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The Science of Selling Yourself · Radiant Voices

• Jeremy de Tolly: We see the lost opportunity. It was theirs for them to have, but because they didn't have the skill or the confidence or using the just the little simple pieces of information, that success was never realized. I guess the saddest part is that unless people actually clued into the fact that skills exist to get that success out, you're also completely oblivious to what it is you're actually losing. But Your audience is here, so they're not part of that category, so that's great. Okay, welcome everyone. Today I have a wonderful guest from Melbourne in Australia, Patrick van der Berg. He is a coach and expert in ethical persuasion. He's also the author of How to Hear Yes More Often and Wouldn't We All Like To Hear More Yeses in Our Lives. Welcome, welcome. How are you feeling today in this exact moment, Patrick? Yeah, good. Good. It's it's winter here of course, where the weather's not so nice, but it's being relatively mild. And I'm a c I'm always excited to talk to people about what it is I do 'cause I remember the excitement I experienced when I figured out or how I you know, read from Dr. Cialdini's work how this all works in terms of how people make decisions and how you can basically get and achieve a lot more success that was always yours to have just by knowing a little bit of simple science. And yeah, hopefully your audience will experience a similar sort of revelation today. And I'd love to be the one providing that to them. Great. Yeah, and it's really to set the frame a lot of the watchers and listeners of this podcast are folks for whom powerful communication has been a bit of a struggle. Perhaps they get anxious in the moment or very anxious and freeze and shut down and they fear taking up space. Just to get real. What is it like for you as a human being, Patrick? F you know, we we just switched on the record button but a minute or two ago. Are there any tingles in your body? Do you feel completely relaxed as if you're sitting at home drinking a beer on your lazy boy? Or what do you actually feel inside yourself in this moment? Well, I suppose I'm not completely relaxed like I would be sitting on the couch, but I think it's a privileged to be in a position to deliver what I can share with people. And I I of course I do know, you know, many years ago when I started to, you know, address groups of people. I did a bit of teaching so that that helped. But I think generally it's good to remember that those people that turn up to listen to you, they actually want to know what you have to bring to them. And I think that's a very nice position to be in. So yeah, that always gives me a bit of confidence. So yeah. Happy happy here to deliver whatever whatever might come out. Great. Yeah, as you say, some tingles in the body, and and it's the same for me. You know, there's just no way when you have a voice in the world that you're you don't have some activation in your body as you get up to deliver a message. I just want to normalize that both you and I will have a little bit of adrenaline spurting around. It's actually very helpful. It switches us on as we then lean into this wonderful subject. Okay, so let's let's dive in. Persuasion, it's it's a kind of an interesting word. People might have any kinds of feelings about it. But can you just set the tone and say what is persuasion? I think that's a good place to start. A lot of people, when they hear the word persuasion, what they hear is manipulation. And that's actually very different. You could say that manip manipulation is about giving somebody no choice. Where persuasion is you're trying to let people come to The decision to agree with you, but from within them, which is also actually crucial in what we do. Often, you know, if let's say if we're a you know, if we're the boss and we're delivering a message to those who are underneath us in the hierarchy, well, because we're the boss, they sort of need to do as as we ask them to do, right? And as long as we're standing there, they probably will. But what happens when you walk away? If you if you've Pressure someone in behaving a certain way. And persuasion people often relate it to sales, which it is very beneficial in, but persuasion is about behavior. So when you pressure people to behave a certain way, as in look, it's in your contract, or this is a part of your job description, which is also pressure, they might do it when you're around, but when the When the cat is away, the mice will play. Where if you persuade someone, if the decision to do this behavior comes from within them, they changed from within. And so when you walk away, the mice don't play because they're at peace. They like the decision that they've made. So yeah, persuasion is by definition. Not manipulation, but a lot of people hear it that way, which is why we often put the word ethical in front of it. We shouldn't really have to, because persuasion should be ethical. But just to point out that we are not interested in that manipulative side of things. And you can use persuasion science in an unethical way. You can use it to put pressure on people. You could make information up that would be persuasive. But research shows that that. might produce short term result, but it is long term disaster because eventually you get found out and people, you know, that don't come back to want to deal with you again. And especially nowadays with, you know, depending on the setting, social media, you know, accounts, videos of, you know, people or businesses having unethical practices, you can literally destroy a person's name or a company brand within days and it can follow you around for a long time. But research luckily also shows that ethical use of persuasion science produces both short and long-term success and builds long, loyal relationships. So there's no need to do this in an unethical way. We can just learn a little bit of simple science. Yeah, I really hear that. You know, when I first started coaching people and I would do a call with them to discuss what I have to offer and to discuss their needs, I was Pretty naive about how to run a call like that. And honestly, I was just throwing banana peels in front of myself and slipping on them in the call and really sabotaging the potential clients' ability to understand what I have to offer, to understand their own issue and how it could be solved or supported. And I I was crumbling with embarrassment at even putting myself forward. There were a lot of issues, you could say, programming or conditioning inside me that made the call very unlikely to succeed. In other words, I had r real gifts and a desire to help people, but my ability to communicate it was pretty awful. What do you think are those strange things inside us that make a person As the at the moment they need to describe what they have to offer or what they're proposing or that they're gonna advocate for something. What is it inside us from a conditioning point of view makes us crumble and undersell ourselves and actually describe ourselves in awfully almost denigrating or humiliating or subverting terms? Well, I mean I can only comment from you know, through looking through the lens of of of my expertise, I suppose, but A lot of things are counterintuitive. I can give you a couple of examples. this is I really like where this is