity, to their preferences, to their current needs or challenges through the roof, they want to give back to you for that kind of kindness. Okay, so let's take some examples. Here's the first one that has to do with unexpected gifts. There was a supermarket chain that sent coupons to their shoppers regularly in the mail. And sometimes they would include a coupon for a free gift, a free half gallon of milk at the store. What they were disappointed in is that many of these shoppers who redeemed the coupon didn't then buy more other things, right? So that is their total spend wasn't increased by the fact that they got a gift. So they tried something by a consultant, not me, told them about the research that shows when people get an unexpected gift, then they're more motivated to give back at high levels. So they did an experiment where one day everyone who came into the store got a coupon, a surprise coupon for a half a gallon of milk. Those people, their total spend went up by 10%. You know what 10% increase in total spend for a supermarket is? It's unheard of. Because the gift they got was a surprise. So what's the implication for you? If you're working online with people, send them a coupon out of the blue for one of your popular items or services, something, at least a discount for it. They're going to feel from that surprise more obligated to give something back to you. Okay, so that's the idea of something unexpected elevates the power of the rule for reciprocation. How about this meaningful thing? Let's go inside your organization. Suppose you have an idea, an initiative that you're in charge of, and if it is successful, it'll elevate the outcomes of your organization. It will elevate your reputation within it. And you want the people inside your organization to get on board to embrace this. And you send them information about this new initiative and you want them to. To incorporate it into the way they behave. Is there anything you can do to ensure the likelihood that they will do that? Here's a study that was done in the UK that gives us an example. It was done by the British National Employment Service Office who tried to get people who were not working, who were unemployed to apply for and appear for interviews for a new job. And a lot of these folks, they weren't interested in getting off corporate off welfare. They liked getting their unemployment and they didn't show up for these interviews. They would be scheduled for interviews and they just were no shows. What the researchers asked the office to do is instead of just saying to these individuals in a letter, we have scheduled an interview for a job at such and such a time, on such and such a date with Mr. Jones. Here's the time and the place, please appear. They said in the letter, here's what we did to secure that interview for you. We called the office, we got a return call, we talked with the supervising manager. The supervising manager saw what was the most appropriate fit for you. We contacted that person and we made this appointment. In other words, we. They talked about the effort that they had gone through to get the appointment. And as a consequence, people spent the effort then to appear for it. They gave back in true reciprocal form what they had received. So what's the implication in your initiative? You need to tell people who you want to expend effort to get on board, the effort that you expended to develop the initiative, how many months it took, how many meetings it involved, how much interplay and revision of the initiative occurred before I'm presenting it to you now that will cause them to be spurred more likely into action. Okay, so that's Unexpected and meaningful. What's seen as a meaningful effort that you undertook to provide that gift or service first or favor? How about the last of these issues? Personalized, customized to the identity or the preferences or the challenges of the recipient.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video. And I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out and if you'd like to.

Get it absolutely free, there's a link.

Below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video or you can Simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

I like this one. This is the one I think is more important than the other two combined. If you can convince people that what you're giving represents something for them personally has been customized for them, they will want to give back to you for you and your outcomes. I have a friend who's a consultant who told me about a problem she was having with a particular client, a particular customer who was notoriously a slow payer. When she would send an invoice, and this was true of all of her friends in the industry as well, it would be typically about six months before he would pay. And she said, what can I do about this? What do we know about influence? I said, well, what do you know about this guy? And she said, you know, he lives in a different city and I really can't find very much about him except that I know that he's an art lover. So here's what we decided to do when she sent the next invoice. Before she did that, she went to the art museums and galleries in, in her town where he would not have had access. Right. And she got a little postcard that depicted one of the exhibits there at the museum that he wouldn't have been able to see. And she wrote on the back of it from Anna and enclosed it with the invoice. I got an email from her. She said, you won't believe this. That postcard cut the delay in receipt of our money in half. We went from six months to three months for the cost of that postcard because it was personalized to something that she knew he liked. And then it was inscribed to him by her. Now, she didn't need me for this. She took the next step. She found out that not only was he an art lover, he collected modern art. So.

And let's say that they're elf. They're not half. They want you to dial into them. You know, you, you want to be open to a better Deal, which is you tailoring your services to them so that it better serves them and it's more lucrative for you. Because first of all, I'm going to presume that everybody on this call believes the same thing that I do, that you over deliver. So first of all, if you're over delivering, you were bargaining whatever you were charging anyway, which means if you tailor your service, you're good of service so that it's a better delivery for them, you're worth even more. Yes, you want to get what you do. No, don't. Don't be greedy. Don't grab with both hands. But when you provide a service that's worth it, you are entitled to be paid. So the more that you listen to them and understand them, and I'm here to tell you there are ways that you can tailor whatever you're providing that would be easier for you to provide it, which means it would be more profitable for you and it would be better for them. So be willing to engage in conversations and be open to that. And then, you know, the other crazy thing is there might be something really counterintuitive that'll make it profitable for you in unexpected ways. And one of my favorites is, you know our mutual friend Dan Sullivan. He's talking about his book deal. He's talking about listening to me. Never split the difference. And we pay people.

Sorry, I pushed the wrong button.

We pay people what they ask. No, I don't. I don't pound people on price. So Dan turns around and gives every dime of the book proceeds to Dan and Tucker.

Ben.

Ben.

Sorry.

And then Ben and Tucker. Tucker says, dan got the last drop of my blood. When you're not greedy on the price term, what the other side gives you back might be worth 10 times what the dollars were worth. Those guys, I think those guys. I think Ben and Tucker would die for Dan.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's. See, the beauty of Dan, too, is. And I think it's one of the reasons. I mean, heck, me and Dan have done podcasts on this is we like reciprocal people. You know, we like people that are generous. We like people that are useful.

And.

