

Lesser Known Ways to Persuade People - peeplaja
http://conversionxl.com/17-lesser-known-ways-to-persuade-people/

======
badclient
_Get people to agree with you first_

A slight twist to this: get people to say yes.

My "success rate" (with approaching women) went up drastically when I changed
the first words out of my mouth to " _Can you hear me?_ ". I now ask this even
when I know a woman doesn't have earphones on.

Why does it work? I have a couple of guesses. It is a question that you can't
help reply to. And inadvertently when you answer this question, you begin
paying more attention to the party that asked.

In ad-speak, this pretty much takes care of the A(attention) in AIDA.

~~~
keiferski
Reminds me of a scene in _Boiler Room_ :

 _Ask him questions. Ask him rhetorical questions. It doesn't matter, just get
a 'yes' out of him.

If you were drowning and I threw you a life jacket, would you grab it? Yes.
Good. Pick up 200 shares. I won't let you down. Ask him if he wants to see
30-40% returns. What's he gonna say, 'no, I don't want to see those returns'?_

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izOIOvguncU&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izOIOvguncU&feature=related)
(possibly nsfw, language)

~~~
ims
If you liked this movie, may I suggest the David Mamet movie that inspired it:
Glengarry Glen Ross (<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104348/>).

Brilliant (but NSFW, language) "Always Be Closing" scene to give you a feel
for it: www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-AXTx4PcKI

------
Tloewald
My wife is the Guadagno in Guadagno and Cialdini and if the reporting of her
findings is any guide, ignore the rest of the article. Her findings were that
women will not respond well to email unless there's an existing relationship.
Men will respond better to email if there's an existing negative relationship,
but it otherwise makes no difference.

The error is forgivable if the writer only read the title of the article.

~~~
nandemo
I hope your wife doesn't send you a lot of emails.

------
Udo
> _Guadagno & Cialdini research (2002) showed that men seem more responsive to
> email because it bypasses their competitive tendencies. Women, however, may
> respond better in face-to-face encounters because they are more
> ‘relationship-minded’_

Yawn. Maybe we just don't want to deal with salespeople but instead judge the
product on our own without being harassed. How is that supposed to be
competitive?

Oh, I forgot, the self-fulfilling world of pop psychology, brought to you by
eternal twin slogans " _It's true if you think it's true_ " and " _You can
convert any social belief into a universal truth by citing agenda-driven
studies_ ". The greatest Jedi mind trick is convincing people that your Jedi
mind trick actually works.

~~~
jpulgarin
Have you read the cited study?

 _Maybe we just don't want to deal with salespeople but instead judge the
product on our own without being harassed. How is that supposed to be
competitive?_

If that is true then why do women respond better in face-to-face encounters?

~~~
Udo
> _Have you read the cited study?_

Same as you. It costs $11 to read that thing and I assure you, nobody has read
it (except maybe now that I said it out of spite). It looky like every other
pop-psy study out there, many of which have been discredited over the years -
at least the ones that people actually bothered with. It's unscientific trash
designed to support broad generalizations and preconceptions. The entire field
is known for making stuff up in a manner that is consistent with the cultural
background and expectations of the study's authors.

The crux of the matter is that these studies are supposed to show how certain
behaviors are biologically hardwired into humans, when in fact the vast
spectrum of human behavior and perception is frighteningly flexible and
subject to the change of cultural and personal values over time. Many people,
including pop-psy researchers, have a vested interest in showing that our
behavior is preprogrammed by nature. In fact, the prescription of what's
natural has been used as a justification for laws and rules for many hundred
years now, so it's kind of a tradition.

Any study of human behavior, especially if gender roles are concerned, needs
to cite specifically the cultural context and timeframe the observations were
made in. Advertising people know this. That's why they use different
strategies in different countries, and it's also the main reason why
advertising premises change over time.

~~~
peeplaja
Robert Cialdini, one of the people behind this study, is one of the most
respected people in the field in the last 20 years.

~~~
Udo
I have no opinion about this guy one way or the other.

Even brilliant people can make mistakes, and even brilliant scientists can be
victims of their own preconceptions. I'm not trying to trash his life's work,
I'm having serious doubts about the premises and results of this study
specifically.

[Edit] Just a strange observation: yours is essentially an argument from
authority (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority>) and yet
mods seem to love it.

