Secrets of persuasion: how to positively influence your message recipients

According to Andrews, Van Leeuwen and Van Baaren, there are thirty-three hidden persuaders that powerful communicators use to get the results they want. In this article, I list five of the most powerful.

1. Acknowledging resistance
You may find this hard to believe, but simply acknowledging that the recipient of our communication is going to have objections is key to them overcoming them themselves. They may object to you raising your fees, for example. Try saying, “I know you will not agree to this, but…” before you deliver your communication, and after you have delivered it say, “But you are free to accept or refuse.” An academic review of the scientific literature on this phenomenon showed that adding those two phrases into your communication doubled the positive response rate. Worth considering, I reckon, but you are free to accept or refuse…

2. Fluency
Overall, messages are received positively when the content is understood. The less processing that the recipient has to undertake, the better the outcome. Using big words and complex phrases may make you sound impressive at the tennis club, but it works against you in 95% of cases. The only time you should consider complex imagery and complex words are when you deliberately want to make the recipient of your message work harder, because sometimes having to work harder makes the recipient believe that the image or product is more impressive or influential than it really is. Also, use numbers—simple numbers—where possible, as this helps the recipient subconsciously process the image or text faster. Strange but true. It’s all about familiarity, and small numbers are easy to process because most of us remember our times tables.

3. Small leads to bigger
If you get a ‘yes’ on something small, the recipient of your message is more likely to agree to bigger and bigger requests. As long as the requests are in line with each other, you are likely to receive a positive response. As Andrews, Van Leeuwen and Van Baaren illustrate, asking for a small donation to a local nursing home might elicit a positive response. A week later, asking for the recipient to volunteer at the nursing home is likely to also generate a positive response, because the two are aligned with each other. There’s no synergy if the second request is not in line with the first. An example of this Foot-In-The-Door approach is one where households were first asked to put a small sticker in their window promoting safe driving. Most households complied. A week later the households were asked to put a big, ugly sign up in their garden promoting safe driving. A staggering 76% agreed, compared to just 17% who hadn’t first been approached to place the sticker in the window.

4. Follow me to the Promised Land
Sex sells, we all know that. But what also sells is promises. Even if the promises are outlandish (buy this smelly deodorant and get women to throw their bras in the air), if the promise is aimed at our basic instinctual needs the chances are good that the recipients of the message will respond positively. Think of toothpaste—for thousands of years mankind has gone without what we know to be toothpaste. Along come marketers with promises of banishing bad breath and winning the hearts and bodies of desirable partners, and suddenly we are all toothpasting away in case we push our potential desirable partners away. The claims may be exaggerated, but people want them to be true. The same force is at work with shampoos, conditioners, detergents and the like. Wearing this season’s style won’t guarantee you a hot date and hotter sex, but it just might.

5. Making your own mind up
Big change—quitting smoking, quitting drinking, quitting beating up your partner, quitting drink driving, getting vaccinated—requires sophisticated messaging. But surprisingly, considering the vast number of academic studies on this, the easiest way of getting someone to do something big is to persuade them that they have made the decision to change themselves, because very few people argue with themselves, they have a need for cognitive consistency. Says Andrews et al., “If people feel that they have provided the positive arguments for performing a certain action themselves, they’re much more likely to believe these arguments and to behave accordingly.” The only requirement of the communicator is that they craft a compelling message that stands out from the clutter and gives the recipient the time and space to process it. Getting former smokers, drinkers, violent perpetrators, and so on, to talk about how they turned their lives around helps, too, because they are likely to be considered part of the message recipient’s ‘in group’ and thus more likely to be listened to. Messages from victims rarely seem to have any effect, the literature suggests.

There we have it, five ways to communicate better for better results. Try the methods out and let me know how you get on. Email me at lee@communicatewithpassion.com.

Until next time, take some communication risks because you never know what will pay off, and communicate with passion!