And it's just so much easier to. That's what an elf person is. People keep asking, what does elf mean? Elf is easy, lucrative, and fun, and half is hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating. It's actually a term I got over 20 years ago from my friend Mark Schneider, who unfortunately passed away earlier this year, but I heard him say elf years ago. And I said, I'm going to develop that into Something, because I started thinking of all the different business methodologies you can use in terms of marketing and the stuff that me and Dean Jackson teach on. I love marketing. It's ELF marketing. It's automated, it's robotic. But then I started thinking, how do you. You can filter everything through an ELF filter. What are people? What are projects? What are things that you're doing? Are they easy, lucrative and fun, or are they hard, annoying, lame and frustrating? Sometimes people can be hard, annoying, lucrative, and frustrating. Not all money is created equal. So ELF is a really great filter. And I'm super happy, Chris, that you're referring to that, because I think it just offers some framing. So, yeah, I mean, this is. Once you become skilled at utilizing what Chris is teaching and what he's talking about here, you will find a lot of things in your life that were difficult become more elf. And that's the whole goal, is to bring ELF to people in all areas of their entrepreneurial endeavors.

I'm going to jump in real quick because there's one more tangent I want to go on to on half.

And now.

Before you fire your half clients. And we just shifted into this recently, we got a couple of deals that were proposed to us, and they were half deals before we walked away. And I had this conversation with my son Brandon and everybody else in our company. When it came up, I said, what's the counteroffer that would make this an ELF deal before we walk? Maybe they don't know that this is half. Maybe they don't understand it. And there's a pretty good chance of what, you know, the chances are that they're going to offer you a half deal because they don't know any better. They can't help themselves. There's a whole bunch of reasons. I said, let's counter with what would make this an ELF relationship. At that point, there's no doubt in anybody's mind what we're looking for. And they had the option to take it or leave it. And we have the option to take it or leave it. And we turned a couple of deals around with that by simply countering. Instead of saying goodbye so long, we said, all right, here's what would work for us. Here's what would make us want to do business with you forever and make us want 10 years from now, look back on the last 10 years and say that was cool. And we threw it out there. And the batting average is actually pretty high on that. You know, we don't counter offer their offer term by term. We construct what would Be great for us and how we would love to do business with them before we walk. And you'd be surprised at how many people will embrace that because they just didn't know any better.

Do you ever have situations, Chris, where you look outside of the scope of what will be the immediate terms that are on the negotiation to see, to draw in other things that might tip things some way or be an influence? I was just thinking about how, you.

Know, that's a great question, man. I'm glad you brought that up. We're trying for that all the time. And, you know, how do you know what you don't know?

What we'll do is next time, and the time after that that she sent him an invoice, right? She included a postcard of a piece of modern art that he wouldn't have had access to right now. This time she didn't write me an email. She called me, she said, you won't believe this. I'm getting paid immediately. Immediately. And all my friends want to know, how did you do this? And she said, I'm not telling them, but I'm telling you. You know how this will work now with an invoice, include something so that in the moment that invoice is open, there's a gift. The rule for reciprocity dominates that situation right there. And that man, in this case anyway, succumbed to the rule of reciprocity. He wrote a check in that moment. And I think that's important for us when we give anything, if we personalize becomes more valuable. Let me ask, I'll give you one more example. It doesn't have to be just with a preference. It can be with a person's identity. How many of you have seen, or maybe your companies do this, that you send. You give gifts to customers and clients. Like a pen, right, with your company's name on it. A calendar at holiday with your company's holidays with your company's name on it. How many of you have seen that or actually participated? It's the wrong name. Sorry? It's the wrong name. It's your name. Not that customer's name, not that prospect's name. And that's what happened to me when I get things like this. This is from some company. I throw it in the drawer with 50 other pins, with a hundred other, you know, with all these other names on them. And then I had one customer who gave me this pen that has my name on it, my name, it's for me. And on the other side is their name. And you know what I do with this pen. I carry it wherever I go. And every time I take out this pen, I notice and I remember the gift, the personalized gift that was given to me. It wasn't an advertising device. It was a gift, a personalized gift. Everywhere I go, it's in my pocket. You know how much this costs to do? Now you might say, come on, I've got thousands of customers. How about for your best customers? How about for your biggest customers? Talk. It takes about $3 to do that. Are your biggest customers worth that? I think so. Okay, let me give you. I'm gonna finish now. In this new book that I'm writing, we have something called Readers reports where people who've read the book influence write to me. I ask them to write to me with examples of how one or they've seen one or another of these principles used on them or by them with great effect. And as regards the principle of reciprocity, here's a reader's report that I got from a guy in Australia. Here's what he says. Not long ago, we moved to Australia where my five year old daughter has been struggling to adapt to the new culture and find new friends. Recently on walks around the neighborhood with my wife, she tried leaving gifts in neighbors letterboxes. These were really just drawings scribbled in crayon and then folded and taped together into a letter addressed to my new neighbors from Carlee at And then she included her address. And this guy goes on to say, I thought it was pretty harmless. And I was more concerned that it might be perceived as a nuisance. I worried that we would be known as the phantom letterbox litterers. Then funny things started happening in our mailbox. We started finding cards, proper Hallmark cards addressed to my daughter that cost anywhere from three to five dollars apiece. Then packets of sweets and small toys started appearing there. If it wasn't for reading your book, I wouldn't have understood this. But the power of reciprocity is unbelievable. She now has a group of friends she plays with in the park across the road every day. Why I like this story is you see each of the three features that amplifies the power of the rule for reciprocity was included in those. As tiny as they were, they were unexpected. Suddenly there's a letter in the box from this little girl. It was meaningful because she created those letters herself. Right. She went to the. To the effort. Right. And customized for my new neighbors from Carly. Lovely. I love that example. So if we can all do that, take that counsel. Right. I'm Sorry, if we. I don't think this is working either. No. Hello. I'm going to use my old professor voice and just shout this out. If we all can do this right, we will dramatically leverage the power of what we give first. If we can include one or another of these principles and if we can include all of them. Yeah. And if we can include all of them, then everybody wins. Everybody wins. People get gifts, services and favors that are for them, that benefit them, that give them joy, and they give back to us with what's warranted from those kinds of resources.

Well, you've already covered some of this, but I'm going to go a little more specific. So what specific steps could someone listening to this take to better persuade or prepare the moment or moments before the message is delivered that you've not shared?

So let's take a step back and provide a general approach. It is to focus your attention on your message. What is the strength of your message? What is the strongest element of it? The thing that if people say yes to it, makes it most wise for them to say yes so that they will benefit.

Right.

