Tag Archive for: psychology of persuasion

Unwanted Gifts and Help

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Gifts are usually a good thing, especially on your birthday, Christmas, an anniversary or some other special occasion. Of course, they’re also very nice when they come totally unexpected.

From the time we’re little, we’re taught to reciprocate when we receive a gift. Gifts are typically met with a verbal “Thank you!” or you might remember your mom or dad making you write thank cards. Reciprocating when given a gift isn’t limited to American culture either. Social scientists agree that people in all cultures are raised in the way of reciprocation.
Gifts differ from rewards in that when giving a gift there’s no guarantee the other party will respond in some way. With rewards an “if – then” system is put in place. For example; if you exceed your goals then I’ll reward you with a $100 bonus. There’s not much risk on my part because your failure to exceed your goals means I don’t have to give you $100.
Sometimes we get unwanted gifts, things we’d never buy or ask for, and yet we feel reciprocity tugging at us to return the favor in some way. Savvy practitioners of influence understand this and use it to their benefit by giving you something you may not want knowing you’ll give them something in return. Hari Krishnas were famous for this trick when they’d give unsuspecting people a flower and those same people then felt compelled to reciprocate with a small donation.
All of this is top of mind for me because of a recent business trip to Nashville. A group of us went to BB King’s Restaurant and Blues Club for dinner and some music. When I went to the men’s room there was a man there sitting on a stool near the sinks. As soon as someone went to wash their hands he was handing them a towel and taking a lint brush to their back.
Personally I find the whole set up offensive for several reasons. First, I don’t want some stranger touching me, especially in the men’s room. No matter where it is it’s an invasion of space.
Second, I don’t like tipping people when they’ve not done something worthy of it. To me it’s like ordering something at a counter and just because someone hands you your order they expect a tip. That’s entirely different than a server who hustles for you over dinner or lunch. When someone does something for me that I can do for myself with little or no effort, like handing me a towel, I don’t feel that’s worthy of a tip.
Not only was reciprocity at work in the men’s room, so was consensus because everyone could clearly see money in the man’s tip jar. That starts a battle inside about whether or not to tip because others have already done so. Here’s a hint; the tip jar was probably “salted” meaning the person put some money in to start with, in order to give the impression that others have been tipping and so should you.
One other thing to point out, all of this becomes more difficult when you’re the only one in the restroom. It’s like making eye contact with someone who asks you a question; you can’t pretend they’re not there in an effort to not engage.
Back to reciprocity; we feel the urge to reciprocate because whether or not we asked, the man in the restroom did something for us. I’ll tell you I didn’t tip because the whole set up actually angers me a bit. And yet after describing all of this to you I must admit, it was still difficult! Not only was it difficult for me, it was for others. In fact, when I brought this up later in the night one person in our group said he decided to wait till he got back to the hotel rather than go to the restroom at BB King’s! That illustrates just how powerful the urge to reciprocate can be.
As I share this I recall a similar incident many years ago at a different location. When one fellow in our party came back from the men’s room and told us there was someone in there handing out towels another person emphatically stated how much he dislikes that and that he never tips people who do that. And yet he did that night because someone in our group saw him do it. Again, despite his protests we see how strong the pull or reciprocity can be on any of us!
So how do you combat this psychological phenomenon when you feel the tug of war going on inside of you? I tell you it’s not easy and trying to do so will elicit a lot of thoughts and feelings. You need to ask yourself a few questions:
a. Did I want what the other person gave me?
b. Would I normally tip this person if I didn’t feel compelled to?
c. Does this feel like a ploy to get something or was it a genuine gift?
If you answered no to any of the questions then you need to remind yourself of that and make a choice not to give in to the power of reciprocity. The principles of influence usually guide us into good behavior but not 100% of the time. As I noted before, savvy people understand these principles and will seek to use them against you at times so be watchful and be vigilant if you ever think the principles are being used in an unethical manner.

Brian, CMCT
influencepeople 
Helping You Learn to Hear “Yes”.

Why the “We are the 99%” Movement?

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Earlier this year a movement began in the United States known as “We are the 99%.” If you live in America it’s hard to believe you would not have heard about it because of the considerable media coverage the Occupy Wall Street protesters have received in major cities across the country. It’s a good bet most of my foreign readers have heard about it too because of the world-wide economic depression we find ourselves in, and of some similar protests internationally.

