Sell them the benefits!

"These are great. They used to be brand leader!" was the last ditch pitch from the stationery goods sales representative stood beside me in Goss's General Store. He offered Mrs Goss the card of ball-pens from his now empty sample bag. She remained indifferent ...and seized the opportunity to serve me as her excuse to close the sale.

I remember that lovely sales cameo from about 40 years ago. Today our friend the sales representative could have used a different story.
"Consumers prefer these because they're not brand leader!"
Well that is the case according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. To be precise what they are telling us is that consumers do actually favour underdogs. It seems that it is part of our psyche to sympathise with a hero who has overcome a disadvantaged start compared to their adversary, and who triumphed because of a determination to beat the odds. Remember how we all felt about Leonardo di Caprio's character Jack in Titanic when he came up against Billy Zane?
In terms of market position it is something that Avis Car Rentals recognised almost 50 years ago. They were second behind Hertz and made a marketing virtue out of it...adopting the slogan "We try harder"

They make a positive persuasive statement to their customers that they should expect to be treated better with Avis.
Yet many of us in business do not follow the Avis lesson. Perhaps we believe it is better to pre-empt what we feel is a conspicuous weakness and confess that we are "a small company" or "quite new" or  "provincially located."
And then because language works at two levels... not only do we make the prospects see a concern that they probably didn't have ...but we also send a sub-conscious negative signal of our own lack of belief and determination.
So check out your own language. Are you making a virtue out of being "a responsive company" with "a fresh approach" and "free of expensive overheads.  
Time to be a hero in your business!

Cognitive dissonance did it for me!

Cognitive dissonance did it for me!

Yes I remember the date November 11 1996. That was the day I quit smoking. After the usual number of failed attempts and despite the discouragement of my puffing peers I finally did it. And the secret of ultimate success was seeing myself as somebody that just wasn't a smoker.

So I quickly related with a recent article in Science Daily reporting on a study carried out by Dr. Reuven Dar of Tel Aviv University's Department of Psychology which found that the intensity of cravings for cigarettes had more to do with the psychosocial element of smoking than with the physiological effects of nicotine as an addictive chemical.
In observations on in-flight attendants with limited opportunity to smoke and on religous Jews subject to a sabbath ban they found that both groups had low craving levels in situations where they expected not to smoke. For anyone that has ever smoked they would recognise that this is a pretty extreme illustration that our behaviour is formed by perception and belief. But it is the case... if I had been one of the flight attendants in the study and I smoked in flight then I would feel that my behaviour was at odds with what I believed to be right. Just like when I quit. I told myself that I was no longer a smoker. If I had a wavering moment I would have been experiencing cognitive dissonance ...the feeling of discomfort that results from holding two conflicting beliefs.
People tend to seek consistency in their beliefs and perceptions. In an often quoted study of misbehaving children it was shown that telling them that they were bad simply reinforced the bad behaviour. When told that they were good they ultimately corrected their bad behaviour because it was dissonant with being good.
All of us have deeply held beliefs. All of the choices that we make such as how we behave...to the kind of work we want to do....to the car we choose to drive are based on needs and wants that ultimately are derived from those deeply held beliefs. Anybody in sales will more than once in their career have encountered buyer's remorse and a cancelled sale. And probably dismissed the purchaser as a "time waster."
Truth is....if we are in the business of influencing others and we attempt this without regard for their beliefs and values then we shouldn't be surprised when we encounter some serious cognitive dissonance.

Things aren't always what they seem!

Talk to anybody that watched the recent World Cup Final and they will probably agree that Holland had tried to kick Spain out of the game. Holland of course cried "foul" insisting that referee Keith Webb had been biased in favour of Spain.

I couldn't see any bias myself but if there was one it could have been to do with the direction that Holland were playing when the fouls were called? It seems that Soccer referees have an unconscious bias towards calling fouls based on the direction of play. According to a recent study into football referees carried out at The University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, there was clear evidence of more fouls being given when play was moving from right to left. The main conclusion drawn being that the mind is conditioned by reading to accept information flowing from left to right as normal...and therefore right to left flow seems instinctively wrong. The study participants were all English Speaking so we assume that Chinese referees would call it differently. 