What is it? Identify that thing and then reverse engineer the persuasion process to the moment before you describe that thing so that you've aligned people's consciousness and their sense of who they are with the strength of that message we just saw. You could make me a comfort orient. You could make me a cost oriented buyer depending on what you put first. If you put fluffy clouds or coins in the background of your landing page, I become that person. Now if you know that and comfort is the strength of your product, you, you've got me. I'm going to rate that as important. I'm going to search for it and I'm going to use it to determine how to behave.

Well, I'm not sure if it's in the second chapter or third chapter in your book. You talk about playing French music or German music. Explain that.

Yeah, so there's a study that shows.

That if a wine shop owner plays German music for a particular time of the day, people buy more German vintages. If he plays French music. They buy more French vintages because they're put in a German or a French state of mind.

And now they're going to behave in.

Ways that are aligned with that state of mind that's been installed by something as background based as the music that they're hearing on the PA system.

I always listen for words that you say because it leaves so many strategic clues on what to do installed. So if you sit and Think like, okay, I want to sell more of my thing here. What do I need to install?

We'll start to say, let's brainstorm this a little bit.

Like, here's some ideas that people have gotten in the past. Start throwing out wacky stuff that people brought up, and that will kick their brain into gear. So, yeah, try to kick them into a collaborative brainstorming process to look for how to get outside the scope. But, I mean, I love that question because that's absolutely what everybody should be doing.

When we talked, he said, is there anything new and exclusive that you could provide to our genius network members? And I said, well, you know, I'm writing a new edition of my book Influence. And I have to say that book has been very kind to me. Sold a lot of copies, a lot of languages. I was in Poland a while ago, and I have a colleague there, Professor Wilhelmina Wozcinska. She said, you know, Bob, your book Influence is so famous in Poland, my students think you're dead. And I thought that was an affirming yet sobering observation on the excess of the book. And that's one reason I decided to write a revision, something new, because I wanted people to know I'm still kicking, I'm still thinking. And so I just finished writing the chapter on reciprocation, the principle of influence, that says people feel obligated to give back to those who have first given to them. And I thought, well, there were several new pieces of.

In order to set it up, in order to do that.

So let me give you an example.

It's just worked for me. I've got a colleague who I've worked with for a long time over in the psychology department, where I'm housed, and I needed a big favor from him, and I sent him an email, and I said, don, I'm working on a project. I don't have the information I need in my files, but I know you have it in your files. I'm going to call you later to get that information. I would really appreciate it.

You just planted that seed.

So I called him up. He said, bob, I know why you're calling. I can't help you. I'm swamped right now. I know you've got this project with a time limit, but I've got projects with time limits, too. I'd like to be able to help, but I can't this time. Sorry. So I didn't say to him.

But.

Don, I'd really appreciate it if you could help me with this one. It would mean a lot to me. I said, don, you know, we've been in the same department now for 10 years. I really wish you could help me with this. It would mean a lot to me. I created a framework of unity. I had the information that afternoon.

So what happened in his head? I mean, explain what with doubt.

There was something that was true, that we had a relationship, a long term relationship, but it wasn't at the top of his consciousness. It wasn't the thing that was aligning his subsequent behavior until I brought it to top of mind. We're relationship partners, Don, for 10 years. And inside relationships you say yes to people. I just moved it from somewhere at midbrain to top of mind and it made the difference. So what did I. I didn't install the relationship. I installed a focus on that relationship that he was, that was now the thing that he was paying attention to. And what you're paying attention to in that moment changes who you are. He became a relationship or oriented respondent, not a selfish respondent about his own issues.

Right, right.

You know, you have a real power to where these sort of things could be used in very manipulative ways. And for the time that I've known you, I mean, I would like to think, think in the same way our relationship. I've never overly asked for anything. You've not either. You've always approached us. You're very cognizant of the ethical use of persuasion. And this is filled with literally a ninja assassin methodologies if used in the wrong way, and incredible human betterment methodologies.

Information I thought I could share. And as we go through it, I hope you'll think about these insights and see if they're available for you to use in your own businesses. But let me just provide a first example that sort of takes us through a validation of how this principle works. There was a study done in a candy shop in Southern California one day. For half of the visitors who came in, the manager met them at the door, greeted them warmly and escorted them to the candy counter. For the other half, he met them, greeted them warmly, gave them a small piece of chocolate and escorted them to the candy counter where they bought 42% more candy than those who didn't get a piece of chocolate. And you might explain that in ways other than the rule for reciprocation that people felt that they had to give back after they had received. You might say, well, maybe they like the chocolate and they wanted more of it. But if you look deeper into the data, the majority of those 42% more people who bought chocolate, who got chocolate, didn't buy more chocolate. They bought some other kinds of candy. So it wasn't what they had been given. It was that they had been given something that caused them to change their purchase decisions up to 42%. So what we know from that is that the act of reciprocation triggered the act of giving triggered triggers an act of reciprocation. But that doesn't mean that what we give is unimportant just because people get triggered. Here's what the newest research shows about what you can give first, to your customers, your clients, your partners, your colleagues. That will cause them to want to give back to you at the highest possible levels. That will cause them to be ready to give back to you, be standing on the balls of their feet waiting for the opportunity to give back to you in a major way. There are three things, three features. If what you give is unexpected, it's not just part of the normal exchange. You know how you get a holiday greeting card and you send one in return? That's not unexpected, that's just normal exchanges. Right? Something that's a surprise elevates the willingness of people to want to give back to you. Secondly is if what you give is seen as meaningful by the recipient, that you've gone to a step to give something to them that's meaningful, right? Then they want to give something meaningful in return to you at a higher level. And finally, if what you've given is personalized or customized to their identity, to their preferences, to their current needs or challenges, through the roof, they want to give back to you for that kind of kindness. Okay, so let's take some examples. Here's the first one that has to do with unexpected gifts. There was a supermarket chain that sent coupons to their shoppers regularly in the mail. And sometimes they would include a coupon for a free gift, a free half gallon of milk at the store. What they were disappointed in is that many of these shoppers who redeemed the coupon didn't then buy more other things, right? So that is their total spend wasn't increased by the fact that they got a gift. So they tried something by a consultant, not me, told them about the research that shows when people get an unexpected gift, then they're more motivated to give back at high levels. So they did an experiment where one day everyone who came into the store got a coupon, a surprise coupon for a half a gallon of milk. Those people, their total spend went up by 10%. You know what 10% increase in total spend for a supermarket is. It's unheard of, right? Because the gift they got was a surprise. So what's the implication for you? If you're working online with people, send them a coupon out of the blue for one of your popular items or services, something, at least a discount for it. They're going to feel from that surprise more obligated to give something back to you. Okay, so that's the idea of something unexpected elevates the power of the rule for reciprocation. How about this meaningful thing? Let's go inside your organization. Suppose you have an idea, an initiative that you're in charge of, and if it is successful, it'll elevate the outcomes of your organization. It will elevate your reputation within it. And you want the people inside your organization to get on board to embrace this. And you send them information about this new initiative and you want them to incorporate it into the way they behave. Is there anything you can do to ensure the likelihood that they will do that? Here's a study that was done in the UK that gives us an example. It was done by the British National Employment Service Office who tried to get people who were not working, who were unemployed to apply for and appear for interviews for a new job. And a lot of these folks, they weren't interested in getting off corporate, off welfare. They liked getting their unemployment and they didn't show up for these interviews. They would be scheduled for interviews and they just were no shows. What the researchers asked the office to do is instead of just saying to these individuals in a letter, we have scheduled an interview for a job at such and such a time, on such and such a date with Mr. Jones. Here's the time and the place. Please appear. They said in the letter. Here's what we did to secure that interview for you. We called the office, we got a return call, we talked with the supervising manager. The supervising manager saw what was the.