Why such dissatisfaction in the land of opportunity, the country where almost everyone wants to live? Certainly the financial crisis that led to the economic downturn in 2008 helped start the movement as many unemployed and underemployed Americans looked at what they perceive to be injustice caused by Wall Street and other large financial institutions.
I believe one psychological reason for the movement is rooted in a phenomenon Robert Cialdini, PhD., likes to call “compare and contrast.” This phenomenon tells us we experience things as being more different than they actually are depending on how they are presented.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, between 1979 and 2007 Americans known as “the middle class,” approximately 60% of wage earners, saw their income increase by 40%. Most people would say that’s not bad, until they compare it to the top 1% of American wage earners who saw their income increase an average of 275% during the same period. To make matters worse, when you group the bottom 90% together that group actually saw their incomes go down by $900. While the reasons for these gaps are many, the bottom line is this; it’s human nature to compare and contrast and the widening gap is a cause of discontent.
Is a person good looking? You can only make that determination by comparing that person to other people. Do you make a lot of money? Again, that’s a relative term and can only be answered by comparing your income to someone else’s. Many people are happy with their salary…until they find out they make significantly less than some coworkers. When it comes to compare and contrast, we all do it to one extent or another.
We live in a time of unprecedented wealth and even people who don’t earn much live far better than their relatives from decades ago. Indeed, it’s rare when Americans don’t have cable television, a computer in their home and a cell phone – hardly necessities of life. Yet there’s a tremendous amount of dissatisfaction because of the perceived income gaps and that they only seem to be growing larger as time goes by.
How did we get here? One statistic I share in my Principles of Persuasion workshop has to do with CEO pay. In 1980 a typical CEO made about 42 times more than the average American worker. By 1990 that figure had grown to 109 times. In 1993, the Fed mandated full disclosure of CEO compensation in an effort to help curb this trend but unfortunately their plan backfired big time. I bet you didn’t know this; by 2005 the difference between the typical CEO and average American worker’s pay had ballooned to 525 times! You read that right. In all fairness, in more recent years the gap has shrunk to a mere 269 times.

How could this have happened? After all, some of the thinking behind the full disclosure of compensation was to let everyone see how much CEOs and other top executives were earning so stockholders could put the brakes on the incredible income growth. It failed because of consensus.

Consensus, sometimes referred to as social proof, is the principle of influence that tells us we look to the actions of others when making decisions and this is heightened when we’re not completely sure what to do. Prior to the federal mandate about compensation disclosure it was an educated guess as to what the market was paying other CEOs in a given industry. Once it because public knowledge it wasn’t unlike what we see with star athletes in sports. Salaries for those athletes have skyrocketed because once an athlete knows what other top performers make their sports agent begins to negotiate an even bigger deal for the athlete. It’s a keep up with the Jones’ mentality and so it’s been with CEO compensation.
Perhaps we’ve now reached the point the Feds thought we would back in the early 1990s when they implemented the full disclosure rule. The Fed thought people would say “enough is enough” back then but it seems to have taken a worldwide economic depression to wake up the voice of the majority of Americans. Where it goes is yet to be seen because there will be a tug of war between the average American comparing their income to the top earners and the power of consensus as companies vie for the best CEO talent they can find.

Brian, CMCT
influencepeople 
Helping You Learn to Hear “Yes”.

Do We Need Term Limits for a Better America?

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In November many Americans went to the polls to vote on various issues. In less than a year we’ll go back to vote in the Presidential election so the rhetoric will heat up with each passing month until November 2012. Knowing this I thought it would be a good time to look at a political issue – term limits – through the lens of influence.

Precedence was set with American presidents when George
Washington declined to run for a third term and based on his actions no president ran for a third term in office until Franklin Roosevelt did so in 1944. The unusual circumstance of a world war in two major theatres was a big reason for FDR’s decision. However, not long afterwards the American people passed the 22 Amendment which limited a United States president to a maximum of two terms in office.
For some reason Americans have not done the same thing when it comes to term limits for congressman and senators. While some states enacted laws to limit the terms of their particular representatives in Washington in an effort to move away from “career politicians” the U.S. Supreme court overturned those laws saying states could not limit the term of national offices.
I’m not going to argue if term limits are good or bad. Like just about anything in life there are positives and negatives to each side of the argument. What is concerning is whether or not the best people get elected and whether or not we’re getting fresh political ideas simply because of how voters make decisions.
I remember my pastor saying, “People will remain the same until the pain of being the same is greater than the perceived pain of change.” That’s akin to, “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.” Americans saw voter revolts in 1994 when republicans swept into power in the house and senate and again in 2010 because of our economic woes. Both times there was so much dissatisfaction with the status quo that people kicked out many incumbents. My question is, why do we have to wait for things to get so bad before we act? “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” sounds good until you consider Steve Jobs and his iPhone. We didn’t need the iPhone because nothing was broken but we’re better off for it. Perhaps we could have the same fresh ideas and change in Washington if we routinely had new people in office.
Politicians are famous for saying things like, “We have term limits because voters can always vote someone out of office if they want to,” and, “Why do we need to restrict voter freedom?” Of course both arguments could be used against term limits for the president and yet as a country we thought it was good to limit the terms for the highest office in the land. I suspect career politicians are thinking first and foremost about self-preservation, not the good of the country.
But I digress and you’re wondering how influence ties into this. It will come as no surprise to readers when I state the obvious; nearly every sitting politician wins re-election the vast majority of the time. In fact, it’s staggering how often they win. Take a look at the charts below showing reelection rates for U.S. congressman and senators from the Center for Responsive Politics.

