We’re All in Sales — Tips to Persuade And Move Others
Does not matter what you do for a living, you spent almost half of your time on some kind of selling
When we think about sales, probably the first image that comes to mind is a salesperson going door-to-door selling stuff that we don’t want to buy. But the truth is that sales is not just that, sales is about persuading and convincing people in exchange for something. Does not matter what your profession is, you are always selling. Maybe you are selling something to someone, you are persuading someone to do something or you are trying to get a raise or a promotion. What you do every day in your job or in your life involves some kind of selling.
As described by Daniel Pink in his book “To Sell Is Human”, 40% of our time in our jobs is dedicated to moving others. That means that 24 minutes of every hour in our jobs are dedicated to selling. We all need to learn how to sell and as the title of Pink’s book might suggest, humans are predictable, therefore, understanding how the human mind works is a key aspect of becoming a better persuader.
Let's explore the main ideas from Daniel Pink described in his book to be a better seller and persuader.
1. Have perspective and empathy
We can’t force people to do things. They want to stay in control of the situation and if they feel that they are losing it, they will get defensive and your effectiveness to sell and persuade will fall to the ground.
If we want to move people, we need to have the ability to step into another person’s shoes and see the world from the other’s perspective. It’s not all about you but about them. By understanding where they are coming from, it becomes much easier to get to know what are their values and goals and find a common ground to get to a deal.
2. Made them think it was their idea
Human beings in general, are much more willing to do something and sustain the desired behavior when they have their own reasons. Make them find their own motivation and feel like they are the ones deciding and not that you are telling them what to do. Make them get to the conclusion that you want. Social proof and building an off-ramp are simple yet effective tools to achieve that goal.
Social proof
Every time we make a decision often is made based on someone else’s decision. There is an experiment made by Robert Cialdini, the father of persuasion, on hotel towels to exemplify this. If you have ever noticed, in every hotel there are cards encouraging guests to reuse the towels in name of the environment. The experiment tried to see if there was anything that could be done to make the message more persuasive.
In the first run, they used a common message telling guests to reuse the towels and they got a result of 35% of them doing so. In the second one, they changed the wording a little bit. The message said that the hotel found that the majority of people who stayed at the hotel, upwards of 75% reused their towels. By just changing the wording, there was an increase to 44% of people reusing the towels. In the third round of the experiment, they tried to intensify this effect by changing the wording again, saying that the hotel found that the majority of people who stayed in that specific room, reused their towels. The compliance went up again to 49%.
This experiment shows that when we are trying to decide what to do, we are not always sure how we should move, so we try to find clues and evidence on others’ decisions to make our own. Bringing social proof to the room is a powerful tool for persuasion.
Building an off-ramp
One of the things that people think that they need to do in order to make others do something is by convincing them. The thing is that this is not always the case. One thing that people don’t realize is that just making things easier for others to act is enough. Here is an example brought by Daniel Pink to illustrate this.
Researchers decided to conduct a food drive at a University. In order to do this, firstly, they sent out a questionnaire to the students asking them, among their peers, who were the most likely and least likely to donate. After deciding the groups, the researchers developed two different kinds of messages, a general one and a specific one. The former just announced the drive and the latter, announced the drive personally by writing the recipient’s name and had additional information of what to donate, a map, and a follow-up call. Both messages were sent to both groups of students and here was the result.
With the specific message, the least likely students become more likely to contribute than the most likely people. And why the message made such a difference? There are two explanations to this according to Pink.
The first is related to human nature. When we try to predict and explain someone’s behavior, we always overweight the importance of their personality and underweight the context and the situation of that particular person is in. Secondly, when we want someone to do something, we need to make it easier for the counterpart to act. The specific message did not change the mind of those students but made them easier to donate food, and that was enough to increase the donation percentage from 0% to 25%.
3. Make it purposeful
A study with some hospitals in North Carolina was done to encourage the physicians and nurses and other hospital workers to wash their hands more frequently. How can we persuade them to wash their hands more often? They tried three different signs to find out which worked the best, in other words, which one was more persuasive.