going. So if we present options to someone, right? as in we have let's say three things that we could ask someone some someone for. And it could be let's keep it at a sales setting. This is easier to to imagine, but it this can apply to anything. So let's say you have a a cheap relatively cheap option, you know, with little commitment. You have a medium package, which is a little bit more expensive and you get a number of additional features. And then you have your, you know, your diamond package, let's say, that's got all the bells and whistles. Most people, and even people that are, you know, in advertising companies and who's supposed to know the science, but too often they don't or they've forgotten. As in, you know, you might have learned about it, but you're not actually, you don't have the application skills. It seems a lot of people, including large companies, put things in the wrong order. They start with it, you know, the good, better, best, right? Even the way we say it, that comes out naturally, good, better, best. We don't say best, good, or good, right? and so contrast, which is not actually a principle of persuasion, but contrast dictates that we can change the way someone experiences anything. By what we present immediately before what it is that we're presenting. And so I can give you a a business example of this T Mobile, big telecom company in Northern America. I don't know if they're they're where you are, and I know in Europe they're there. they were selling phone packages online, like a lot of people do. And as in no, we sell things online. And so they had the cheapest package with the Fewest amount of calls and the fewest amount of data on the top, and then they had the medium price package, and then they had their their most data, most call package down the bottom. So it went from cheap to medium to the most expensive package. When they were recommended to turn that around and then move the most expensive package to the top, so people perceived that first, sales of that most expensive item went up by 34.4%. Wow. Just by changing the order. And so I I see that a lot that people it's like they don't want to scare people. So they start off with small and work up big bigger, and they don't actually realize that they're working against what they're trying to achieve. Other example is that if you want to motivate a particular behavior. You don't want to highlight the behavior you don't want to see more of. And I can give you an example of that. I do a bit of networking, and there's a lady I know, Marianna, she does first eight training, and she couldn't come to the networking meeting, so she asked me to step in for her. And so, you know, she gives me a little spiel that I'm supposed to say in this meeting in terms of what Marianna does. And she she sends me this message. And I remember it relatively clearly, it said, Did you know that only thirteen percent of Victorian businesses, as in Victoria in Australia, only thirteen percent of Victorian businesses are compliant with first aid requirements? As in like you know, we don't want to be like that, do we? Right? We want to be compliant. But by highlighting to people that thirteen percent of businesses are compliant. What am I also telling you? What the subconscious hears is that 87% of Victorian businesses are choosing not to be compliant. That's the majority behavior. And as we'll no doubt go into a little later, the principle of social proof teaches us that people follow the actions of others, especially when they're numerous. So when my subconscious hears that the majority of businesses I'm not really being compliant with first aid requirements. I'm getting a very strong subconscious message to not get a first aid course organized. And so there's there's many more examples like that. That's a goodie. I love it. I th I would love to dive into then the the actual principles. I c I think I can see something behind you, the universal pr principles of persuasion. Let's talk about that. Or maybe just before that, you know, one of the things I wanna t to frame. Is that beyond the word persuasion, there's the idea that we want to be able to articulate our ideas in a way that is powerful, clear, that people can really receive. And most of us have got conditioning, like you described, where we'll unconsciously make a lot of mistakes when putting forward our case, articulating what we believe is true. Even when it comes to, for example, getting a five-year-old to eat vegetables, you know, there how do we how do we frame this in a way that supports the child to actually eat healthy food? And so I think it's really useful to move beyond the the ick. This is not some kind of slick sales technique or manipulation. This is the ability to articulate ideas and make a case for yourself or your product, and hopefully those are th in in a way that serves people. So let's get into how, the big how. I think are there seven of them there? Yeah, Jeremy. love to dive into those, but I think maybe it would be beneficial if we lead that in with explaining how human beings actually make decisions. Okay. Because once you understand that, then it becomes very clear why these seven principles are so powerful. Got it. Let's do Sound good? Yeah, let's do it. All right. All right. So I'm gonna lean on the work of Professor Daniel Kahneman, who died a couple of years ago, unfortunately, but he was a professor in psychology and a behavioral scientist. And he won a Nobel Prize in 2002 in economics, which is a little bit unexpected, right? I mean, normally you win a Nobel Prize to make an extraordinary contribution. So, what does a behavioral scientist figure out that has such an impact on economics? Well, a lot of his work was about the decision-making process, and decisions shape economics. That's how that fits together. So the popular belief that old economics used to have and science used to have was that people are logical, rational creatures, and we would therefore use logic and reason. To formulate our decisions. And Daniel Kahneman proved that that's basically not the case. And that's in essence why he won a Nobel Prize. So I'm gonna relay his research in a simple way. So when it comes to the decision-making brain that we have, or the decision-making brain of our audience, and when I say audience, I don't literally mean a whole room full of people per se. It could be the you know one of your managers that you're talking to it could be a representative of the local council that you're talking to at a at a at a desk or something it could be your teenager that you're trying to clean get them to clean up their room right whoever receives your message is the audience so our audience has when it comes to decision making two parts to the brain one part is called system one system one is fast It is an unconscious brain that works outside of our conscious control. It makes decisions automatically. It takes very little effort to run. We use it for everyday decisions, and it works a lot on shortcuts. Rules of thumb that we've learned in the past serve us well, or also things that sort of are genetically built into us, like our sense of scarcity. And so Let me give you an example. You might walk in a strange city with your partner and you're looking for a place to eat and you've you know you've not had dinner there before. There's a number of restaurants, two in front of you, one is empty, one is