The Power of Pre-suasion and Persuasion with Dr. Robert Cialdini

32:47Like the clouds and the coins. But here's one that I really like. One of the things that we are challenged with these days is getting people on board with us, both inside our organizational envelope and outside. Outside, we want our customers, our clients, our prospects to feel bonded with what we have to offer our organization, our products and services. Inside, you want your people who are working with you to be on the same page. You want them to move in sort of a unified way, a sense of partnership with you and their colleagues in achieving this common goal. And there was a study done in Belgium to show how you might do this with a simple image.

33:35Researchers had subjects come into an experiment. they sat at a table with a researcher, a young woman, who showed them photographs of household objects, like a toaster, a table, a chair, that kind of thing. And for one-third of these subjects, there was a figure standing behind the object in each case. In one case, it was a single figure standing alone. For another third of the subjects, it was two individuals standing apart from one another. And for a third sample, it's two individuals, not quite like this, but shoulder to shoulder in a partnership. Group hug. Like this. Let me show you. Yeah.

34:31And then the researcher got up from the table. I'm never coming back here. Yeah. No, no. Okay, I'm okay, I'm Italian, I'm okay. Touching. The researcher got up from the table and pretended to drop an array of items onto the floor. And the question is, who gets off of their chair? Spontaneous, they don't have to be requested. gets down on their hands and knees and becomes cooperative, becomes a partner and a collaborator with the researcher in getting this stuff off the floor. Let me show you what the answer is here. For people standing alone, who saw the image of one person standing alone, 20 % do it.

35:25For those who saw two individuals standing apart, 20 % do it. Now, you probably are going to guess what I'm going to show you for those people who saw an image of togetherness before they were asked to do something that was a partnership, collaborative, cooperative activity. 60%. You triple it. You triple it. Now, when I saw this study, I was in a position where I was not surprised by this effect because I had seen it over and over and over. Where you focus people first sends them down a channel that causes them to be congruent with the idea that you focus them on. In this case, it happens to be cooperativeness, partnership.

36:25Here's what surprised me. It surprised me so much that I was reading the study on my computer screen, and I have a chair with wheels on it. And it literally rocked me back in my chair so that I rolled back away from the screen. Here's what it was. The subjects in this experiment, including those people who had done three times as much as their contemporaries, were babies. They were 18-month-old children. That's how primitive this effect is. That's how much of a feature of the human condition this is. It's in us. It's in us. And by primitive, I don't mean that in a negative sense. I mean it in an elemental sense.

37:30It's how we operate as members of the species. Okay, when you've got something with that kind of motivating power, that's where you go. The more I study the influence process, persuasion and so on, the more convinced I am that the closer you can get to primitiveness, the more power and the more reliability you will have in the effects that you produce. And this is one of those fundamental principles of action. What you focus on at any given moment makes you prioritize all information that's related to that focal concept while it's still in consciousness. And you can see the kinds of differences you get in getting choice and action, not just in babies deciding who to help pick up objects, but in furniture store buyers, in cruise purchasers.

38:59So it doesn't go away after 18 months. It's still in us because it's so adaptive to do this. Think about it. If you go into a situation and you pay attention to something, it's because it's important. We wouldn't last very long as a species if we went into a situation and started paying attention to things that were not important there. So if you pay attention to something that's important, I want to say two things. First of all, it makes sense that you would prioritize attention to things that are related to that concept. That's the important one, right? And secondly, it's going to get you to perceive that if you are focused on this thing, it justifies your focus.

40:04It warrants your focus on that thing because it's the one that you chose to spend time on. That's the logic behind it. Here's how a communicator can change that equation. By directing people's attention to something, they can get them to spend focused attention there for reasons that have nothing to do with its importance, that have something to do with the communication process where you deflect their attention to this thing. Can I bring in a tactical application to that? All right, so the premise, just to make sure I understand, is because in our natural state we tend to focus on things that are important, because generally we look at stuff that might eat us or maybe we could have sex with it, right?