Most appropriate and the other side. What is your advice for the people.

Out there about it fit for you? We contacted that person and we made this appointment. In other words, they talked about the effort that they had gone through to.

Get the proper care and feeding of others, utilizing persuasion. Once you learn what is in persuasion? Because this is, I mean, you literally teach people how to get what they want.

Yes, it's dynamite. And dynamite can be used to build.

A bridge or blow up a bridge appointment. And as a consequence, people spent the.

Effort that between people. So, Joe, we've been friends for a long time and the reason we've been friends for a long time is what you said, that we share values, right? And the reason I've liked interacting with you over that time is that your ethical approach you take an ethical approach to this.

So here's why to appear for it they gave back in true reciprocal form what they had received. So what's the implication in your initiative? The you need to tell people who you want to expend effort to get on board the effort that you expended to develop the initiative. How many months I am recommending that.

People who understand the pre suasive strategies that are available to them only use them in ethical ways. We've just completed a research program where we find that those organizations organizations that.

Use took how many meetings it involved.

How much interplay influence attempts in dishonest.

Deceptive, unethical and revision of the initiative occurred before. I'm always produce two big.

Damages to.

Their viability presenting it to you now that will cause them to be spurred more like the first is there are.

Some people inside the organization who are just not comfortable with the unethicality and they are stressed by it and they try to leave. They don't do very well on the job because of that stress into action.

Okay, so that's unexpected and meaningful. What's seen as a meaningful effort that you under they try to leave. When they do leave, you get all.

These turnover costs that are associated with that big cost. But here's the one that was most interesting to me. When those people who are stressed by the deception leave, who remains is those people who are comfortable with dishonesty and cheating.

It took to provide that gift or service first or favor. How about the last of these issues? Personalized, right?

And they're going to cheat you.

Wow.

They're the ones who are going to.

Customized to the identity or the preferences or the challenges of the recipient.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video and I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out and if you'd like to.

Get it absolutely free, there's a link.

Below in the steel equipment. They're the ones who are are going to run these under the table deals with vendors and partners and suppliers. They're the ones who are going to pad their expense accounts. Count on it. They've been selected for. They've been selected for. You've pulled the viper under your coat.

Yeah, exactly. That says scription. Or you can wait till the end.

Of this video or you can simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

I like this one. This is the one I think is more important than a lot about people.

That have toxic cultures and are toxic in general and cannot. And then they have a worldview that everyone's out to screw them because that's just their frame of how they view the world. I mean I've always like the saying I said earlier, be nice to the people you meet on the way up. They're the same people you meet on the way down and that, you know.

I heard the other two combined. If you can convince people that what you're giving represents something for them personally has been customized for them. Right. They will want to give back.

Dan Sullivan say this years ago and I've said it to so many people because I, I'm constantly trying to reinforce this to people is that money earned ethically is a byproduct of value creation. And if you're going to go out and ask people to give you money, you better damn well give them value.

Because it takes to you for you and your outcomes. I have a friend who's a consultant who told me about a problem she was having with a particular lifetime to build a reputation.

And, and like you said with social proof. The one thing I do like about it is it makes it much harder for scumbags to exist for as long.

As they were client. A particular customer who was notoriously a slow payer when she would send an invoice. And this was true of all of her friends in the industry as well.

It would be able to because now it's out in the open.

It's out there.

Yeah. Which is great. So you have really changed. I mean tons of people's lives. I have no idea. Do you have any idea how much impact your book influence and your work has done? I mean does it ever occur. Do you think about like. And I'd love to hear a couple of stories that you're most proud of of someone that has done something. It could be just building and growing a business. It could be a cause. I mean you, you have done a lot.

Typically about six months before he would pay. Let me give you an example of.

An email that came to me maybe.

Three or four days ago and she said what can I do about this? What do we know about influence guy.

Whose two sons are boy scouts and they were selling popcorn outside a supermarket. You know, they had a table.

I said well what do you know about this guy? Right? And she said.

And they were having very little luck. He said, maybe 10, 15.

You know, he lives in a different city, and I really can't find very much about him except that I know that he's an art lover.

So 15% of people were. Because as people approached, they said, would you like to buy some popcorn? 10 or 15%, they had just come out of a. Out of a supermarket. If they wanted popcorn, they would.

Here's what we suggest. What we decided to do when she sent the next invoice. Before she did that, she went to the art museums and galleries, gotten it right. He said, I read your book.

He had gotten an early copy of Pre Suasion. And he said, I thought to myself, what's the essence of our message? What is it that will make people happiest if they give to us? And so we changed the question to.

In her town, where he would not have had access. Right. And she got a little postcard that depicted one of the exhibits there at the museum that he wouldn't have been able to see. And she wrote on the back, do.

You support the Boy Scouts? And now we get 90% of people who either buy popcorn or if they.