half filled with people, which one do you not go into? The empty one, right? Because if a lot of other people choosing that restaurant over the other one, well maybe they know something we don't. Right, but we're typically better off doing what other people do. Now you could you could stop, you could wait, you could start to interview fifteen of the locals, what they know about these two restaurants. You could maybe go on the internet and look for reviews, or maybe you could approach the local council if there's been any issues with food poisonings in one of these restaurants. No. The the The vision that a lot of people made the decision to go there is good enough for you. You ignore the empty one and you go into the other one. So the decision is made really quickly. And so that's that's system one making those sorts of decisions. Other rules of thumb, for example, might be that if something is rare, scarce, or we're not sure if it stays available or something is unique, then it tends to have a greater value. Should pay more attention when we lose something than when we gain something. So that might be another rule of thumb in the back of our head, or something like expensive equals good. We know from experience that typically if you spent more money on something, you get better stuff, right? So that's system one. On the other side, we have system two. So system two works slowly, where system one was fast. System two is conscious thinking. System one is unconscious. System two takes a lot of energy to run. And we use it to make complex decisions. And it's typically a way of thinking where we need to concentrate. For example, system one can drive a car on an empty road. You know, sometimes late at night you come home and you can't actually remember which turnoff you took. That's because you were not driving, system one was. but if you need to park a car in a tight parking spot, well then you better pay attention, right? Otherwise that's not going to turn out so well. So that system two will take care of that. So a lot of people and science thought that, well, when we need to make decisions, we would look at all the available options, weigh up our options and make a decision that way. Well, Daniel Kahneman demonstrates back in 2002 that ninety percent of our decisions are made by system one. And now there's talk that that's 95% or even more. Now, a couple of questions could bubble up here. First of all, why is this percentage increasing? That has to do with our attention span. In the 80s, we used to have an attention span of 20 minutes. The famous goldfish has an attention span of nine seconds. Our attention span is now seven seconds. Being beaten by the goldfish. And so because system two, our logical, rational part of the brain, needs attention to work and our audience doesn't have it anymore, they lean more heavily on system one with the decision making. So here's the the punchline, the clanger with all this, is that if we don't know how this science of decision making works, what what are the Bits of information that allow system one to make a quick, easy decision on, if we don't know that, then when we sit down or we think, okay, how am I going to present this idea to my people? Or how am I going to convince my employees to follow the new safety procedures? Or how am I going to convince this person to, you know, love the sales presentation I'm giving and and signing the contract to purchase, let's say. When when we think about how we're gonna do that, we're using conscious thought and that's system two. And system two has the awkward habit to come up with reasonings rationale that would need system two in our audience to process that information and they don't have the time for that anymore. And so we actually cause more uncertainty in our audience. And regardless of how wonderful your proposal is or how much it might make sense, they decide to push back from it and you and your wonderful idea, and they decide not to decide, or they decide not to buy into what it is you're proposing. And so if you, let's say, over a given period of time make a thousand proposals or pitches or requests to people. You get a certain amount of cooperation out of those thousand attempts, right? If it's in sales, you probably get a small amount of yeses and the rest, you know, if people didn't buy what it is you had to offer. And it's very easy to think, well, you know, if I I've got a little amount of yeses that I achieved, that means that the rest of them were no's. And I would argue they weren't all no's. A big chunk of those, most likely, were not no's at all. They were indecisions. They decided not to decide. Had you only given them a piece of information that their system one could have gone, hey, you know what? This is probably a good decision for me. Then that yes decision would have been able to surface. And that's why the the differences that can happen when you implement persuasion science can be Large, with a single sentence, you can sometimes achieve 15-20% more success rate, sometimes five hundred percent more, even, just by making a small change informed by science. And so it makes a lot of sense when we're making an effort to convince other people that we use the science we have available to us. Now, those principles of persuasion, they're basically seven categories of types of information. That can allow your audience to make a easier decision if it's in their favor to agree with it. If you've got a rubbish proposal or a rubbish product that just doesn't suit them, this is not gonna make say yes. So it's not magic, it doesn't work all the time. It's all about increasing the probability that someone says yes. That sounds great. Yeah, I think it's it's a strange position I find myself in sometimes when I I will sit with people who clearly have got really powerful debilitating speaking anxiety. And I know and I I hear them and then I sit with them and they tell me exactly how powerful it is. Included in that that anxiety is a kind of a what I'd call a freeze response. So they're used to kind of freezing under perceived pressure. This is what they often will do when they need to speak in front of a crowd. And that same kind of freezing response will lead them to not making a decision. It's kind of it's too scary. I don't know what to do. And that helplessness will then unless I learn how to do this better, that helplessness that they carry inside them will prevent them making a decision and they will literally vote to stay stuck because I don't necessarily present the information well. so I'm very fascinated to see where this all goes. And the upshot of that, of course, is that somebody that I could have helped. ends up staying stuck and having a limited career, feeling endlessly frustrated that they're not actualizing in their life. And so y you know, as you say, I've no interest in selling this work, for example, to anyone for whom it wouldn't benefit. But to have pe a l a whole bunch of people just not make a decision and stay stuck is a you know, it's a horrible outcome. So I'm so curious about what the seven principles are and how they work. Yeah, and and and you're quite right. I mean And and you see that when people, you know, how they communicate now, they present themselves. I I can't not see it when somebody's communicating, or I cannot not hear it. That if their brochure is put a certain way, I can see the credibility they're