 

Are incumbents winning so often because they’re the best candidates? Hardly. It’s simply a function of familiarity. People go to the polls and tend to vote for the person they’re most familiar with and the farther you go down in terms of elected offices the worse it is because quite often people vote for the incumbent simply because they know nothing about the other person running. When you’ve seen or heard about your congressman for the past four years or your senator for the last six years that’s a lot of familiarity for a challenger to overcome.
On this subject, in his book Influence Science and Practice, Dr. Cialdini wrote, “Often we don’t realize that our attitude toward something has been influenced by the number of times we have been exposed to it in the past.” And it’s not just how often we hear a name it’s how much we see the face. Sitting politicians are routinely seen in the news and that helps unless their face is connected to a scandal. I can tell you from firsthand experience that I get much better response to my emails when I include my picture at the bottom of the email because familiarity helps.
While there many other things that come into play during an election we can’t underestimate the importance of simply being more familiar with one candidate vs. another. It’s the way we’re wired.
To be sure we – the typical American voter – are partly to blame because we’re notoriously disengaged when it comes to knowing the candidates, their positions, and understanding the issues. If anyone didn’t need term limits it would be presidents because I’d venture to guess we know presidential candidates better and understand the presidential issues more because of how much they’re in the media vs. lower offices and more localized issues.
In a sense terms limits save us from ourselves and how our decision making might be working against us. My boss likes to say, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.” In other words, how can we expect anything different from Washington when we keep electing the same people for the most part? Yes, we can make a concerted effort to become more informed voters but with less than 60% of people of voting age voting in every presidential election since 1968 do we really think that will happen? I certainly don’t. Sometimes we need laws to protect ourselves from ourselves and I’d say term limits would be one such law.
Brian, CMCT
influencepeople 
Helping You Learn to Hear “Yes”.

Say it ain’t so, Joe!

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According to baseball folklore, in the aftermath of the Black Sox scandal in the 1919 World Series, a young fan supposedly said to Shoeless Joe Jackson, one of the most famous players of that era, “Say it ain’t so, Joe.” Unfortunately the boy’s hero had to admit it was true that he and several other teammates conspired to throw the World Series that year.

That scandal is among the biggest in American sports history but ironically it will be eclipsed by an even bigger scandal in recent days, one that has people thinking, “Say it ain’t so, Joe.” This time they’re referring to legendary Penn State football coach Joe Paterno and his staff’s failure to do more in the wake of a former assistant, Jerry Sandusky’s alleged sexual abuse of young boys at the Penn State athletic facilities. The story is horrible in so many respects and is far too detailed for me to go into in this post. To find out details in the Grand Jury investigation visit ESPN.com.
Sports radio and major news organizations are all asking how anyone could have known about the abuse and not done more. Many commentators are telling listeners and viewers what those people should have done and what they (the commentators) would have done if they had been at Penn State. Indeed, I think almost anyone who hears the sordid details thinks they would have tried to stop what they witnessed or would have immediately gone to the police. What I’m about to say would ruffle those commentator’s feathers and might upset you too.
 