Can'T buy popcorn from Anna and enclosed.

It, they give us some money.

Wow.

Because that's what they want to do. They want us. What's the frame that you put first? And I have to say, I've been getting a lot of the.

With the invoice, I got an email from her. She said, you won't believe this. That postcard cut these kinds of emails.

And messages back in the old days, letters from people about influence. Yeah, those things happen that people who are using this for good causes, the.

Delay in receipt of our money in half, we went from six months to three months for the cost of that postcard.

Do improve the outcomes and everybody wins.

Yeah, well, see, because it's one thing to be like a famous celebrity or musician, and you might put a song out and millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people listen to the song, and that's great. And they're well known. You sell 3 million copies of a book, but then that is put into the blueprint. It's put into the methodologies, it's put into the operations of how someone conducts, delivers everything in their business. The roots that go down in the ground with work, like what you're doing affects humanity. It's just. It's really hard to see it because it's not out there like a movie, it's not out there like a song. But it is living within all of these business owners. And so I think books like Pre Suasion and books like Influence are. They move the dial. I mean, they literally move the dial in the way that people do business. And, I mean, I would imagine you're very proud of your work. I just wanted to say this as.

A reminder because I think it's so important.

Well, thank you.

But I think what we're recognizing more and more is that in no way did I invent social proof or scarcity or authority. I just arranged for people to align themselves with it, to harness the power of those things where they're naturally there in the situation where they counsel people correctly of what to do.

Well, here's what I would say to that, though. You didn't invent diamonds, but if you find a piece of coal and then.

You do all the work to get.

That diamond, you are a diamond maker. I mean, because you go in and you mine for all of these methodologies and you literally give people the recipe on here's how to bake the things. So, yeah, I mean, it's out there, but you going out there and finding it, researching it, studying it, testing it, assembling it, putting yourself and your researchers and all the situations to cull through it and figure it out is an enormous amount of effort.

Well, thank you for saying that. But I do agree with you that it requires more than just the raw material. At the same time, this is powerful raw material that we're about talking, talking about. Here's the best example I know of how pre suasion works. That made me. When I saw this rock back in my chair, I had to read this study three times to believe it. So let's say you want people to be more helpful.

Okay?

They do a study in Belgium. They bring subjects into an experiment, and they are shown photographs. And in the background of the photograph, for a third of the subjects, there's an individual figure standing alone. For another third of the subjects, there are two figures standing apart from one another as a distance, a separation between them. For a third sample, the figures in the photograph are standing together. They're shoulder to shoulder. They're unitized. Now, the researcher, in all of those instances at the end of showing the photographs, gets up from the table and spills a bunch of items onto the floor accidentally. And the question is, which subjects get off of their chairs, down on their knees spontaneously, and start helping the researcher? There's no question those who saw the people standing shoulder to shoulder, who were put in a togetherness, collaborative state of mind, are three times more likely than anybody else in the study to do that. Now, that's not what rocked me back in my seat. Here's what it was. The subjects in this study were 18 months old. They were babies.

Wow.

That's how fundamental this process is.

That is fascinating.

So we've got raw material to work with. That's dynamite.

We just have to be sure that.

We channel it in productive ways.

I love it.

I love it.

Wow.

So what do you hope that people take away, learn, and utilize the most out of persuasion?

I would say this general idea that the old way of thinking about the influence process of focusing on your message and how to craft it.

Will get.

You a long way. But if you want to maximize your impact, you want to leverage the features of your message, you have to think about the moment before you deliver it and structure it as carefully as you structure your message.

That is great.

And structure it as carefully as you structure your message. And I could assure, well, I guess I can't 100% assure this, but I can bet my life saving that. Most people have never thought about this that deeply. And now you've given people a whole other way to think about what I consider the most important aspect in building and growing not only a profitable company, but meeting friends, developing relationships, creating causes, and just advancing what it is you're trying to advance in the world.