missing out on. I can see that people are just not gonna actually believe all the wonderful talk that you have about yourself. Right. And so we we see the lost opportunity. It was theirs for y for them to have but because they didn't have the skill or the confidence or using the just the little simple pieces of information, that success was never realized. And I I guess the saddest part is that unless people actually clued into the fact that skills exist to get that success out, you're also completely oblivio oblivious to what it is you're actually losing. But your audience is here, so they're not part of that category. So that's great. What's so interesting about it is if you don't have these kind of skills to be able to articulate and make a a really successful case for whatever you want to speak about, whether it's, you know, advocating for yourself in a job interview or whatever else it is, you end up believing that there's something intrinsically wrong with you rather than learning a set of skills that would empower you to make your case and then you succeed. So Yeah, I I ideally this people learn how to do this and put themselves forward and succeed more and develop greater confidence in the world and put themselves out there and get a whole lot more yeses. Yeah, and and you know, I guess a lot of people think that people are naturally persuasive. And it's certainly the case that some people just have an energy about them. They can walk into a room where everybody's hostile to begin with and they turn the whole room around, right? But they're probably using one or two strategies linked to one or two of these principles. And when you ask them, How did you do that? They can't articulate it. I can't w they don't know what it is that works. It's just whatever they do just works. But at least the good thing with this and what you teach, there's a science to how to do this. And because there's a science, it can be taught, learned, and we can get better at it. A good example actually is Dr. Cialdini himself. He's You know, if anything, a bit of a an introverted university professor. He's not, you know, the sort of, you know, I mean he's charismatic, but not the sort of person you would imagine when you think, somebody's just naturally very persuasive, but he's probably the most persuasive person in the world. All right. Let's jump into this. Let's dive into this principle. All right. So there's seven universal principles of persuasion, and we call them universal for a very important reason. They are functional in all languages, all cultures, and all countries, which is exceedingly helpful because our own countries, our cultures are intermixed, but it's also much easier to do business with people in other countries. So this is something that works everywhere. All right. Now there's seven principles. All these words you've heard before. And you know, for the the the first one I'll name is reciprocity. And most people go, yeah, I know that one, right? And some people might have even read Dr. Cialdini's book. But knowing about something doesn't mean that you use it. And even if you use it, it doesn't mean you use it in the most effective way. So even if some of this sounds familiar, do some self-reflection if you're actually using it. Yeah, I don't I mean I know what reciprocity means in theory, but I have no idea what it what it does for persuasion. So yeah, tell us. All right. Let's start with reciprocity. So reciprocity means that we humans, we have a a a need to give back the same type of behavior that's first given to us. Right? If you invite me to your birthday party, well, I really should invite you To my birthday party. If I do you a favor and later I ask you to help me, you'll find it really hard to say no to me because I already did you a favor. And so, in the context of compliance, we are more likely to agree with someone who we feel we owe something to. And so in business, we've taken that generally as in okay, we got a Give people stuff. Right? And that's in essence correct, but a lot of businesses still completely miss the mark. good example I like to raise is sometimes you're on a website and they have a lead generator, they have a beautiful ebook that you can have. And they say, we have a wonderful ebook for you. Just put your name and your email address, we'll send you the download link, our gift to you. And they think that they've activated reciprocity, but they haven't. Because Reciprocity gets activated when let's say you give somebody a gift. A gift is something that's given without a requirement needing to be met. Where the downloadable ebook, it was name and email address first, then I will send you the download link. So it wasn't a gift at all, it was a reward. And the person receiving it, while they might be thankful for it, they don't feel they got something to reciprocate. They don't owe you something. Where in other settings, That does work really well. And we see this in the supermarket a lot. You might enter the supermarket and there's a man or a woman there with a tray with pieces of cheese, pieces of sausage, cups of yogurt, right? slices of pizza, lipstick to try. It really doesn't matter. The science is really clear. The more you give away, the more comes back. The average order goes up. and what I find Somewhat hilarious about it is that it doesn't actually matter if you like the cheese or not. You buy more of something else because it's not about the piece of cheese you got. People reciprocate behavior. You were kind to me. Now I need to be kind to you. So we're what's good for us to keep in the back of our head, and all these principles have a dozen different application strategies, but good thing to keep in mind is how can I help this person genuinely without actually trying to set it up so that they will reciprocate. Right. So you know we can if it's somebody in the workforce, we can actually help them do the task or or lead them to useful information or or you know put them in contact with the right people or maybe help people with their business. Guess what? When you help people with their business, they start looking for opportunities for you to help you with your business. It's very automatic. It's like there's an emotional bank account that goes out of balance when we do something for one person. And we actually we want to equal, we want to bring that balance back. Well, we we typically will go overboard to make sure that the other person feels that we've reciprocated. So reciprocity is an understated and very powerful principle and it is a very long expiry date. As in you could help someone now, and depending on what it is, if it you know it's tiny they might forget. But if it's something, you know, like you know, you were really helpful, a year, two years later they might still remember that that bank account is out of balance, right? And they still owe you something. And more expensive, more elaborative things do tend to You know, get more reciprocation, but by no means does that mean that inexpensive things or even free things like information or helpfulness or listening to someone, that that is not powerful as well. I can give you a research study which I like in the UK. charities approached high income earners. And they asked if they would be willing to donate a full day's wages to the charity. And when that was the only request, or that was the request, five percent agreed with