I doubt most of those commentators, news anchors or the average person would have acted much differently than Joe Paterno or Scott McQueary.
I know that statement sounds harsh and doesn’t sit well with many people but I’ll remind you as a society we have short memories. People asked the same things about the atrocities perpetrated against the Jews by Germans during World War II – how could any human being have seen what was going on and not done something to stop it? How could anyone have actually participated in those atrocities? In more recent years the world was aware of genocide in Rwanda and did little to stop it and there was not a huge outcry from people who saw it on the news either. Five decades ago Stanley Milgram wondered the same thing about people and set out find an answer.
If the name Stanley Milgram is familiar it’s because he was the social psychologist from Yale who conducted a series of experiments in the early 1960s to see how people responded to authority. As you can imagine, most people predicted the average American would not do much harm to another person but, during a “learning experiment” Milgram found that 65% of his subjects administered a series of 30 progressively stronger shocks to a partner with the final shock being 450 volts. That’s enough voltage to kill a person! There was no coercion involved, no personal history to consider, nor was anyone’s career on the line in the experiment. All it took was a man in a white lab coat – a perceived authority – insisting that participants continue on with the experiment despite their protests and near emotional breakdowns at times. For details on the Milgram experiment, click here.
In a much milder form, the Milgram experiment and many other interesting scenarios such as bullying have been replicated in recent years on the NBC television show What Would You Do? I encourage you to take a look because it’s fascinating to see how normal people respond in ways few of us would predict.
Most people believe themselves to be better looking than the average person, and smarter, kinder and, I bet, more heroic. You probably believe you are and I’ll be honest, I believe I’m all those things too. Because of our high self-esteem we like to believe we would have immediately done the right thing if we’d been at Penn State. Indeed, many of the people at Penn State thought they were doing the right thing because they followed school protocol. In reality I bet most people would not have acted any differently than the Penn State folks and would have reported the incident to their boss and relieve themselves of the burden of getting involved.
If you think differently here’s one more case to consider, Catherine Susan “Kitty” Genovese. This is the woman who was stabbed to death in New York City in 1964 in full view or within earshot of many people who did nothing to help her. The accounts vary as to how many people and the actual circumstances but it’s become commonly documented that all too often people don’t help one another when they see someone in need and the more people there are around, the less any one person feels the need to help. This is sometimes called the “bystander effect” or “diffusion of responsibility.”
I will also point out that sometimes the people who protest the loudest are the people who might be least likely to do the right thing. Have we forgotten about the Catholic Church sex scandals and the numerous preachers who’ve railed against homosexuality, infidelity and so many other sins only to be caught in the very things they preached fire and brimstone about? Do the names Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Baker and Ted Haggard ring a bell?
Sometimes, it’s the people we least expect who take the
heroic actions, and all too often, those we do expect to step up don’t. This post in no way exonerates Joe Paterno, Mike McQueary or anyone else at Penn State nor does it condemn them. This post is simply to help us understand why they might have made the choices they did. The same psychology at work in them works in everyone one of us too so I would caution anyone to emphatically state what they would have done had they been there because truth is, we never know until we find ourselves in similar situations. Sometimes we surprise ourselves in good ways and other times we’re ashamed. We would all do well to remember the famous church saying, “There but for the grace of God, go I.”
Brian, CMCT
influencepeople 
Helping You
Learn to Hear “Yes”.

 

Influencers from Around the World – My Favourite Principles of Influence Used by Online Marketers

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This month our Influencers from Around the World guest post comes all the way from Ireland courtesy of Sean Patrick. Sean owns his own sales training company, Sean Patrick Training, and writes a blog, Professional Persuader. We met through Facebook several years ago because of Dr. Cialdini and we’ve maintained regular contact ever since. I know you’ll enjoy what Sean has to say this week.



