Top tips on the psychology of persuasion

This blog post was published on June 25, 2013 at 04:39 pm GMT

I was invited to lead a half day workshop for marketers and lawyers at LawNet recently on this topic. We covered a lot of ground – some of which I have written about in previous blogs (see links below), particularly the 7P buy in model and toolbox.

However, there were a couple of strands that were of particular interest in this session – primarily as it provided a framework around which to “hang” many of the other ideas:

How are we persuaded? (Zimbardo):

1. Who (the communicator)

2. What (the message)

3. Whom (the audience)

4. Effect (the desired outcome)

The six characteristics of effective communication (Heath):

1. Simple, brief, profound

2. Unexpected, surprising

3. Concrete, real experiences

4. Credible, trustworthy

5. Emotional – feel as well as think

6. Tell a story

Conformity

Both informational (where there is uncertainty) and normative (where we want to make a good impression) conformity were discussed as well as the importance of in-group bias and social identity theory in the context of a law practice.

Recommended reading

There were a number of references provided for further reading although my personal favourite, and the one strongly recommend as it’s written by a psychologist, is “Influence – the psychology of persuasion” by Robert B Cialdini. His six strategies have served me very well over the years. Although John P Kotter’s work on both buy-in and persuasion/attack strategies was also referenced.

Favourite persuasion tips

I always ask about delegates’ main takeaways from a session, and this is what they said:

· Visioning exercise

· Understanding comfort zones

· Deliver what you have promised and developing trust

· Communicate in a different way

o Be sensitive and adapt to different personality, cognitive and learning styles

o Use drawing as a tool

o Consider “one page” summary diagrams, storyboards or schematics

· Strategies for dealing with different types of “difficult” behaviour

· Regular meetings to both review progress/successes and motivate next short term actions

· Physically sitting near and working with those you want to influence