that request and donated a full day's wage. I mean, for those people, you're talking about tens of thousands of dollars in terms of a donation. The other half of people, or not actually was there were different categories, I shouldn't say half, but another group of people, they were given the same request. But before they were asked that, they were given a little bag of sweets. About fifty cents worth. Out of that group, eleven percent decided to donate a full day's wages over a bag of sweets. So it's yeah, it it does work and it's very very mechanical how we react to it. I think what's wonderful about that is that. Yeah, the simplicity of it is give. You know, give back. Give free stuff, give your time, give value to people, and it'll come back. And it hopefully that that's a kind of a prod for the for the whole of society to operate that. If we all just give a whole lot more, things will go better for us. And it's it it cre it creates alliances. Between but reci reciprocity is a great relationship builder. And you know, I talk to people and say, Well, I I I do that a lot with people and I go, Well, that's great. Then you already have an an element that is already natural to you that makes you more persuasive with people because you're just a helpful person. But now you know the science. You'll probably get more dedicated to it to make sure, okay. How can I help this person in this situation? Sending this email, is there something I can help them with? Yeah, that they'll they'll do good things for you. Great. Okay, love the first principle. All right, let's let's move on. So liking is another principle. So we like people that are like us, which means similarities. We like people that like us, and we like people that like us and say so. Just compliments. We are suckers for compliments. So, yeah, different ingredients in there. A little hard to dive into everything today, but let's talk about similarities, for example. before I gave the example of the restaurant, right? Empty restaurant, half-filled restaurant. So you're standing in the street, you see a half-filled restaurant, and you go, Okay, we'll go for that one, right? And you start walking up to the restaurant. And as you approach the restaurant, now you're you can clearly see the people inside as you're approaching. And they're all motorcycle riders. I'm I'm I could be one of them, right? I got Big Harley at home. big leather jackets, helmets on the tables, big boots on. Now, if if you are not per se a motorcycle rider, you might now not feel that that restaurant is really your cup of tea per se. Right? It could be nice people, but it's just yeah, they're not like me. You might actually change your mind on the restaurant and go look for something else. Unless you're standing there and all your leathers and you got your helmet under your arm, right? You go, hey, this is my crowd, right? Now you're even more enthusiastic to go in. So similarities matter. So a good example in terms of similarities, you want to look for things that you have in common with people. I think it was Northwestern versus Stanford that a study. Where they had people who were using email to negotiate difficult business contracts. And thirty percent of those negotiations ended up in deadlock, which which represented an enormous cost. The negotiators were instructed to before they started to talk business to share information about themselves. Things that you know, personal things, things that they liked, hobbies, you know, what they like to eat. Places that have been on holidays, that sort of stuff. And then, of course, reciproc reciprocation kicks in, right? The other party would reciprocate. well, thank you for telling me about that. I also like motorcycle riding and I'm a scuba diver and da-da-da-da-da. Right. As a result, deadlocks from 30% dropped to 6% by just uncovering similarities. It wasn't about how much information was shared. It was about how many similarities were uncovered. So again, to to bring that back to being naturally persuasive, if you're interested in other people, and you know you genuinely what are you into? What did you do on the weekend? Right? Those sorts of conversations can uncover things you've got in common. You might notice something in someone's office, like, wow, you're into sailing? My wife and I went sailing two weeks ago. It was brilliant, right? All of a sudden you've got this familiarity with each other and negotiations or your relationship will go a lot smoother. Again, just from an authenticity point of view, it's really about leaning into and finding common humanity. And there's really it's it can be so simple, surely. As you say, it's knowing a little bit about their lives, sharing similarities in your life, because we're all really very similar. We all go to the grocery store, we've all got Particular things we shouldn't leave the grocery store with that we come home with. For me, it's dark chocolate. I'm an 85% chocolate eater and I eat too much of it. And and so it goes. And this this thing of common humanity. It's not that hard to find when you learn that very simple tools, and I I I'm sure this can be very sophisticated too, but you learn to use them. Okay, tool number three or principle number three, unity. Cool. Before we go there, I love chocolate too. So you and I are basically best friends already, right? There we go. And you've highlighted something else, right? When when you're when you're trying to uncover similarities, you can raise things about you that are really specific and really rare. Like in my case, like I've already blurred out, I'd ride motorcycles, like scuba diving, and I'm also a pilot. But cool not many people do. These sorts of things. So by me raising those three things, the chances that I uncover a similarity are smaller. Right? Where if you also raise some things that are more general, as in, I love Asian food, I'm a sucker for chocolate, right? Now you've got things, me too. You've got a bigger strike rate. So you wanna you wanna sprinkle, you wanna share some of the exciting stuff, but also some of the more common stuff. And of course, you know, if you do happen to have things in common that are more rare, right? If I bump into somebody who's also a pilot or who also scuba dives, then we have a you know familiarity with each other that just instantly goes up a lot. But let's move on to unity, which leads into this nicely. Liking is about similarities, we could say. Unity, which is the last principle Dr. Cialdini gave us in 2015 after additional research. Unity is about a feeling of being part of the same community. We say a feeling of we ness. If I can describe you and me as we, right, then we feel like we're part of the same community. So in a company, a company is a community. So let's say if you're addressing the team, right, it's it's not a bad thing to raise that, well. We're all here as the you know the big family of A B C company. You can you can use the word family for more things than just blood relatives, right? To raise this awareness that yes, we are part of this group of people. you know, we see this at football matches, right? We have nothing in common but all of a sudden we know we're supporting the same team and we're best buddies, right? so that's unity in in essence. Unity also co-creation fits within unity. If we do something together, we have more loyalty to it than if we did it independently. I'll I'll give this one to your audience. If you have, let's say you've got a team of people underneath you and you've got five tasks, and you've got five people that you want these tasks to do, you could approach each people in the each person individually. And you could say, could you get this done by Thursday? And could you get this done by Wednesday? And could you and give them all the tasks to do and they'll probably all get done? Or you could say, hey team, and address all five at the same time. I've got these five tasks that I need doing by these and these days. Can you organize yourselves to get this stuff done on time? Now the same jobs will probably get done, but now they have to. Co-create with each other to get this done. And so you build more team coherency that way than if you start always giving people individual tasks. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Thank you. Cool. Social proof. Social proof. All right. So touched on it before, but I'll expand on it. People have people tend to follow the actions of others, especially when they are numerous. And when the other people are similar to us, and when we are uncertain. Right? So what that means is that we need to let people know what other people have other people have already agreed with us, have already done what it is I'm asking you to do, and they were happy about it. Right? That's why, for example, online reviews and testimonials are so powerful. 98% of online shoppers say that detailed online reviews are an important factor on deciding what and where to buy. so we need to gather data. And so asking for testimonials and reviews is great. A lot of businesses have already jumped onto that, see the value, wouldn't possibly stop you know, featuring those things on their websites or in conversation, but there's a lot more that the principle of social proof. Has to offer different strategies that are equally powerful, if not more powerful, than reviews and testimonials. good thing to remember here: similarities again is in there, and we call that an amplifier. If you're going to do a pitch to a particular person and you're gonna, let's say, show five testimonials, if you just give them five ones that you like of different people, men, women, different ages, different hair colors, different nationalities. Then it's good, it's still social proof. But if you know that you're talking to, I know, a mature lady company director, you would do well to turn up with five testimonials of other f mature female company director. You can feel it, right? I mean, if you're looking at people, wow, these are just like me, right? It it hits you more that that's that's makes sense for you, is right for you. All right, three more principles to go. we have the principle of authority, which has always been my favorite. authority helps us to get people to listen to us more, to to listen with the gravity that our words and our expertise deserves. Without this, everything else we do is much less effective. And I'm not quite sure why I've always liked it so much, but one quality of authority is that it is one of the principles that is the hardest to pick up that you're exposed to it. We are so automatic in reacting to it. I mean the the good thing about knowing about persuasion science is like a self-defense class, right? You can defend yourself against other people using it on you, but authority is is extra difficult. So authority teaches that we follow the advice of other people Who have superior knowledge and wisdom on a particular topic. And this makes sense, right? We can't know everything. So, you know, I mean the doctor is a good example, right? We we're in a foreign country. We I don't know, something wrong with our knee or with our digestive system. We go into an office, we've never been there before, we talk to a perfect stranger, but they have a white coat on, and they've got some certificates on the wall, and they're gonna prescribe us some chemicals to take and we just take them, right? We don't question it. We we don't ask that they actually paid attention when it was the month for knee problems in the university or digestive issues. We just assume that they know better and we follow their advice sometimes to our detriment. But it's a shortcut, right? If there's someone in the room who knows more about this stuff than I do, I'm typically Better off following that advice. Do you have to be an expert to embody authority? But you can borrow authority from other people. Let's say you're an 18-year-old and you got a great idea, right? you know, I I I love young adults, but it it you know, you you look young, right? To convey your point across is going to be tougher for you than if somebody's wearing is older, wearing glasses, a bit of gray hair, right? You assume that they know more stuff. but let's say if you're the 18 year old and you've got this break great idea, and you could support what it is you're saying with a number of studies that some universities had done, or some professors had done, or doctors had done, that basically concluded or supported what it is you're saying, that gives more authority to your argument. but what I encounter a lot more is that most people, and I would assume probably everybody that listens to this podcast, you are all an authority on your particular field. You've got expertise in that. But the problem is you can't walk into a meeting, shake someone's hand and go, Hi, my name is Patrick. Let me tell you the 34 reasons why you should listen to me today. Which is what lots of people do. I've got a master degree in this and I've got a company that turns over two and a half million dollars and we've got twenty eight employees and they're Reeling off all their wonderful achievements because they want the other person to realize that, you know, what I'm sharing with you, there's supposed to be some weights behind that. I know what I'm talking about. But the subconscious of our audience goes, You're full of yourself, right? And you lose authority and you lose liking. It's lose, lose. You can't do that. Once you're face to face with someone, you have lost the opportunity to sing your own praises. So Good tip here is that before you meet someone face to face, you gotta organize for someone else to raise your credibility for you. And if there is no one else, send somebody a message two hours or a day before the meeting and send them a letter of introduction. Sounds a little bit old-fashioned, but if you send an email and say, Hey, really looking forward to our meeting tomorrow at 10:30, I've attached a little bit of My background, so you know where this stuff is coming from that we'll be talking about tomorrow. I'd appreciate it if you could peruse the information. Well, people are curious, they're gonna look through it, and now it's not considered boastful. And now, from the moment you shake that hand, everything you say will be processed more with the gravity that it deserves. And if you fail to do that, if they give you long enough, it might be that at the end of the meeting. They then understand that you know your stuff, but that does mean that in all that time before you got there, they were not processing what you said with that gravity it deserves. So a very important tip to do that before you talk to someone. Super potent. Thank you. Consistency and scarcity. Consistency works because we feel an internal pressure to f to act in line with things