My Favourite Principles of Influence Used by Online Marketers
The following is a list of my all time favourite principles of influence used by online marketers and how I see them used; the good, the bad and the ugly.
1.     Authority
Marketers use this principle to create a sense or feeling of how the potential customer is in safe hands because they make the prospect feel as though they’ve found someone who has or can demonstrate ability, credibility and proof of concept by knowing the exact pain, dissatisfaction and problem that the prospect is currently feeling. It’s a demonstration of experience by telling a story of how the knowledge to overcome the problem or dissatisfaction came about, the journey of anguish and frustration followed by one “Eureka” moment that just blew the problem apart and facilitated a solution.
Solutions imply success and this is where testimonials come in handy. The marketer will supply oodles of proud and happy customer testimonials which make the prospect’s imagination itch with anticipation. Unfortunately all too often the testimonials are nothing more than cronies and affiliates who have an interest in the product’s success by earning commissions on each sale.
The real heavyweight to this principle is when the marketer offers a cast-iron guarantee or assurance as to the efficacy of the product that the prospect will only ever experience success. This deflects any come back to the marketer by implying that it’s the customer’s problem if they don’t experience the same results as all the other customers.
The last piece of the authority principle that the marketer needs to employ is by bringing in the heavy-weight celebrities, famous affiliates or mentioning some major event they sponsor.  The principle of authority when used credibly creates and confirms expertise, but when done in an egotistical manner it implies “Guru Status.” There is a world of difference between the two and self-appointed gurus are best avoided.
2.   Scarcity (Fake Urgency)
When done properly and all other conditions are met this is the one principle to send a would-be buyer over the edge. It makes them buy, especially when potential customers are spoon-fed the notion that what they are pondering is about to be taken away from them due to two things:
a. Limited stock or supply, or
b. Time limited price offer
Scarcity is often perceived as the one to watch out for because it’s been used over and again, but if all the other principles are used effectively then scarcity becomes the trigger that’s easily pulled. The easiest way this is done on the web is by stating right from the start that what is about to be sold is scarce either because of limited supply or because the guy in the stock room messed up and priced all the labels incorrectly, stupidly at a much lower price so therefore the marketer can’t afford to sell the product at the launch price for an extended period.
The reality is that scarcity is quite often fake and the sense of urgency is false; just a ploy. The majority of products sold on the web are information products so how can something produced digitally be of limited supply? The same rule applies with price simply because no one sells anything at a loss; unless it’s a liquidation sale where all stock is liquidated at low prices in order to pay the exorbitant fees of the liquidator. This why a time limited price offer can be extended and often is when the guy in the stockroom screws up again and finds a ton of stock that was hidden under a polythene cover.
In my opinion scarcity is really powerful when people travel and they see something that is scarce back home but is abundant in the region they are travelling through. But the conundrum is either to buy there and then or to go on the web and buy via direct mail when they get back home. Generally, the window of opportunity is narrow for both seller and buyer and most of the time the tourist will succumb and purchase on the spot.
3.   Reciprocity (Concession)
The principle of reciprocity has been killed to death by marketers on the web. The usual tricks follow the pattern of exchanging an email address in return for some pointless or semi-useful report, whitepaper or mp3 that contains only self promoting messages rather than ready-to-use-instantly-valuable information.
A new wave of reciprocity is to receive an invitation from a marketer to a live web-conference where you can learn X and Y and achieve Z for free. It’s like a 3 for 2 offer. This tactic achieves both receiving the identities and email addresses of prospects that sit at the beginning of the sales cycle and during the lead nurturing process the marketer can choose to offer more freebies of varying scales to the prospect with the aim of qualifying the prospect further. The principle of reciprocity states that I’m more compelled to do something for you because you gave me something first that was both personal and timely.
Prospects will begin to find the marketer as a source of authority through a repetitive experience of this principle.
4.   Contrast
Perceptual contrast is one of the sneakiest tricks that a marketer can play out in the online world. The same tricks that a mentalist employs are played out online all the time.
This principle plays stage to how a menu of prices can confuse and distract and leave the customer financially worse off. Just the like the 3 for 2’s you see in the shops a similar price structure ensures that the marketer is maximizing every dollar from every customer. But the pricing structure can be a lot more complicated if bonus materials and legacy products are offered at supposedly discounted prices.
Just like price, how problems are solved can be distorted very easily by using this principle. Questions a lot of people don’t ask themselves before buying include:
a. What will this product really do?
b. How much time do I need to invest in order to get a return?
c. How does the product really work?
More often than not the obvious gets blurred by the use of other principles melding together that creates dissonance in the prospects mind. This in turn creates a contrasting perception of where they are and where they’ll be in the future but at the same time seeing their potential future self in the present because they’ve convinced themselves to buy the marketers product and now feel a part of a tribe of successful like-minded people. They trust wholeheartedly the marketer to be their sole authority over their problem.
5.    Liking
I like you because you appear to be similar to me because of experience, status, color, race, sexuality, football team, or our stamp collection.  ; )
Liking is powerful because it brings about a sense of trust that is long lasting. We all want to be a part of the same crew, tribe, team and corporation or we like people who value our sense of freedom and independence and therefore feel camaraderie. This tactic is very popular with online marketers who launch membership sites that take in monthly fees or marketers who create pre-launch events that bring together the entire pool of prospects who suffer the same dissatisfactions and allow them to network, mingle and produce fellowships by way of interacting in web-chat facilities, forums and social media sites.  It also goes hand in hand with the social proof principle that facilitates the need to purchase even more because people who we came into friending are buying, and those who bought before had huge successes and you know what they were pretty cool people too and I like them!
Hopefully your eyes are open a little wider now and you can spot legitimate use of certain principles of influence vs. illegitimate use.
Cheers,
Sean

To read about Influential Negotiations on Sean’s site click here.

Jeremy Maclin, Jack Nicklaus and the Power of Commitment

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Jeremy Maclin might not be a familiar name to many of you but he’s certainly a rising star in the NFL and adored by the football fans in Philadelphia.  In early August he was not in the Philadelphia Eagles’ training camp because he’d been battling an undisclosed illness. The story came to my attention in late September as I was watching Chris Berman talk about Maclin on ESPN’s Sports Center.