~~~
Volpe
Not quite, It was pointed out it was a cited article, you called the author
into question, and was shown the author is credible.

The only fallacies are coming from your posts, not from the article in
question... :\

~~~
Udo
As I said many times in this thread: I called the study's conclusions into
question, not the author.

> _The only fallacies are coming from your posts, not from the article in
> question... :\_

After fighting you guys for the last our without one single person agreeing
with me, I'm inclined to say you're right. I should probably stop posting now.
It wasn't my intention to upset anyone. I'm sorry.

~~~
swombat
Don't be sorry. You haven't hurt anyone's feelings (and if you have, they were
too fragile to survive long on HN). It's fine to defend your arguments and
later realise you're wrong. That doesn't make you a lesser person - on the
contrary, you're someone who now knows one more thing. That's good. If HN can
do that more often, that's good.

------
wallflower
One of the best ways to influence people is to ask someone to do a favor for
you. Especially if the person you are asking has more perceived power. It is
called the "Ben Franklin Effect"

Teenage girl (to teenage guy):

"Can you help me with my homework?"

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Franklin_effect>

~~~
omarchowdhury
I think in your example case, the teenage guy would be helping for different
reasons.

------
Natsu
> Upsell a product that cost 60% less

> The time-tested 60×60 rule says that your customers will buy an upsell 60
> percent of the time for up to 60% of the original purchase price.

These two statements are not the same... Or was this to be an example of #17?
("87% of people believe everything if there’s a percentage in it")

------
pavel_lishin
"13 things you can do right now to increase your conversion rate.

#1: block the content."

<http://i.imgur.com/GTgzM.png>

~~~
peeplaja
Conversion is action (not reading), so actually this works well. While I don't
like popups as much as the next guy, its ridiculously effective. 80% of opt-
ins come via popup (all double opt-in).

------
skeletonjelly
How to get a post noticed on HN this week: don't swear, but _mention_
swearing.

------
Riverbed
And there's even a reference in here to the HN topic of the day - swearing in
front of an audience!

> 2\. Swearing can help influence an audience. Light swearing, that is. (Go
> overboard and lose all credibility.)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
The example is saying "damn"! Is that really considered swearing?

~~~
gujk
It is sad that we have lost the fine and colorful distinctions between
swearing, blaspheming, cursing, and vulgarity.

------
frisco
The title should be cropped to, "Lesser Known Ways to Persuade People".

------
skizm
#12 makes me sick, but is understandable I suppose. I feel like it implies
anecdotal evidence > fact based evidence.

------
cr4zy
Being confident and not one sided is a hard place for me to get sometimes. But
being positive does help with that :)

------
Helianthus
Eww. Pop psychology.

Persuading people is a lot easier if you look at it as mutually trying to make
the best decision--to be persuaded as much as to persuade--instead of some
stupid gimmicky power grab. "I felt so powerful because I got someone to agree
with me!" Feel powerful when you're right, feel powerful when you're wrong and
can admit it, but feeling powerful because someone else thinks you're right is
folly.

~~~
badclient
Someone can feel powerful because they got someone to agree with them _and_
because they believe they are right.

As a salesman, you don't get compensated for "feeling right". Welcome to the
real world.

 _Persuading people is a lot easier if you look at it as mutually trying to
make the best decision_

Depending on your definition of "gimmick", the above may also be considered a
gimmick.

------
Alex3917
For what it's worth, most of these examples (and more) are in Cialdini's book
Influence:

[http://www.amazon.com/Influence-Psychology-Persuasion-
Busine...](http://www.amazon.com/Influence-Psychology-Persuasion-Business-
Essentials/dp/006124189X)

~~~
peeplaja
Actually they're not. I specifically point out in the beginning of the article
that I don't cover stuff from Cialdini's Influence (as it's been over
covered). Who hasn't read it yet, definitely should.

~~~
Alex3917
Ah ok. I just skimmed over this and assumed they were from Cialdini, because I
have heard most of them before.