41:02That's the general rub. Smaller than us, eat it. Yeah, or we can eat it. Life or death. You're talking about death or life. Life and death. Talking about the basic aspects of humanity. So because that's so ingrained in us, now the reverse of that almost becomes causational. Because I'm looking at it, it now becomes important merely because I'm looking at it because historically I looked at things that were important. That's right. So the inverse has now become true. We've confused causation with causation. Yeah, we've confused in our brain. So how can we as marketers leverage that? Anybody in here ever heard of retargeting?

41:42Right? When you run retargeting ads all the time and all people are seeing is your brand, your logo, your stuff, you become important not because you are, but because you're there. because you're constantly present and constantly visible. So, I mean, if you're wondering what's the ROI of retargeting, what's the ROI of, I mean, that's the reason, and I've said this before, people are like, ah, I see your ads all over the place. Right. You know whose ads you aren't seeing if you're seeing mine? My competitors. So I become important, not because I am. You guys know this. You've been around me enough.

42:16You know I'm largely worthless. But from a retargeting perspective, because you see me again and again and again and again. I'm there on YouTube and it's there like, hey, me again. That guy must be important. Why? Because I visibly see him all the damn time. And it might, and the logical part of you will say, this is annoying. I find it irritating that I keep seeing your ads all over the place. The 18-month-old viewers being like, that's important. That person is really, really important. And yet you keep showing up for stuff like this. That's a great insight. And it explains something that I heard Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, Berkshire Hathaway, explain why they invested in Coca Cola many years ago, whose value in their stock portfolio has skyrocketed, I don't know how many hundred percent, right?

43:05It's because everywhere you looked you could find a Coke sign or a Coke machine. It was always there. It was visibly prominent, which gave it standing as important and worth paying attention to. Attention direct response, people, if you don't think branding matters, there you go. But I guess on the inverse of that, I was thinking, how could you apply that to like, how could you, where does that naturally occur, right? So if you're driving down the road and you hear a siren or see police lights, your situational awareness immediately goes up. You slow down your car. You look around you to see where the accident is.

43:48It's more important to you than it was. You were listening to the radio or talking on the cell phone, but instantly it's more important. Right, right. And that's why, by the way, have you ever heard, especially in Europe, there are police sirens that go, wah, wah, wah. You know why? Like a baby sound? It's the sound of a baby. It's at the sequence of an infinite. Not ignore it. And that's where we have evolved to pay attention to that. Makes it worthwhile and justifies our attention, yeah. Yes? Here, we've got to throw the magic cube, if for no other reason than because it's fun. Who has it? All right.

44:37Oh, up high. No, that was actually a pretty good toss. I can absolutely confirm what you're saying. Like, and I can show you a live example of what we did. If you have a browser and could throw that to the screen, is that possible or? I'm sorry? Do you have a browser and could throw that quickly to the screen? Is that possible? Then I could show you what we've done. Probably not. Can you show us like on a Wicked Smart thing? Yeah, like the thing is we compare dating sites and we have built like a table where you can compare them. And in the beginning, we were just saying, like, the best dating sites, the top three dating sites.

45:15And then we switched that to a background with a kissing couple. And the first thing was, do you remember your first kiss? And after doing that, we put them in a completely different mood before consuming our content. And this increased our time on site, by like 20 % and clicks and stuff. So yeah, this was a big change for us when doing that. And I see that in online shops as well. Like they sell cold pressed dog food. Cold pressed dog food? Yes. It angers me that that exists. That absolutely exists. I believe it. Like if you, I see it in many online shops, But what about if you transformed it to, do you remember how happy your dog jumped around and played with a ball or whatever?

46:12And you want to make him happy like this again, and here's the dog food or something like this. So I think this has a big influence on buying stuff. Yeah, there's only two things that anybody's ever buying, right? Transformation and identity reinforcement. So if we can figure out the identity that they want to reinforce and come up with ways to show that to them, or figure out the transformation that they want to become and get them in that state, then you got it. But the point is, it's about being deliberate and intentional. Sorry, you want to throw that? Dayton Bill over here has got one. No, can I do it, please?