So what I'm going to talk about today is how to use ethical influence and priority persuasion to get more people to say yes. And, you know, usually when I talk about this kind of stuff, most people are focused on marketing. I teach a lot of people about copywriting and marketing and sales, face to face sales and things like that. But one of the things I want you to know is this is not just about business, which I think is really fitting for Genius Network. These are the kinds of things that you can use in everyday life. And, you know, a lot of times when, when I speak, I get people that, you know, they want to know the magic words. I'm, I'm an NLP guy, right? It's all about linguistics. They're like, tell me the right sentence to say for this. And, you know, this and that. It kind of reminds me of, you know, back when Evan Pagan used to do the double your dating thing. You know, I was an affiliate for his probably 20 years ago, and he would guy, he would get guys all the time going, tell me the pickup lines. What do I say to girls that make them like me? And he would say, I'm not going to teach you pickup lines. I'm going to teach you how to be a better man, then you'll naturally be more. More attractive. And that's kind of the, you know, I thought about all the things that I could teach in, you know, 25, 30 minutes today. And that's kind of the tack that I'm going to take, is I'm going to go a bit meta on influence and persuasion, and you'll be able to apply this to anything that you do. It's not necessarily about the individual language patterns. There are a lot of them. You can learn language patterns. This is more going to be about how to think about how you speak to people in a way that will get them to say yes in every area of life, every context of life. So I'm kind of new to Genius Network. You know, my wife Kayla and I, we joined in January. Don't know a lot of people yet, so I'll just spend a second kind of telling you where I came from and how I got here. This is where it all started for me. Back in 1995, I started a company called Liquid Mirror Software. I was what we affectionately called back in the day, a shareware author. Try before you buy software. And I actually got into business for a really weird reason. I was 20 years old. I was fresh off the streets being homeless, and my girlfriend, who I'd only been dating for a few weeks, got pregnant. And I had no ambition in my life. I didn't have a high school degree. I didn't have really any skills other than the fact that I was a hobbyist programmer. And I knew I needed a career. I knew I needed to take care of this new human being that was coming into the world who's about to turn 30, which is crazy to me. And I was a security guard making $6 an hour, which was a lot of money for me. I mean, I think minimum wage at the time was 450. So $6 an hour is like, wow. I was making it, and I knew I needed to do something. And really, programming was the only skill that I had. And this new thing had been coming out called Internet programming. You didn't need a degree to get into it. But everywhere I went, I would give them my resume and they'd say, well, you don't have experience. Come back when you have experience. Nobody would hire me. And after probably 20 or 30 interviews, I was finally like, how am I going to get experience if nobody hires me? And I came up with this idea. What if I came up with my own software company and I published my own software title, and then Put that on the resume then, then I've got experience and people will have to hire me. And I had this little program that I had written. It was called Send to Anywhere. And it was a file utility, would help you copy and move files around in Windows. And I published that out there and really it was the only purpose was to get it on the resume. And it took off and it did really well and it did help me get my first job. And then that was my side gig for a number of years and, and about a year later I started getting featured in newspapers, magazines, and I started realizing I should really figure out how to market this thing. Maybe I don't have to have a day job, you know. And so that's where I used to get these 3M floppy disks at CompUSA and duplicate them and put the stickers on them. That's where I started. That was my first website back in 1995. That was my earthlink.net free 10 page website that I had there. It was beautiful. I ended up with a better one later. Started one of the very first shareware networks. If you ever downloaded shareware software in the late 90s, or in 2000s, you probably downloaded from one of my sites called the Shareware Junction Network. Had one of the very first file hosting companies out there. SW Mir years ago. In 1998, everything changed. I was at the county fair in Orange County, California, and my friends and I would go there every year primarily to see the stage hypnotist, a guy named Mark Usik. And I think he's one of the best stage hypnotists on the planet. I was sitting there in the audience and enjoying the show like I did every year. I mean, we would go pretty much just to see him. But I didn't believe in hypnosis. I thought it was all, you know, a put on. I thought the people on stage were drunk or, or idiots or just paid to be on stage or something like that. But I love the show. But at the end of the show he was selling these tapes and he's going, step right up, step right up. Get your tapes. Three for $20. And all I wanted. I didn't believe in hypnosis. I was super skeptical, very logical guy and you know, I believed the kind of hypnosis that they put out in Hollywood and cartoon, you know, cartoons where people are sort of controlling others and their eyes, you know, spin and stuff like that. But I had 20 bucks in my pocket and I just really wanted to hear what was on these cassette tapes. So I walked up and I said, you know, I'll take it. Slap down my $20 bill. He goes, which ones do you want? I looked down in the case, and the first one that jumped out at me was, quit smoking. At that time, 1998, I was 25 years old. I was smoking three packs of cigarettes a day. And I was hopelessly addicted to cigarettes. From the time that I graduated high school and really got some freedom, you know, being out of the house a lot, I really just started smoking more and more and more. By the time I was 21, I was smoking three packs a day. There was a time where I actually rolled cigarettes, and I would smoke filterless cigarettes just to get even more of a rush out of it. And I tried everything I could to quit smoking. Nothing worked. And so I bought this silly little tape about three weeks later at home. I popped it in and listened to it. The curiosity finally got to me, and everything changed. I woke up the next morning and never touched another cigarette again. I barely had a thought of a cigarette after that night that I literally fell asleep listening to the tape. And it was so effortless for me to quit smoking that it actually took me three days before I realized that something had changed. And it dawned on me that I hadn't had a cigarette in 72 hours. And that was the moment when I went down a rabbit hole, that I'm still going down rabbit holes. I fell in love with the subconscious mind and how it works. I started reading everything that I could find on hypnosis. That led me to neuro, linguistic programming, social psychology. And in late 1998, it really began to fuse into my marketing. And I began to play around with these ideas of things like conversational hypnosis and embedded commands and anchoring and using these things in my marketing to such an extent that by 1999, 2000, I was actually writing copy for other people. I'd never been trained as a copywriter. I'd read some books, of course. The Joe Sugarman book was the one that really got me started. If anybody's ever read that, if you've never read that, it's definitely one of the top books to read on copywriting, the slippery slide principle, and really helping other people as well. And it was great because working with other people, I could really see the objective change in their results just by adding a few things. Sometimes I wouldn't even rewrite their copy for them. I would just change a few things or put a little embedded command in that, you know, was almost already there. And I Just became fascinated with this. So my in 2000 I became certified as a hypnotherapist. 2001 NLP I ran a practice for many years. I'm still a coach till today we run a coaching practice. But my real love, like my passion is fusing together, you know, NLP and hypnosis and psychology with marketing because I really think it's all the same thing. And I think a lot of times people think that marketing is about creative writing whereas in, in my mind it's all about hypnosis, it's all about suggestion, it's all about really getting to the subconscious mind. So today I'm the owner of Transform Destiny, we're the top NLP training company in North America. And also with my wife I co own Transform Destiny. And also with my wife I co own Influence to Profit. And that's where we teach heart centered business owners ethical influence and persuasion. I think the most important word of that is ethical because I find that most people who are heart centered business owners, they have something that's going to transform the world in one way or another or at least transform a life, help a person out and they just don't know how to get that message across. And that's what I'd love to do, is to help people, number one, craft that message and then number two, amplify it, teach them how to get that out there. So there's my shock and awe slide. You all know you're supposed to have one of those, right? All right, so let's talk about this. And my goal today is I'm going to talk for, you know, probably about 20, 25 minutes. I'm going to give you some really good stuff and then I'll open it up for questions. I know Gina said, you know, we should probably have a question and answer segment. If you don't have questions or if you want me to go deeper, I've got more content and I'll go, you know, as long as you want me to. Up until the hour. So here's the problem. We live in a high saturation world. This is I think in the last two, two and a half years, even ever more so a problem. Seth Godin predicted this 22, 23 years ago, right. That the Internet was gonna change everything about how people consume, about how people learn, that we are so saturated with, I mean just messages. But most of them it's, you know, it's been estimated that we see between 30 and 90,000 marketing messages a day. Remember the first time I heard that, I thought, well, that's ridiculous. We don't see that. And then I realized, well, my computer says Microsoft on it, is focused right on my thing here. I've got burgers, bagels on my coffee. We probably do, if not tens of thousands, right? We're continually saturated by information and by choices. People are overwhelmed, they're skeptical and they're cynical. And here's the problem with that. The subconscious mind, which really is the number one player when it comes to getting people to buy things, it takes the path of least resistance. If given two options and one is easier or quicker or has less resistance, the unconscious mind will tend to pick that one. And this is where a lot of people's procrastination comes from, is people set up situations where the easier thing to do is to not do what they have to do. And the unconscious mind will always influence you in that direction. The result is this. These days, people's default answer is just no. It is literally the easiest thing a person can say. And it really doesn't matter how good your intentions are or how good your product or your service is. The fact is that most people will probably reject you, especially if you're only trying to sell to the conscious mind, which is what most business owners and marketers do. So the solution is to learn how to ethically influence and persuade people you interact with. Really, I think all business is about influence and persuasion, but more importantly, it's that word ethical, right? And so we do this by learning how to speak directly to the subconscious mind. This is something I've been fascinated with now for 24 years, and I've dedicated, really my whole life to this. Now, people used to think that in order to speak to the subconscious mind, you had to have a pendulum or a hypno disc, and you had to have a person with spooky eyes that would look at you and, you know, speak in a soft voice like, you know, what was the old Taco Bell dog, right? You're getting very hungry if you remember the Taco Bell hypnosis commercial. And the fact is, that's not true, right? Formal hypnosis or formal trance is something that is very useful when it comes to doing change work if you need to quit smoking, lose weight, drop a bad habit, gain a good habit, let go of fears, any of that kind of stuff. Formal trance is great for that. But in 1951, Milton Erickson, who was one of the greatest psychiatrists on the face of the earth, he was also a hypnotist. He sort of made the announcement that you don't need formal trance to speak to somebody's subconscious mind. The subconscious mind is always listening as long as you know how to speak to it, right? Now, usually when I bring this kind of stuff up, people go, wait a minute, hang on. You're talking about like, you know, digging into people's minds. And isn't this all just manipulation? Aren't you? Aren't you trying to force people to do things against their will? Well, the fact is this. If we look up the definition of to manipulate, it's a transitive verb, and the definition essentially is to move, especially in a skillful manner. I think all language moves people. Sometimes it moves people elegantly, sometimes it moves people sloppily, sometimes it barely moves people. But really, when we communicate with people, we're trying to move them in one way or another. We're trying to move them from one state to another state, from one decision to another decision, from maybe where they are physically in one place to another place, right? We're always trying to move people when we speak. And wouldn't it be great to do that in a skillful manner rather than what most people do, which is, you know, most people, they learn most of their language between 5 and 8 years old in terms of learning how to speak. Most of that you learn between like 5 and 8 years old. And then beyond that, the only thing we tend to do to add to our language is just to learn vocabulary, just to learn new words. Most people don't actually invest time in learning how to skillfully use language, which is a very powerful skill.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video. And I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out, and if you'd like to.

