How to Make Persuasion Easier - EP:089

When we present, when we are communicating, when we send out sales and marketing messages out there, we're trying to get the yes. But sometimes that yes is too big of a yes. What do we need instead? A thousand little yeses. And that's what we're going to talk about this week on Find the Red Thread. I'm Tamsen Webster of TamsenWebster.com. Please do me a favor, like and subscribe. We've talked before about how your big yes that you're looking for as a result of your message or your communication can sometimes get lost in what we call the no hole, the big gap between where an audience is before you talk to them and where you want them to be after you talk to them. In the middle is all the reasons that they say no, and that no can be deadly for us because a no to something is a no to everything. It's really, really, really hard to get past a no. But as it turns out, it's also really, really hard to get past a yes, thanks to what's called the principle of consistency. Now, this is something most often associated with the work of Dr. Robert Cialdini and his great works on influence. He's a researcher and an author, and He talks about how people operate in a very consistent behavior with things that they have agreed to. Which means if you say yes to a little thing, you are more likely to say yes to another thing that's even slightly bigger than that afterwards. So it means that the big lesson for us as people who are trying to create changes in thinking and behavior because we want to make changes in our world, whatever we define that as, that we need to figure out a way to turn that big yes into a thousand little yeses. We need to break that big yes down into increasingly smaller parts that are easy for people to say yes to. Because at the beginning of your presentation is not necessarily easy for them to say yes to some major change in thinking or behavior. But it can be easier for them to say yes if you can say yes to Do you want this goal, right? Do you want this goal that we've identified? It can be easier if they say yes to a problem of perspective that they weren't aware of, but that you introduce. It can be easier if you introduce a truth that they already agree with that makes it pretty hard to stay looking at the situation the way they have before. Once you've got those 3 yeses, it's much more likely that you are gonna get a yes to the change that you're looking for. But we can make it even smaller still. Remember, we're looking for 1,000 little yeses, not literally necessarily, but we're thinking about what will make each of those slightly smaller yeses, the goal, problem, truth, change, and the actions, even easier. How can we make that even smaller? And the most simple way to do this is to ask of yourself a very simple question. What do they need to understand and agree before before they'll move forward. And you can apply this to what do they need to understand and agree before they'll move to the problem? What do they need to understand and agree with before they'll move to the change? Each of those will introduce to you other little pieces of information that they're going to need to hear, understand, and agree with before they go forward. So for instance, if we want to get them to say yes to the problem, we will, we need to A, have assumed that they are saying yes to the goal.. But we can even check that by doing what I call validating the goal of explaining and bringing up for them, or even having them discuss in the room why it is that they want that goal. Each of those responses, each of those mental thoughts is a way for them to say, yes, yes, I want that thing. And then you can say, okay, well, what's the next thing that they have to understand and agree with? Well, they probably have to understand, agree with the fact that there are barriers to that goal, barriers that they are aware of that they've been struggling with. They need to say yes, that I struggling with those barriers too, and that those barriers have consequences that are difficult and painful for me. They also need to say yes to the fact that they have been trying things to get the goal, other solutions that may or may not be working to the extent that they want. They need to be saying, yes, I've been trying things. Yes, some things work, but some things don't. So that when you say, so maybe there's something else we need to look at, maybe there's some deeper problem, They're willing to say, yes, let's explore. If you repeat that process for each step, each statement, red thread statement in your, in your message, in your talk, in your book, whatever it might be, you're much, much more likely to get those thousand little yeses that lead to the big yes. All it comes down to is asking yourself, what do they need to understand and agree? To say yes. I'm Tamsen Webster of TamsenWebster.com. Thanks so much for listening or watching to this week's episode of Find the Red Thread. If you want more information about workshops or where you can see The Red Thread live, go to TamsenWebster.com/events, and you'll see all the places where I'm either hosting workshops or where I'm going to be speaking somewhere soon.