46:46This is the highlight. All right. Thank you. All right, Bill, you ready? I feel like I'm really good at this now. You got it. Thank you. You got it. Yeah. This is great stuff. What about in regards to changing someone's state? And when I'm saying someone who's in an elevated state, a customer service call, does it still apply? Are there other things that you can do when someone's already out of state to kind of jujitsu them? It'd be cool to try some on-hold music that reset their mindset. Yeah, some music that would change. Zen music, like at the spa or something. But the one way to do it, it seems to me, is to get a sense of commonality with the agent who they're going to be talking to on the phone.

47:42So that they sense that this is somebody like me who's going to empathize with my situation. Not somebody from this other, this unstated other organization. It's an individual who is like me. And that disarms conflict. It's hard to be against yourself. So to the extent to which you can see yourself in other people, there was a study done with negotiators where half of them were asked to negotiate on a very difficult problem, and they got 30 % deadlock negotiations. Nobody won. Everybody walked away with nothing. There was another group, before they began the negotiation, they sent information back and forth to one another about their hobbies, their interests, and background, and so on.

48:41That group, deadlocked negotiations, went from 30 % to 6%. Now, it wasn't just because they got information that humanized the other person. When they looked at their data, it was only when there were commonalities between their interests, hobbies, background, family situation. It wasn't until they saw a connection with themselves. So that representative needs to ask some questions about this individual. the situation, where do they live, how many people in their family, all these kinds of things. And where there are commonalities, they get to say honestly, oh, really? Yeah, me too. Or my wife's from there.

49:37And it changes the situation from hostile and conflict-laden to something else, something unitizing. the on hold time when they're looking. Oh, let me go and pull up your records. Hey, while this waits to pull up, you know, where are you from? I'm picking up an accent, where are you from? You can use that during a customer thing as though, you know, computers don't move at the speed of light. Now, was there another one over there? Go over here and then part of. Yeah, I like that you threw it. Yeah, this is awesome. I absolutely love all this. So it just seems, just based on what you said there, a lot of this stuff we're kind of doing with survey funnels, We're seeing this translate with segmentation, like you just mentioned, asking the question before you get to that point of asking for a conversion or a sale or whatever.

50:28But my question is, do you generally start at the end of the funnel and work your way back when, I guess, thinking about this? Or do you start from the top to the bottom when you're, I guess, wondering how you're actually taking someone through this process? Well, I think there are two steps. and you and your team, it's crucial to do this with your team.

50:55Identify the principal feature of the message that you are about to deliver, the core element of it that you want people to most pay attention to. That's step one. And then you go and you reverse engineer the process. You go to the moment before you're going to deliver it or at the outset of it. And you bring attention to that idea, that feature, that factor. That's how, it's not all that complicated, but But it is going to require that you and your team decide on an image or an adage, a slogan. So if you want change, right, there are all kinds of sayings that are, when you're through changing, you're through, right?

52:00Exhale the past. Inhale the future. Those kinds of things that are, there's one by this British novelist, E.P. Hartley, that I love. It's, the past is a foreign country. They do things differently there. Just putting people in a state of mind, if I stay here, if that's what you want is change, change is what you've got is going to be require change and produce benefit beneficial change getting them to take that step those kinds of things you might just have that quote at the top of the page at the top of the page yeah i'll give you an example that i if you've ever anybody in here have like the amit like centurion card the whole thing they're selling there is exclusivity right and so you get a little business card in the mail and you call the number right and it's like a 212.

52:55It's a New York number. It's not a 1-800. And when you call, they answer, they go, uh, uh, and they're not like, you know, yes, American Express. The person in the end goes, yes, hello. Very kind of abrupt. And you're sort of taken off guard. You're like, uh, hi. Like, yes, um, this American Express. Who's calling? It's like, um, my name is Ryan Dice. I received a card email. Okay. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. In the lower right-hand corner, um, and talking against the cadence, right? How do you speak when you're talking to somebody? So what do they want me to feel right now? They want me to feel like I'm kind of on the outside.

53:31Yeah, in the lower hand corner, there should be a code on the card that you receive from us. Would you mind reading that code to me? Sure.