Get it absolutely free, there's a link.

Below in the description.

Or you can wait till the end.

Of this video, or you can Simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

But here's the thing. Manipulation isn't the issue, right? What really is the issue is intent. What is a person's intent when using these words, right? When people talk about the word manipulation, usually what they're talking about is a win lose situation. So I think when it comes down to it, when it comes to influence and persuasion, especially intention and integrity is a big part of it. And this is why the ethical part of influence and persuasion is so important. Can these techniques be used to create a win, lose situation or what we might call a manipulation, because it was.

Personalized to something that she knew he liked and then it was inscribed to him by her. Now she didn't need me for this. She took the next step. She found out that not only was he an art lover, he collected modern art. So the next time and the time after that that she sent him an invoice and. Right. She included a postcard of a piece of modern art that he wouldn't have had access to right now. This time she didn't write me an email. She called me, she said, you won't believe this. I'm getting paid immediately. Immediately. And all my friends want to know how did you do this? And she said, I'm not telling them, but I'm telling you. You know how this will work now with an invoice include something so that in the moment that invoice is open, there's a gift. The rule for reciprocity dominates that situation right there. And that man in this case anyway succumbed to the rule of reciprocity. He wrote a check in that moment. And I think that's important for us when we give anything, if we personalize becomes more valuable. Let me ask, I'll give you one more example. It doesn't have to be just with a preference. It can be with a person's identity. How many of you have seen or maybe your companies do this that you send. You give gifts to customers and clients like a pen, right? With your company's name on it. A calendar at holiday with your company's holidays with your company's name on it. How many of you have seen that or actually participated? It's the wrong name. Sorry, it's the wrong name. It's your name. Not that customer's name, not that prospect's name. And that's what happened to me when I get things like this. This is from some company of other people.