What really caught my attention was near the end of the story when Berman declared Maclin his new “favorite player” because of his outlook in the midst of what he was dealing with. Then Berman shared that despite the uncertainty of his future Maclin participated this summer in a couple of youth football camps. Berman relayed that when he asked why he did that Maclin said, “Because I made a commitment.”
Commitment is a powerful, powerful thing when it comes to influence. Why is that the case? Because of something Dr. Cialdini coined “the principle of consistency.” Consistency alerts us to the reality that people feel internal psychological pressure to remain consistent in word and deed. Very few people like to say one thing then turn around and do another. It’s not just the public pressure because of perception; it’s rooted in how we are raised. People who don’t do what they say are quite often the recipients of negative labels: flip flopper, liar, wishy washy, inconsistent, and unreliable, to name just a few.
Here’s another example of the power of consistency. This one comes from the book Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive (Goldstein, Martin, and Cialdini). On March 2, 2005, Jack Nicklaus’ 17-month-old grandson Jake accidentally drown in a hot tub accident. The tragedy was only one month out from the biggest golf tournament in America, The Masters. Jack Nicklaus has won more green jackets (6) than any other golfer in history but when asked if he would play Nicklaus said the chances were between “between slim and none.” However, not only did he play, he played in two other tournaments as well. When asked why he did so in the midst of the family tragedy he said, “You make commitments, and you’ve got to do them.”
Wow! Two high profile people dealing with personal and family tragedy and yet they feel compelled to do what they said they would do. If consistency is such a powerful psychological principle the question for us is, how can we ethically tap into this principle to help move our agenda ahead? It’s actually pretty simple and can be summed up in one word – question.
Too often people tell each other what to do instead of asking. Here are a couple of examples:
“I need the board report by Friday.”
“Clean your room before lunch.”
Simply turning these statements into questions taps into consistency:
“Can you get me the board report by Friday?”
“Will you clean your room before lunch?”
There are a couple more things that can be done with each statement to increase your odds of success: 1) give yourself a fall back option, and 2) use the word “because” to tag each with a reason. Here’s how I’d approach the board report request incorporating both:
“Can you get me the board report by Tuesday because I have to get it to communications for proof reading before I finalize it?”
Notice I moved the date up from Friday to Tuesday. If the answer is “no” then I can retreat by saying, “Can you get it to me by Friday?” This taps into reciprocity because people usually respond with a “Yes” immediately after telling you “No.” Studies also show the odds of hearing “Yes” go up rather significantly when the word because is used and a reason given.
So here’s my take away and something I share in workshops – stop making statements and start asking questions. Do so and you tap into the power of consistency because an affirmative answer creates a commitment on the part of the other person just as it did with Jeremy Maclin and Jack Nicklaus.
Brian, CMCT
influencepeople 
Helping You Learn to Hear
“Yes”.

Customer Service Success = Under-promise and Over-deliver

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I was listening to the “Mike and Mike Show” on ESPN radio on the way to work one morning when I heard Mike Greenberg utter a familiar phrase for those of us in the sales arena, “Under-promise and over-deliver.” Even if you’re not in sales you might have heard the phrase before. What you may not understand is why it works so well.

Under promising and over delivering helps make happy customers because you set expectations you should be able to deliver on and that’s the key. For example, does it bother you when you call a customer service number and hear, “Your call is very important to us and will be answered in the order it was received. Right now your estimated wait is five minutes,” and the wait ends up being seven or eight minutes? I know it bugs me.

How do you feel when this happens, “Your call is very important to us and will be answered in the order it was received. Right now your estimated wait is ten minutes,” and the wait ends up being seven or eight minutes? If you’re like most people you feel pretty good…or at least better than you did in the first scenario.

Why is this so? It’s simple. In one case the expectation wasn’t met but in the other it was exceeded. It didn’t matter that in both cases the actual wait time was the same. This is a classic case of “compared to what?” which derives its power from something know as the contrast phenomenon in the study of influence. What we compare something to can make all the difference in our experience.

Most people make the mistake of over promising and then under delivering. For example, a company wants to get a new order and they bid too low only to come back later and raise their price…or try to raise it and anger the customer. They may have gotten the contract but an upset customer will talk to a lot more friends than a happy one so it ends up hurting business in the long run.

Here’s something most of us face on occasion – time away from the office.  When we leave the office we change our voicemail and turn on the out of office message to alert people that we’re away. When I take family time I clearly tell people I won’t be checking voicemail or email but when it’s not family time that’s different. If I’m traveling for business I’m still more difficult to reach so I might us a message that incorporates something like this:

“While I’m away my access to voicemail and email will be limited. I’ll do my best to reach you while I’m traveling but it might be Monday before you hear from me.”

We live in an almost fully wired world where people expect 24×7 communication unless we set a different expectation. When people call or email they’re not thinking about how busy we might be unless we let them in on that fact. My message doesn’t promise the other person will hear from me but when they do I usually get a response along these lines, “Hey, thanks for getting back to me. I know you’re out so I wasn’t expecting to hear from you till Monday.” Do you think they’re happy? You bet they are because I exceeded their expectation. I under promised and over delivered.

I say this often; understanding persuasion isn’t a magic wand that will get you what you want every time. And let me add to that there are always exceptions to the rule. Sometimes there’s the difficult customer who doesn’t care what you’re doing because they want an answer now. For folks like that I always make sure to include in my message a way to reach a real live person in my absence so they can get immediate help when needed.

I love what I do and the company I work for – State Auto Insurance – but I’m not an employee 24×7, nor is work the most important thing in life. I have parameters in my life and to remind me of that my personal mission statement concludes with this – I work to live, I don’t live to work. I’ll never sacrifice my faith, family or personal well being at the expense of my career.