53:40F, G, R. Okay, let me check. Oh, I see. Oh, hi there. Mr. Dice, is it? Yes. Oh. Thank you so much for calling. Let me just apologize for my demeanor earlier. As I'm sure you can imagine, we received quite a few phone calls to this number from people who frankly don't qualify and have not been invited to apply for the Centurion card. So we needed to make sure that you were who you said you were. Now that I've verified your code, let me just say welcome and congratulations on being invited to apply for the American Express Centurion card. See how the pacing and everything? So it's everything, right?

54:31It was, yes, but how do you talk to somebody if you're annoyed that they're there? It's very quick and very punchy. And then, oh, oh, I see. And now, like, it was just, you know. And tell me, what do you know about the Centurion card? I mean, I was like, oh, my God. And I'm like, oh, this is good. And I'm like taking notes and crap like that. But it's the same thing, right? So I think that's the key, right? What is that state that you need to be in? What is the thing that we want to pay attention to? We want them to feel a sense of exclusivity. How do we make someone feel that sense of exclusivity?

55:05You exclude them and then re-include them, right? We've all done that. And I'm sure there's quotes on that. You could probably show a picture if you really wanted to make somebody feel left out. You know, we've all had the experience of being the last person picked, you know, for a game thing. Like, so maybe it's that. The Oxford Club letter that's been around forever for Magora shows a great big closed door on the front of it. And, you know, basically it lets you know that you're on the outside. And inside are all these wheeler dealers, cool people that know things that you don't. And that's the whole message of the door.

55:40But that key is picking, being very deliberate, right? What is the thing that we want them to notice? What is the thing we want them to focus on? What's that sense? And now once you've decided that, then you can reverse engineer all the mechanisms to do it, be it imagery, language. I know we're fundamentally out of time, but could you talk about just very briefly the importance of metaphor and the selection of metaphor in terms of getting people to do that? Like the example that you gave of a virus, right, and the ways to see that. It has to do with a point that we were making in Perry's mini mastermind, which was terrific, by the way.

56:22What do people counter argue? They counter argue the conclusions you draw for them, or the assertions that you make, or the claims in your argument. they don't counter-argue music, they don't counter-argue imagery, they don't counter-argue stories. Stories are, they just are. And they don't counter-argue metaphor. for something like, here's the study. Researchers show people a news report of a rise in crime in their city. And they describe it either as a rampaging beast that must be controlled and stopped, or they describe it as a rampaging virus that must be controlled and stopped. And now they ask them, how should we best deal with this crime, this crime wave?

57:45those who are exposed to the metaphor of a beast

57:54they recommend catch and cage solutions more police, more prisons, harsher sentences it's what you do to a beast Those who were exposed to the virus metaphor recommend treatment, cleaning out the conditions that produce the virus, education, mentoring programs, these kinds of things now, all based on where that metaphor took them psychologically in terms of the mind state. They didn't counter-argue the idea. Now, what's interesting about this is that you could predict whether they were going to choose cage solutions or treat solutions based on their political preference and their gender. Republicans versus Democrats, men versus women.

59:09Those were trivial compared to the difference that occurred as a result of that one word, that metaphor that put them in a state of mind that was then congruent with a particular kind of choice, a particular kind of action. Fifteen minutes later they would have probably went back to their core brain. 15 minutes later. That's why you need to get a choice. Temporary suspension of belief. You need to get a choice when they are in that state of mind. Don't fool around with that period of time. That's a mistake. Strike. I think a good place to leave a new quote that you had in the book that I wrote down.

1:00:01These are my notes. I'm not like texting, just so you guys know. These are my notes from the book that I'll be sure to send them. But I love this quote, and I think it's a good thing to remember in everything you do. It was Daniel Kahneman who said this. I think it's a pronounce his name. Nothing in life is as important as you think it is while you are thinking about it. Nothing in life is as important as you think it is while you are thinking about it. In that moment you are thinking about it, that thing that permeates your thought, nothing that exists is as important as that. How do you make sure that what you want them to think is what they are in fact thinking, that you stay there in the front of their mind?

1:00:39How do you make sure that the thought that you want them to have is there? If you could pull that off, then I think you've just pulled off the main primary tenet of pre-sweaving. And then you get them to act. You must get them to act while they're in that state of mind. Oh. Partee? Oh.