that we have already said or done. if we say we'd do one thing and then do something totally different, then people might worry about us or call us unreliable or a lot worse words, right? And we do the same thing to other people, right? When somebody says they'll do something, then you know we we push back from them. So we go to great lengths to make sure that other people don't think about that about us. And so if we can discover What is important to someone, and then make sure that what it is we're proposing is in line with what's important to them, which I think is highly ethical. It is much harder to say no to that. so we can do that by doing some research on people, you know, company mission statements might reveal certain attitudes that they're proud of. Well, maybe your proposal aligns with that and makes it harder to refuse. But we can also ask questions of someone to to reveal what's important to them. And as you know, Jeremy, I've got my own podcast, Ethical Persuasion Unlocked. I've got an episode I won't I won't spoil it, but in episode eight, I'm doing an interview with Chris Phelps, who's one of my colleagues, also trained with Dr. Cialdini. He runs four dental clinics and he introduced a single question on the on the patient intake form. A single question, which was linked to the principle of consistency. And that single question raised case acceptance, which is what dentists call it, when the patient goes, Yes, dentist, I will do what it is you recommend. That got raised by 33.5% with the single question. And you can apply that to many businesses. So go listen to episode eight. And last last principle scarcity. so we value things more that are scarce, that are rare, that are dwindling in availability. we value those things more. Funnily enough, we don't experience them any different, but we do value them more. And that can be expressed in lots of different strategies. but one thing I often sort of give away, we tend to have a terrible habit of explaining to people what they will get more. If they do as we ask, or if they buy what it is we're recommending, or if they follow our recommendation. You get there faster, you're gonna save money, it's gonna be better for the environments, better for your children. These are all gain language, I would say, where we know that people are far more motivated by a fear of loss than possible gain. But yet we're constantly expressing what people will get if they Go with us, what do they get more? And that is costing us a lot of success. And I can give you a little research case which I like. There's a company, they did home assessments to assess how well a home was insulated, so that they could then explain what the financial yeah consequences were of basically having their home fully insulated to make it better or to not have it fully insulated. And so half of the people, and of course what they would save varies per house. Every house is different, but let's say one dollar, let's use that as an example. So half of the people were told, if you insulate your house fully, you'll be able to save a dollar a day. And the other half of people were told, if you fail to insulate your house fully, you will lose a dollar a day. It's the same dollar, right? But the people that got the loss instruction. A hundred and fifty percent more people were motivated to insulate their house fully rather than the group that got the savings instruction. Sounds like telling a five year old that they'll grow better muscles from eating spinach is not the way to do it. And and tell them that they're p that they risk becoming weak and sick and I mean is that true, really, that you that you ultimately emphasize the downsides? of making a particular decision in scarcity. Generally yes. I I'm I'm gonna completely back off on what you would say against a five year old. I d I don't I don't think that might per se be the right example. but yeah absolutely if you you know if I'm trying to sell you a beautiful car I can s tell you that you know you're gonna save money, it's gonna be better for the environment and you're gonna get to work just so much more relaxed. Or I can explain to you that, you know, if Don't have this car, you know, you'll get to work more stress, you'll waste more money on petrol, and you'll waste time. And it comes and it doesn't mean we need to use loss framing at every single turn. You can tell people what they tend to benefit, but you should probably point out that these are benefits that they should not be missing out on. You're still sort of pulling that back in there. Got it, got it. Okay. So Just while we've got a little bit of extra time, what does it look like to pull this all together and to use ethical persuasion seamlessly and professionally and authentically? Yeah. Can you paint a picture? Yeah, sure. And and that's a a good question. And I can also bring into that, a lot of people ask AI to help them be more persuasive. And AI is a little better than the average human being. But it has no situational awareness. It gets things wrong all the time and it invents things and it goes in unethical paths as well. So we have to be very careful with that. So how does this come together? Well, first of all, people often ask which principle is your favorite? What's the most powerful principle? Well, the answer is there isn't one. And probably the worst thing you should do is have a favorite, have a go-to principle. Because it's not like that. You should look at the situation where you are. And we could identify that there's three areas that you need for success. First of all, you need to have a good relationship with your audience. Right? If you if you if you're dealing with someone in a in a in a shop or in any setting, if you don't like them, you're gonna go out of your way to not deal with them. Right. So relationship has an impact on the success of anything else we do. I can try and motivate you into action, but when you don't like me, when we don't have the relationship, it's not going to be very, very successful. If you've been emailing someone and it takes them on average three weeks to get back to you, it's telling you something, you don't have a good relationship. Otherwise, it'd answer you more promptly. So there's particular principles that are great at building and repairing relationships. Now, it could be that you've got a great relationship with that person, but in terms of what it is you're offering, they're still uncertain about w if it's right for them. And in sales, they typically say, well, if they say no, then you just haven't shown enough value yet. Well, that's maybe true, but I would say that as in you people are just still uncertain that what it is you're proposing, either a purchase or a new procedure to follow at work. That's right for them. And so uncertainty is what you want to reduce. And so there's other principles that are great at reducing that. Once you've got a good relationship and re uncertainty is reduced, you know, as in people love you, love your product, but they're still not buying it, they're still not doing what you ask. Now it's motivation that's lacking. So there's other principles that are good for that. So how do you apply that? You would look at where you are in the situation and then Would basically go through the principles. And a lot of my students, for example, have a little PDF on their desktop, which gives them some prompts on what