Today we are going to boost your personal power by eliminating 5 persuasion sins (Stop This To Be More Persuasive). Stick around to the end for the most common and worst persuasive mistake beginners make. Stop this sin or it will single handedly destroy your chances of becoming a master persuader.
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Answer:
Stop acting uncertain, being needy, running your mouth, getting aggressive, and being entitled if you want to maximize your persuasive powers.
Sin #5: Acting Uncertain (Kills Persuasion)
Let’s get started with sin number 5, acting uncertain. Humans have to make decisions every day with limited information. To handle this issue, we have developed shortcuts. When we have to make a decision on whether we should believe someone, judging their certainty is one of the methods. Thus committing the sin of conveying uncertainty will annihilate our persuasive abilities. Here’s a few ways to avoid this issue.
First, eliminate weak wishy washy words. WWW words are language markers that serve to convey uncertainty. When you eliminate these words from your persuasive vocabulary, you are increasing the level of certainty you broadcast. Stop using words like “um,” “well,” “could,” “might,” “maybe,” “think,” and “believe”.
Second, stop ending sentences with higher pitched tones to be more persuasive. High pitched tones are used to tell the recipient that the person speaking has a question. If you end your statements of fact with higher tones, you make the listener think the statement is really more of a question. Consider the difference between saying “you should go to the store” and “you should go to the store.” Practice ending your statements with lower tones to eliminate this problem.
Third, slow down your speech. Rapid speech sometimes signals that people are nervous. It distracts from your message and can make people wonder why you are so rushed. People who have the correct way of doing things don’t need to rush because they are already prepared. Slow down to convey more certainty.
Fourth, eliminate poor body language to avoid conveying uncertainty. People often use social hierarchies as a way of deciding who to listen to. People are more willing to listen to those higher up on the hierarchy because those people have more resources to trade. Convince others you have an important place in the social hierarchy by eliminating trashy clothing and body language. Don’t t ouch when you stand or sit. If you avoid eye contact, stop. Stop rapid and fidgety movements. Make yourself spread out instead of cowering in a ball in the corner. By eliminating hunched posture and fidgety movements. If you are struggling with any of these physical things, consider doing face pulls. If you struggle with eye contact, try discovering the person’s eye color during the first few seconds of the conversation to correctly convey confidence.
The key thing to remember with eliminating uncertainty is to ask yourself the question “If I don’t believe what I am saying, why should they?”
Sin #4: Being Needy
Stop doing this to be more persuasive. Neediness is another shortcut people use to determine if they should believe someone. People intuitively know that a desperate person might hurt them as they try to help themselves.
The only way to really eliminate neediness is to find yourself other options. This applies to many areas. In dating, you eliminate nervousness and neediness by asking out many people each day. You should aim to ask at least five people out each day. If you are filing job applications aim for at least ten a day. To eliminate your neediness in terms of friends, look on “meetup.com.” Join a group that meets each night of the week that you aren’t busy on. If you are purchasing a car, go to at least three different dealerships so each sales rep has to compete against the others. When you are selling something you reduce neediness by having more people in your pipeline. This means more cold calls and doors knocked.
The key thing to remember with the neediness sin is that it comes from being lazy and fearful. The solution is always to increase the quantity of new options. As the quantity of new options increase, neediness necessarily decreases.
Sin #3: Running Your Mouth
An easy way to screw up your possibility of persuading someone is to jump in and start pitching too early. Stop doing this to be more persuasive. When you start trying to convince a person too quickly you typically don’t have enough information to make an effective pitch. You end up trying to use reasons you believe to persuade someone. Sometimes you get lucky and they value the same things, but other times you don’t get lucky and they have a completely different set of priorities. Don’t make persuasion more difficult than it already is.
Make sure you ask questions and observe the person before you go and run your mouth. Questions make the person feel understood, which lowers their guard, and they help the person share their desires, which makes it easier to craft an effective persuasion message. Ask yourself “do I know what this person values, fears, and desires” and “what evidence do I have?” These two questions will help you determine whether you are talking too early or too much.
Say you have a cell phone sales job. Focus on the security and privacy of the new phones with the fidgety nervous lady. Tell backwards had bro dad that phones are cutting edge. Tell him he can impress his friends with his new phone tricks. When you see an old lady with snot on her shirt, try telling her she can use the new phone to better connect on video chat with her grandchildren.
The key to remember here is to keep your mouth closed until you have evidence of what the person wants, values, fears, or desires. If you listen carefully enough, they will tell or show you.
Sin #2: Getting Too Aggressive (You’ll Never Change Minds)
Sin number two is to get too aggressive with the person you are trying to persuade. Stop doing this to be more persuasive. Getting aggressive can be another way of conveying neediness. If you didn’t need the person to agree, why would you get angry when they didn’t listen?
Aggression also switches people into fight or flight mode. When people are forced to think about their ideas while in flight or flight mode, they bunk er down and end up believing those ideas more strongly. This is the basis for confirmation bias. If you want someone’s mind to actually change in the long run don’t use pressure tactics.
A key caveat is that you might not care if someone changes their mind. You just want them to comply. That isn’t persuasion but coercion. We can help teach you how to do that but that is separate from the topic of this video.
The key to remember with aggression is that it locks people’s minds up. Stop committing this sin by focusing on remaining calm in discussions.
Sin #1: Entitlement (Persuasion Doesn’t Work The Way You Want)
People are often confused when they present their ideas logically and factually and people refuse to change their minds. They fail because they aren’t playing by the correct rules of persuasion.
You are not entitled to persuasion working the way you want. Effective persuasion doesn’t depend on the person being factually or logically right. It depends on avoiding the brain’s landmines that are set up to stop it from changing. You must follow the psychologically optimal persuasive patterns so as to avoid these traps. These traps include things like confirmation bias, minimization, denial, identification, sublimation, and many many more. If you study these mechanisms, you can avoid them and stand a chance of effectively persuading.
So how do you avoid these defenses? You start by building trust. We will cover more in another video, but you first find a connection with the person you are trying to persuade. Do you like the same food, music, or sports? Bonus points if you can find a similarity that is relevant to what you want to persuade them about.
Well that’s it for today. Comment if there was a part of the episode today that you want to learn more about.