1:01:02Thank you. This thing is borderline evil, but beautiful. Question for you. When designing an infographic, should it be visual, sequential, and descriptive, or should it take on an influencing journey? A journey? An influencing journey as opposed to visually descriptive. I'm talking specific to infographics that is accompanied to copy. Yeah, I would say it depends on your market and it depends on your goal. But in general, the journey is the one that is going to be most successful, I think, in moving people effortlessly through your material in ways that link together as a general rule. Just because that journey is something in which they don't counter argue the narrative, they don't counter argue the journey, the sweep, right?

1:02:22They counter argue the end of that. But if you've got them buying in all along, they're less likely to contend against the conclusion.

1:02:38Last question. And then when we're done here, don't leave, we need to do Wicked Smart. So you can clap, but don't leave. Real quick, Jason Fladlin here just shared this with me. There's 39 book recommendations from billionaire Charlie Munger that will make you smarter. Number 11 says, influence the psychology of persuasion. A frequent and persistent recommendation from Munger. I believe he's given away more copies of this book than any other. Wow. Which is pretty badass. I don't even know if he knew that. Well, that's wonderful to hear. Whenever we have a... I bet. Whenever there's a Berkshire Hathaway meeting, Charlie Munger tends to recommend our books, and we see this Berkshire Hathaway spike in our Amazon ratings.

1:03:29So real quick, since you have spent your whole career figuring out how to get people to say yes, how do you use persuasion and persuasion to repel who you want to repel, to say no to things? In the same way I'm going to ask you as communicators to think about the moment before you send your message. I'm going to ask you as a recipient to think about the moment before you received it. What were those clouds doing there?

1:04:12What happened just before I got the message? Think about that and where you are being steered. that gives you a chance to decide whether you want to be steered in that direction. It would make sense. I would think it would make sense sort of like a restaurant, right? If you're a guy in cut-off shorts and flip-flops, when you walk into Bob's Steakhouse, you're just going to feel uncomfortable. I think maybe the environment that you're setting, like a lot of this to me, because I started in retail, So e-com came to me a certain way. Online came to me a different way than most people because I think about it.

1:04:55It's been kind of easy for me. I said, would you do that if somebody were walking into your store, right? And with retail, if you don't want a certain kind of customer, you just don't create an environment that attracts that kind of customer, especially when you're going upmarket. You've got to upmarket that you're not going to go to Mastro's and you're not going to Mastro's down here in Beverly Hills with cutoffs and flip-flops. It's not going to happen. You could, I guess. Maybe they let you in, but you'd probably feel uncomfortable the whole time you were there. No more than Roland's skin would begin to boil inside a Holiday Inn, for instance.

1:05:33Like if he were to walk in, he immediately breaks out into hives I've seen in happens. It's something amazing to watch. But it's an environment that just is hostile to him, right? So maybe that environment, I think creating an environment that's just not conducive to them. I think when digital marketing did a great job, Richard and Ryan have done a great job at creating an environment that's not necessarily conducive for the startup wannabe biz opera kind of person, right? Which was a big part of the audience in the beginning. It was just not really running them away, but just creating an environment that wasn't tenable for them.

1:06:17Yeah, no, and that's really great. And I mean, I think I do that with Genius Network with the criteria of income and all that. But from a personal standpoint, you're now a very famous person in the business world. How do you personally say no? How do you use it in a courteous way without coming across? Because I think most people here, you know, I get hit up hundreds of times a week. interview this, would you do this, can we talk? And I always try to be as nice and as pleasant as I can, but my bandwidth is super limited to just everyone. And so, like how do you - Yeah, so what I will do is, as I suggested, ask myself, well, what were the principles that this person was just using on me?

1:06:59And what did they do immediately before they launched into that message? Does it take me in a direction I don't really want to go or is not consistent with the image I want to have of myself, which doesn't fit my self-image? That gives me the chance to say precisely that. I'm sorry, this isn't for me. This idea just doesn't fit with the way that I prefer to comport myself or to do business. Thank you very much for thinking of me, though. Perry's taking notes. This was awesome, so thanks. That's pretty great. Thank you so very, very much. I really appreciate it. Doctor, doctor, thank you. And big, big, big round of applause.

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