- “Hand hygiene prevents YOU from catching diseases.”
- “Hand hygiene prevents PATIENTS from catching diseases.”
- “Gel in, wash out.”
Two of them did not have an effect but one did. Which one did you think was successful? The second one. When people choose to work in a hospital, they do it because they care and want to help other people. That’s their purpose. By reminding them of their purpose, the message became much more effective and persuasive.
4. Stop at 3
When we are making our case and trying to find arguments to support it, how many of them should we offer? Generally, less is more. As described by Pink, three is the magic number. Adding a fourth argument to the case deteriorates persuasiveness.
Usually, this happens because first, the counterpart may feel like you are trying too hard, therefore you may offering something that is not that good, and second, humans get confused dealing with too much information at the same time.
5. Frame it
In today's world where there is a ton of information and stuff going on, people became stimulus rich and context poor. They simply can't focus on things that really matter. Framing is an effective way to make them see the issues and things that you want.
As described in my other article "5 Tips to Make Better Decisions — Lessons from CEOs, Behavioral Economists, a Pro Poker Player, and a Sleep Scientist", cognitive bias has a huge impact on our decisions. When we understand how human thinking works, we can use biases to frame the message and also be cautious to fall prey to those same biases. You don't have to use all of the frames that I will list down below all the time but use them as a tool that should be applied at an appropriate moment.
The loss aversion frame
First introduced by Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Laureate of Economics, and Amos Tversky, loss aversion refers to our perception of loss in contrast to gain. The prospect of losing $10 is much more daunting than the thrill of gaining the same amount, even if economically they are the same. It shows that the fear of loss completely distorts people’s perception. That's how insurance company sells their product. Instead of focusing on gains, they focus on what you would lose if you don't buy their service. Frame the message in terms of losses instead of gains to make the message much more persuasive.
The opportunity cost frame
Opportunity cost refers to a potential missed benefit that someone can have when choosing the alternative over the other. This type of framing is useful when someone is trying to convince you of something and you have to push back a little. Here's an example:
Imagine that you are an architect and the client wants to build an extravagant thing and you as the architect don't find it a good idea. You have to be political and cannot say right away that you don't want to do that. What you could say is that it is possible to implement the idea but with the current resources (money and time), the client would need to give up something. By bringing the opportunity cost to the surface, the counterpart will understand that there is a cost to every decision and will make them stay back.
The experience frame
People tend to value more experiences than goods or services. People do not get joy from the television that they just bought but from gathering the family around it to watch a movie on a Friday night. When selling something like a product or an idea, framing the message in the experience frame, makes it more valuable and viable for the person who is buying it.
The contrast frame
There is a very interesting and well-known story told by Daniel Pink about Rosser Reeves, a famous ad man in the 1950s. Reeves is out for lunch with a friend and he sees a blind man sitting on the ground trying to get some coins with a sign that said: "I am blind". Reeves tells his friend that by adding four words to that sign, he could increase dramatically the number of coins that that man could collect. He walks to the man sitting on the ground and takes the sign and adds the four words, now the sign said: "It is springtime and I am blind". The legend goes and starts pilling up coins.
The idea here is that people understand things in relative terms and not in absolute terms. By comparing with something else, it makes the message much more clear and much more effective.
The potential frame
A research was conducted by asking people to pretend that they were the general manager of an NBA team. The people have been offered two players, the first one was a rookie player who'd never played at the NBA before and the second one was a five-year veteran. The researchers asked them what they wanted to pay those players in the sixth year, or in other words, what they were willing to pay to the rookie in five years and the veteran next year. The performance stats for both were the same in the sixth year. The study found out that people would pay more for the rookie because of his potential.
This idea is very important especially when you are doing a job interview. People tend to overvalue potential more than they should. Often people looking for a job spend a lot of time talking about all the accomplishments, which is not a bad thing but make sure to talk about your potential as well because strangely enough, the potential is more persuasive than actual experience.