to look for for each principal. and so then you would go through the list. Okay, well, if I want to do something with reciprocity, if I want to build a relationship, is there something I can help this person with? Right. And you go through the list. Have I looked for similarities that I could bring up? Is there a complement that I could make? You know, is there a community that we both feel part of? You basically go through the principles and the different strategies and you look what's naturally in the situation. And then all you need to do is bring that to the surface. And you certainly don't want to bring everything to the surface. Because if let's say if you use all the seven principles, there's so much information in there, now you start getting a feeling that somebody's trying to convince you. Right. So typically you might just use two, maybe three principles at most. Right? But you pick the right ones, give them the setting, and let them do their work. No need to twist anybody's arms. Right? These principles are powerful. And if that yes is in them, you'll increase the chances that that yes will come out. That sounds awesome. I I I can see it's a it's a subtle art of really learning how to do this and learning to do it authentically and as you say, ethically. We're not looking to manipulate people. We're really looking to Give them their information and or and and and also to create an environment where a relationship environment where there's the safety and trust and connection to for someone to even begin to clearly evaluate if they want to do something. Because if we don't have those in place, then you might have fantastic ideas, but they'll stay somewhat dead inside us and unshared with the world. Unless we're able to create connection, create safety, and kind of open, let people put down the drawbridge and then we can walk across and and talk to them. And I think that one of the things that's really come through for me is this thing about helping people resolve uncertainty. I often I think we think we've said, we've shared what we have to share, and when they don't agree, they're they've rejected our idea. They don't like our idea. Whereas I think from what I'm hearing, frequently we may not have created connection, but also very frequently people are indecisive. They need support and help to work through their indecision and their fear of making a decision. And from there they can evaluate if it's for them or not. But to be timid and be scared of having the full conversation, to fully share what we want to. persuade people with or to at least share and advocate for our ideas. To not know these things is, I think, to underserve ourselves in a world where people are being persuaded every time they open their phone, they walk into a shopping center. And so that people are used to being persuaded. And so if we arrive in a situation advocating for our ideas and we're falling to pieces and we have no idea how to do that, We're basically shutting the door on our our ability to succeed potentially in this world. We're certainly compromising it. Does that make sense? Does that sound about right? No, absolutely. There's there there's so much success slipping through your fingers. Ma maybe something to to close on, if if you'll allow me. There was a study where school kids were in a situation that if they didn't raise their grades by a full letter. They would be expelled from school. And they were separated or divided into three groups that got three different types of instructions from the school. They all got access to exactly the same assistance and same help, but they got different instructions. The first group was not asked to set any study goals. The second group was asked to set study goals and keep those in their heads. The last group Was asked to set study goals, write them down, put their name under it, photocopy it, and give one to everyone in the class. Now, the question is, how successful were these kids in raising their grades enough to stay in school? Well, the people that didn't set any study goals, they weren't very successful. I think it was 14% of them were successful in raising their grades enough to stay in school, the rest were Expelled. The second group asked to set study goals but keep it in their minds. Do you think that we're more successful? No. The same. Also 14%. I would have thought that would have scored better, but still the same. 14% scored enough. The rest was expelled. The last group, 86% of them were successful enough to grade raise their grades to stay in school. Now, I would argue that for all kids in all three groups, this was just as important and they were just as motivated. But the only thing that was different. was the instructions that they got. Now my point without this study, we would have never known that there is an eighty-six percent group. Imagine being the parent of one of the kids that was in the first group, just by chance. You would now realize that had they been put into the third group, they would have had so much more chance of staying in school and their future wouldn't have been impacted. As greatly as it has. But for most people in business, they're all in the 14% group and they don't know they are. Right? So, yes, there's so much success you're missing out on, but yeah, it's something you need to need to learn, which luckily doesn't take all that much. Dr. Cialdini's flagship course with a trainer guiding you is only about a 20 hour investment. So it's it's not like a university course. That's amazing. Yeah. In the using a principle from these seven principles, I I imagine the thing to say is that what does it cost one to not be able to articulate and advocate for ourselves and to really sell our idea our idea excuse me, sell our ideas, sell ourselves in job interviews or to new potential clients. There can be an incredible cost over a lifetime to being terribly afraid to share your value and under skilled at it in a world where some might be skilled in it and getting massively ahead and they're no more talented and no more able. And as I as I was saying earlier, invariably what people will do is they'll turn that lack of success against themselves and feel that they're unworthy, that they don't deserve it, and that there's something inherently wrong with them, where in fact it can really be as simple as a skills issue. So We'll be sharing all kinds of links in the show notes to Patrick's work, to his podcast. Please have a look at him and this work and his book. Thank you so much for sharing this time with me, Patrick. It's been really powerful. Delighted with the invitation and I hope your audience got a lot out of it. And if I can ask the audience a favor. As podcast hosts, I know that it's it's it's hard to sometimes wonder what our audience appreciates about what we bring to them. So if you've listened to Jeremy a few times and you're valuing what you're getting on his show, leave an online review. Go to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and I know it's not that easy, but find a place where you can leave a review and let him know what it is you liked about that. I know Jeremy would really appreciate it and it's what gives the show more direction and meaning as well. So I would also appreciate that. I love that. Thank you. Demonstrating the principles, there's the social proof and and I really would love that. Thanks, Patrick. Thanks so much.