So let me encourage you; set the parameters on whatever you do and remember that under promising and over delivering is the better strategy to take because the science tells us so.

Brian, CMCT
influencepeople 
Helping You Learn to Hear “Yes”.

The Three Commitments of Leadership are Essential to be Influential

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This week we have a guest post from Jon Wortmann. I met Jon a couple of years ago after hearing him on a radio show. He mentioned he was on Twitter so I contacted him and we’ve communicated on a regular basis ever since.

Jon is a non-profit leader, a leadership coach at Muse Arts, LLC, and an author. His first book was Mastering Communications at Work and now he’s followed that up with The Three Commitments of Leadership. He was trained at Harvard University and has consulted with and offered workshops for educational, non-profit, start-up, and Fortune 100 organizations.  I encourage you to reach out to
Jon on Twitter because he’ll reach back. You can get in touch with him at @jonwortmann.
Brian, CMCT
influencepeople 
Helping You Learn
to Hear “Yes”.
The Three Commitments of Leadership are Essential to be Influential
The punch line of The Three Commitments of Leadership is simple:  teammates love to work with leaders who pay attention to clarity,
stability, and rhythm.
The same is true of leaders who know how to connect deeply with others.  The principles of influence are really about what makes us want to work and live with the people around us.  Influence can be used to get people to say “Yes,” and when people like us, when we are consistent, and
when we reciprocate the kind of authentic interactions that help us want to spend more time with someone, it creates teammates who follow us from company to company and always want to be on our team.
Here’s how the principles of influence can make you the kind of leader whose team people beg to work on.
The first of the three commitments is clarity.  We all know the case study:  the leader doesn’t tell us exactly what he/she wants, and then gets angry when we don’t do what is expected.  For instance, you’re volunteering with a team on a Habitat for Humanity build.  The site supervisor wants the roof on the house by the end of the day.  But the supervisor doesn’t tell you.  He shows you how to put on a roof, and you have a great time with your fellow volunteers getting half the roof up.  At the end of the day, as you high-five and celebrate, the supervisor is a grumpy bear.  You ask him, “Why?”  He says he wanted the roof on the house.  You all leave not liking him because you could have worked faster if you
knew that mattered, and next year you choose to volunteer with a different charity.  The problem is clarity.  Leaders who are clear, who understand what their people need to completely own what they’re doing, are also the leaders we like and want to keep working with.
The second commitment is stability.  Stability comes from providing the resources we need
and building a culture of trust.  There is no more powerful tool than consistency to produce stability.  As the old McKinsey & Co. axiom goes: leaders do what they say they’re going to do.  When they do, by repeatedly giving people what they need to be successful, teammates know that they can count on the culture of an organization to meet their own obligations and goals.  For instance, when Ernest Shackleton tried to be the first to the South Pole, he brought every possible supply his team would need:  from wine and supplies to make cakes in the Antarctic winter to over a ton and half of bacon.  Because he consistently gave them what they needed over the year of preparation before the attempt at the pole, they set a new record even though everything went wrong and they almost lost their lives.  He was able to push them so hard because from his consistent provision of resources, they knew they could trust him.
The third commitment is rhythm.  The old model of hierarchical leadership will not
produce the best results in most cultures today.  Our globally connected and competing world, unified by social networks and powerful communication technology, means leaders have to be as generous to our teammates as they are to us. We can’t tell people what to do and expect it to get done.  When our teammates take risks, offer ideas, and invest, we have to
reciprocate.  The CEOs who people want to work for behave the same way with their boards and executive teams as they do with every other employee.  When a janitor sends an email with an idea for improving a product, the CEO reaches out and validates that janitor with the same enthusiasm he would one of his VPs.  When leaders get into a rhythm of reciprocating
communication, ideas, and validation with every member of their team, the team will model the behaviors and the culture will show its health by the results it produces.
People love to work with leaders who commit to relationships and an organizational structure that has clarity, stability, and rhythm.  Leaders can fulfill their commitments by being the kind of people others like, by being consistent, and by reciprocating the behaviors of their best teammates with every team member.  The leaders who make the three commitments and fulfill them with the principles of influence are the kind of leaders teammates want to connect with for life.
Jon

You Da Man!