Of course they can. But all language can do that, right? You don't need. You don't even need skill to manipulate people. Just a black heart. There are people who manipulate all the time just with the English language. Right. It doesn't even necessarily require skills. So here's the thing. The challenge with creating win lose situations and there are unfortunately there are people out there who use Neuro linguistic programming and win lose ways. Most of us know what their reputation is. Unfortunately they've kind of dirtied the reputation of Neuro linguistic programming where there is a lot of positive that you can take from that. The challenge with creating when loose situations is you may get them to say yes but then they never trust you again. Now I'VE been in this business that I'm in right now transformed destiny for 22 years. I have people who've been buying from me for nearly that long right from to me. And I'm passionate about what I do. I didn't get into business to make money. I got into business because I love what I do. I go down these rabbit holes and I'm compelled to do this. It's my purpose. And then money's the result of it. But there are some people who are primarily money driven and they try to use these kinds of tactics and techniques, but. But they backfire because you know that person will only ever buy from you once and will probably poison other people to not buy. Right. It's not influence. It's just tricking people. So real influence creates relationships that thrive and flourishes and as both parties, for both parties, as they grow. And I would even stretch that to say that I think that real influence is leadership. If you truly. And Joe's a great example of this. Right. Joe went through his recovery and got well himself and now he helps other people recover. Can you imagine if a person was still stuck in their addiction and charging other people to help them not be addicted? Right. That's. It doesn't work well. And that's not to say that it can't work. And that's not to say that there aren't some people who are pretenders. We were talking about imposter syndrome. I always find it funny that the people who should feel imposter syndrome don't. And all the people who are really the good, genuine, kind people who really can help people are the ones that feel imposter syndrome. I think that the true influence is about leadership. So that means walking your talk, believing in what you sell. And that of course goes even further into making you a more influential person. When you are fully and 100% congruent behind what you're selling, that makes other people want to follow. So really, in essence, ethical influence makes you an excellent communicator. So if you look at the mind, there's a lot of misconceptions about the conscious mind, subconscious mind. A lot of people say we only think with 10% of our mind. It's actually nowhere near that. If you look at the research, and a lot of this comes from knee high CZ and the conscious mind actually only makes up 0.006% of the mind. It's 6/1000 of 1% of the mind. The conscious mind's the other 99.994% the conscious mind is logical and analytical, which is how a lot of people try to sell and market. Whereas the conscious, the unconscious mind or subconscious mind is emotional, organic. The conscious mind is in charge of accepting or rejecting what it encounters, whereas the subconscious mind is in charge of desire. The problem with trying to sell to the conscious mind is this conscious mind is like one of those funny guards that you see. If you've ever been to England and you've been to Buckingham palace, you get the guards. By the way, don't ever touch them. They're badasses. They will kick your ass hard. Other than that, they won't look at you or, or, or move, but they have permission if you touch them to really mess you up. The conscious mind is kind of like one of those guards. It's standing guard outside the gate and it's the gatekeeper, it's the guard that you see at the Royal Palace. Its job is to filter out the environment and to keep out suggestions. That's really the job of the conscious mind, right? The intention is supposed to be a good thing, but often it's not. Very often it's our conscious mind that prevents us from achieving what we want in our own lives, from taking that chance and falling in love, or from buying the thing that we know is going to help us from starting a business or whatever it is. A lot of times it's the conscious mind that gets in the way and rejects the wrong things. And so what we have to do, we have to learn how to bypass that gatekeeper. And if you do, you have access to the vast majority of the mind that's in charge of desire, which is where all buying decisions are made. And there are people who go, what if I'm B2B? What if I'm selling to corporations? Well, you're still selling to a human. Somebody said this at the last, the last genius network mastermind, which is, you know, it's still H2H. It doesn't matter if it's B2B or B2C or anything else like that. If you're selling to another human being, desire is always part of the equation. Now, it may not be the desire of, oh, I want this fancy car, but it may be the desire of I want to make this good purchase decision so that I get praise from my boss. And other people think that, you know, I'm a good worker. So there's always desire as part of the, part of the equation. So accessing and communicating with subconscious mind is the key to great marketing and sales and really, the number one thing is desire.

I throw it in the drawer with 50 other pins, with a hundred other, you know, with all these other names on them. And then I had one customer who gave me this pen that has my name on it, my name. It's for me. And on the other side is their name. And you know what I do with this pen? I carry it wherever I go. And every time I take out this pen, I notice and I remember the gift, the personalized gift that was given to me. It wasn't an advertising device. It was a gift, a personalized gift. Everywhere I go it's in my pocket. You know how much this costs to do? Now you might say, come on, I've got thousands of customers. How about for your best customers? How about for your biggest customers? Talk. It takes about $3 to do that. Are your biggest customers worth that? I think so. Okay, let me give you. I'm going to finished now. In this new book that I'm writing, we have something called Readers Reports where people who've read the book influence write to me. I ask them to write to me with examples of how one or they've seen one or another of these principles used on them or by them with great effect. And as regards the principle of reciprocity, here's a reader's report that I got from a guy in Australia. Here's what he not long ago we moved to Australia where my five year old daughter has been struggling to adapt to the new culture and find new friends. Recently on walks around the neighborhood with my wife, she tried leaving gifts in neighbors letterboxes. These were really just drawings scribbled in crayon and then folded and taped together into a letter addressed to my new neighbors from Carlee at and then she included her address. And this guy goes on to say, I thought it was pretty harmless and I was more concerned that it might be perceived as a nuisance. I worried that we would be known as the phantom of letterbox litterers. Then funny things started happening in our mailbox. We started finding cards, proper Hallmark cards addressed to my daughter that cost anywhere from three to five dollars apiece. Then packets of sweets and small toys started appearing there. If it wasn't for reading your book, I wouldn't have understood. But the power of reciprocity is unbelievable. She now has a group of friends she plays with in the park across the road every day. Why I like this story is you see each of the three features that amplifies the power of the rule for reciprocity was included in Those small gifts, as tiny as they were, they were unexpected. Suddenly there's a letter in the box from this little girl. It was meaningful because she created those letters herself. Right. She went to the, to the effort. Right. And customized for my new neighbors from Carley. Lovely. I love that example. So if we can all do that, take that counsel. Right. I'm sorry, if we. I don't think this is working either. No. Hello. I'm going to use my old professor voice and just shout this out. If we all can do this right, we will dramatically leverage the power of what we give first. If we can include one or another of these principles and if we conclude all of them. Yeah. And if we can include all of them, then everybody wins. Everybody wins. People get gifts, services and favors that are for them, that benefit them, that give them joy, and they give back to us what's warranted from those kinds of resources.

Well, you've already covered some of this, but I'm going to go a little more specific. So what specific, specific steps could someone listening to this take to better persuade or prepare the moment or moments before the message is delivered that you've not shared?

So let's take a step back and provide a general approach. It is to focus your attention on your message. What is the strength of your message? What is the strength, the strongest element of it? The thing that if people say yes to it makes it most wise for them to say yes so that they will benefit. What is it? Identify that thing and then reverse engineer the persuasion process to the moment before you describe that thing so that you've aligned people's consciousness and their sense of who they are with the strength of that message. We just saw. You could make me a comfort oriented buyer. You could make me a cost oriented buyer, depending on what you put first. If you put first fluffy clouds or coins in the background of your landing page, I become that person. Now, if you know that and comfort is the strength of your product, you've got me. I'm going to rate that as important.

It's the driving factor in all sales and marketing. So what I'm going to present to you now, I'm going to kind of go meta on influence. Instead of giving you language patterns, I want to teach you how to think about what you say so that you can choose the language patterns that you probably already know. And this will help you in your copywriting and face to face sales and your relationships. My first, by the way, guinea pigs when it came to hypnosis and NLP were my kids right My son was five, my daughter was three. And, you know, using this in my everyday life was how I really began to start to get good at it before I ever even introduced it into business.

Okay. I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want.

You to click here.

And if you want to watch some more videos that will be useful and awesome, click here.

Go ahead. You're over here.

Do it now.

Come on.

Thank you. Watch them.