The Psychology of Persuasion

• The ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee. And I will pay more for that ability, than for any other under the sun.
• If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things form his angle as well as from your own.
• Compared to what we ought to be, we are only half-awake.
• The great aim of education is not knowledge, but action.
• Most people operate in a stimulus/response mode.
• Knowledge is only potential power. True personal power is the ability to take action and implement your knowledge.
• Outcome-based thinking is the ability to visualize the precise outcome of a process before beginning that process.
• Opinion is ultimately determined by the feelings, not the intellect.
• If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend.
• Law of Reciprocity: When someone gives you something of perceived value, you immediately respond with the desire to give something back.
• Law of Contrast: When two items are relatively different from each other, we will see them as more different if placed close together in time and space.
• Law of Friends: When someone asks you to do something and you perceive that person to have your best interests in mind, and/or you would like him to have your best interests in mind, you are strongly motivated to fulfill the request.
• Law of Expectancy: When someone whom you believe in or respect expects you to perform a task or produce a certain result, you will tend to fulfill his expectation whether positive or negative.
• Law of Association: We tend to like products, services, or ideas that are endorsed by other people we like or respect.
• Law of Consistency: When an individual announces in writing or verbally that he is taking a position on any issue or point of view, he will strongly tend to defend that belief regardless of its accuracy even in th face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
• Law of Scarcity: When a person perceives that something he might want is limited in quantity, he believes that the value of what he might want is greater than if it were available in abundance.
• Law of Conformity: Most people tend to agree to proposals, products, or services that will be perceived as acceptable by the majority of other people or a majority of an individual’s peer group.
• Law of Power: People have power over other people to the degree that they are perceived as having greater authority, strength, or expertise.
• The only way on earth to influence the other fellow is to talk about what he wants and who him how to get it.
• Persuasion techniques involve the manipulation of the laws of persuasion. They also involve manipulating other current circumstances, which can include the masterful use of questions, sharing secrets, using power words and phrases, applying time pressure, and others.
• Questions are valuable tools for the master persuader. They are used in the persuasion process to clarify statements, determine values, draw out objections, and direct the conversation.
• The most powerful word on the face of the earth is our own name.
• You can make more friends in tow months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years trying to get other people interested in you.
• Once you know someone’s strategy, you can present your proposal to him in a way that will make it virtually impossible for him to say no.
• Men must be taught as if you taught them not, and things unknown proposed as things forgotten,
• Misused words generate misleading thoughts.
• First, determine whether a person is a mostly logical or a mostly emotional person and, second, whether a person is a mostly assertive (extroverted) or mostly nonassertive (introverted) person.
• Action springs out of what we fundamentally desire.
• Those individuals who feel overwhelmed with providing value for others and for themselves have powerful motivation.
• We must become passionate if we are to persuade others.
• Rapport is a nonverbal linking of two or more people.
• The objective of rapport is to send a subconscious message to your counterpart that you are just like him. When you are just like someone, you are likely to gain that person’s trust.
• Many people fail to make a favorable impression because they don’t listen attentively.
• The ability to gain the respect, trust, and liking of a stranger during the beginning stages of the persuasion process marks the skill of instant rapport.
• The master persuader models the prospect, shows sincere interest in the prospect, and confirms he’s in rapport with the prospect, asks questions to discover values, asks questions to discover rules that define values, asks questions that identify needs, and asks questions to discover rules that define needs.
• Be wiser than other people, if you can; but do not tell them so.
• The deepest urge in human nature is the desire to be important.
• Brevity is a skill few salespeople possess.
• Be congruent – Make certain your nonverbal communication matches your verbal presentation.
• Use client-centered thinking – Every part of your proposal is important to the client if, and only if, it shows what’s in it for him.
• We are interested in others when they are interested in us.

Source: The Psychology of Persuasion By Kevin Hogan