Many of the familiar optical illusion "tricks" we come across are also answered by this "seeing what the mind expects to see" explanation. And if you want some fun with these follow this link to the exploratory.org and check out their illusions.
In a creativity workshop last week I had fun in an exercise that had us randomly scrawling our representation of various emotions on blank paper. It was interesting to see how some of us came up with similar images for a given emotion.... but that others chose that same shape as interpretation of a quite different emotion.
And the point to emerge from this? 
We see what we think we see... and what you see is possibly quite different to what I'm looking at!
Modern technology has added enormously to business communication but e-persuasion and the "so convenient" emailed pitch is risky!
To make sure you get your meaning across get in front of the people...tell them ...show them ...experience it with them and make sure they do see what you mean.


    

Look for the common ground

I am definitely a "fence sitter" when it comes to liking Jeremy Clarkson and Alastair Campbell. On occasions I think they can get a bit up themselves and be irritating...but most of the time I find them hugely entertaining. And I'd put them both up there as "hall of fame" contenders when it comes to persuasive communicators.
But they are also known to be fairly wide apart...politically speaking. And to be what you might call combative persuaders. So I was very interested to see  them in conversation on Top Gear the other evening.   

They began as you would expect with little attempt to conceal their mutual antipathy. The fact that Alastair was welcomed with boo's by some of Jeremy's courtiers didn't help. Although the reception was more of the style of a panto audience greeting Captain Hook than the deep hatred implied by the Campbell-hating Daily Mail. Nonetheless it probably did encourage Clarkson to hold court and get in some easy hits off his guest.
It was never going to be an easy conversation. I can only judge them by their public personas and these suggest few levels where rapport would get a toe-hold or likemindedness be uncovered.
But I had a go using the popular Levels of Thinking template:

• On what each would see as their purpose in life they were at their widest apart.
• As to how they see themselves in promoting that purpose they are actually very similar. JC is just as much a spin doctor as AC.
• On the question of beliefs and values...yes gaps definitely appearing again.
• Looking at capabilities. Harmony again with both having a mastery of PR and rhetoric!
• What about behaviour? It's yes again. Have you ever seen two more dedicated wind-up merchants.  
• And environment. Most of the time they do what they do separately and the people they do it for love them. Put them together unnaturally and territorial problems are bound to occur. Although as we also saw, put them into an alternative environment which they happen to love...in this case a fast car and they're best of mates!

So a very interesting exercise I thought...
Two controversial and provocative opposites who when you go looking for it share a few more opportunities for rapport and agreement than you would think.

The power of hypnotic language

Become a master persuader with advanced conversational hypnosis! Seduce the women that you desire!
I just Googled "Hypnotic Language" and apparently those are just two of the things that it achieves for you. So I'm definitely up for that!

But then I've always been very open-minded to ideas...maybe even too ready to believe stuff I read. Which is why I have a daily scan of the newspaper headlines as a susceptibility check...  excuse me a second or two...
Arise captain Rooney! What Capello must do now to turn England around  (Robbie Savage Daily Mirror)
.....Yes that worked nicely....back to my sceptical self now.
But the reality is that we are susceptible to certain forms of language and always have been. As a kid at school I learnt that hyperbole was a figure of speech that greatly exaggerates the truth. Today "hype" is an expected element of media communication.
Early on in my career as a young salesman we were trained to use positive phraseology. Don't say "Hopefully this will be enough?" because that sends a signal of doubt. Say "The order size you'll need is x cases!" ...end of discussion!
Today there cannot be many leading politicians or barristers who haven't been introduced to the "hypnotic" power of presuppositions,generalisations, or complex equivalents. There are probably a few who fancy themselves with the odd embedded command and study every second of Youtube clips of Derren Brown.
What they of course would see is an expert and perfectionist who with endless hours of practice performs his "magic" imperceptibly.

By contrast you will spot the occasional newly trained NLP "Graduate" who attempts sleight of mouth with all the subtlety of a fairground barker...and wonders why it doesn't work.
If you can see it then it isn't happening. It is the imperceptibility that makes it work.  
Hypnotic language does work...although I prefer to call it persuasive language...it sounds better without the hype!

visit http://persuadability.co.uk/ for more articles and tips on persuasive communication