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 “You da man!” is a familiar phrase for many sports fans. It seems like we used to hear it all the time after Tiger Woods hit a big tee shot. What you might not know is where that phrase may have come from and that it has nothing to do with hitting a tee shot or sports.
During a coaching conversation I had not too long ago, my “coachee” shared some frustration as he tried some upward coaching with the boss. It seemed as though the boss had a blind spot in a particular area. Let’s face it; sometimes people just can’t see what is so clear to everyone else.
A strategy I suggested was to share a story that would allow the coachee to turn the tables and arrest the boss’s attention. My idea came from a passage in the Bible in which the prophet Nathan did this with King David. Here’s the reference I was thinking about:
The Lord sent Nathan (the prophet) to David (the king). When he came to him, he said, “There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him. Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him.”
David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, “As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this deserves to die! He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.”
Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man! This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. I gave your master’s house to you, and your master’s wives into your arms. I gave you the house of Israel and Judah. And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more. Why did you despise the word of the Lord by doing what is evil in his eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own. You killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. Now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house, because you despised me and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own.’
Ouch! Do you see what Nathan did there? He used a compelling story to hook David. Then he asked David what should be done with the rich man who stole from the poor man. After David gave his answer and Nathan basically said, “The story is about you! You had everything and took another man’s wife after having him killed.” David had no wiggle room because he’d already pronounced a verdict.
In the field of persuasion we often talk about the principle of consistency which tells us people feel internal psychological pressure to act in a manner that’s consistent with what they’ve said or done in the past. Once David laid down the law, so to speak, and then realized the story was an analogy about him, his eyes were opened to what he had done.
This approach can be applied to coaching or any other situation in which someone might have a blind spot. Perhaps using a compelling story or analogy to make your point can get the other person to view their own situation in a way they never have before. If you paint a good picture it’s almost like saying, “Let’s watch this video so you can see how you really come across.” Before stating your version of, “You da man,” the key is to ask the other person to tell you what they think because in doing so you engage consistency.
Will everyone change? No, but as I’ve shared before, persuasion is not a magic wand that gets you everything you want. But, when used ethically and properly tapping into the various principles of influence, it will help you hear “Yes!” more often. I confidently assert that because the science tells us so and because I’ve seen it play out personally and professionally.
Brian, CMCT
influencepeople 
Helping You Learn to Hear “Yes”.

Rick Perry declares Social Security a Ponzi Scheme

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Not too long ago, during his first Republican Presidential debate, Texas Governor Rick Perry ruffled more than a few feathers when he referred to Social Security as a

“Ponzi scheme.” Because of the ensuing buzz I thought it would be good to
explore his statement and the potential impact on his run for president of the
United States.

In
the age of political correctness Perry certainly went out on a limb with his
Ponzi scheme reference. Later he said, “I think American citizens are just
tired of this political correctness and politicians who are tiptoeing around
important issues. They want a decisive leader. I’m comfortable that the
rhetoric I have used was both descriptive and spot on.”
This
post is not about a party, program or political positions; it’s about his
statement and the psychology it evokes.
Social
Security has been a part of the fabric of this country for more than 70 years
and as such, it’s become something people have come to expect. We can rightly
call it an entitlement program because after people pay into it their entire
working lives they expect the government to give them something in return.
We
hear all the time that Social Security is broken but very few people want to do
away with it. After all, if we did then millions of people would get nothing.
While they might feel like they get nothing when they pay other taxes, with
this particular tax they were told they would get something and mentally it’s
already theirs.
When
Social Security is compared to a Ponzi scheme – which is illegal – people begin
to wonder what a person like Rick Perry might do with the program. After all,
the government is supposed to stop illegal activity. The element of an ever
growing base of contributors needed to keep it going is what leads many people
to view the program as a Ponzi scheme. However, it’s very different than BernieMadoff’s Ponzi scheme. As I wrote earlier, this post isn’t about debating the
merits of Social Security because plenty of other blogs, news outlets and talk
radio shows are already doing that. My goal is simply to look at how Perry’s
statement might be taken by a large percentage of the population.
In
the realm of psychology there’s a principle of influence known as scarcity. This
principle tells us people value things more when they believe they’re rare or
diminishing. Put another way, we are more motivated to action by what we fear
we’ll lose as opposed to what we might gain.
How
does scarcity apply to Perry’s Ponzi scheme reference? I think most Americans
realize Social Security is not sustainable in its current form but they also don’t
want to pay more taxes to support it. On the flip side, very few if any people
will declare they’re doing well enough and are willing to forego what they’re
rightly entitled to.
As
I noted earlier, Ponzi schemes are illegal and if Americans think Governor
Perry will do away with Social Security then I think he’s doomed. He might
still win the Republican primary but he’s preaching to the choir there. I do
believe in the general election the Democrats will play on his statement and
get Americans to believe Rick Perry won’t reform the program; he’ll do away
with it entirely. That will be his undoing because those critical independents
and undecided voters usually swing elections. If they believe he might do away
with something they’re counting on then scarcity kicks in and they’ll be very likely
to vote against him.
I’m
not a politician and generally prefer to stay away from political subjects but
I felt this one was worth looking at from the perspective of influence. There’s
still a long time before the primaries and the general election so that’s
plenty of time for others to potentially make bigger blunders. However, should
Perry square off with President Obama in November 2012 pay particular attention
to how his opponents use this statement against him.
Brian,
CMCT
influencepeople 
Helping You Learn to Hear “Yes”.