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DRAW IN THE LISTENER
What youâre about to read is a bit frightening. Sometimes seminar attendees walk out on me as I deliver this material because theyâre disturbed by what they hear. These are smart people walking out. I donât blame them for leaving. This is the stuff of nightmares.
As you continue reading, youâre going to learn to persuade in a way you never imagined possible. Not in a Dale Carnegie way. Not by smiling and tossing in peopleâs first names as you speak with them. This is about getting people to do what you want. Particularly strangers. (When a Wired reporter saw hundreds of strangers follow my commands in unison, he called the display âa feat of mass obedience that must be seen to be believed.â)
My persuasion model is unusual, but deadly effective. I didnât read about it in a magazine or develop it with a team of university scholars. Instead, it comes from my 37 yearsâ experience in front of audiences and from my study of those true masters of influence, show folk; mostly show folk in the âdark arts.â
Yes, all I know about persuasion Iâve learned from carnies, fakirs, hypnotists, magicians, mentalists, spiritualists, and, particularly, pitchmen. Naturally, Iâm taking liberties here with who I call show folk, but letâs not split hairs. Their methods are the important thing, not the taxonomy.
These mentors of mine, whom youâll learn about throughout the book, share several traits: If they donât persuade, they starve; their strategies may involve outright deception; and they use, for the most part, entertainment as a means of changing minds. For want of a better term, letâs call their ways âtheatrical,â and my model the âTheatrical Persuasion Model.â (Things always seem more real when you name them; thereâs your first lesson.)
So if youâre ready for an underground education in influence, read on. If youâre anxious to learn what magicians dub âthe real work,â this is the only place to find it. Itâs all very doable, and youâll be able to use the model no matter what your situationâthat is, if you donât let your fears get the best of you.
Reader, I just hit you with an influence technique: the Fright Challenge. Liken it to the carnival barkerâs ballyhoo used to snare people strolling the midway: âLadies and gentlemen, can you bear it? Sho-cking! Horr-i-fy-ing! A living, breathing nightmare! The most intelligent among you will want to keep walking!â The more the carny protests, the larger the crowd grows.
If I was successful with my pitch, you didnât notice you were being influenced. Or, if you realized it, you were at least intrigued enough to read this far. Whatever your reaction, I now have your attention, and I intend to keep it.
You can rely upon the Fright Challenge whatever your audienceâs size and intellectual makeup. Everyoneâand I mean everyoneâresponds to this simple tactic.
I used a lengthy challenge to open this chapter because you can build slowly on paper. Readers like to feel the timbre of a writerâs voice and see how he or she goes about developing an argument. In person, though, itâs a different story; if you take too long setting the challenge, you cross the line from provocateur to menace.
When the people Iâm trying to influence are standing before me and want to know how I earn a living, my Fright Challenge is to the point: âAre you sure you want to know? Itâs a little frightening. Most people canât handle it.â When they say yes, and they always do, I conspiratorially add: âMove in closer. I donât want everyone hearing this.â Suddenly, I have their attention in a way that makes them hungry for my words. Theyâre mine for the moment.
Reading How to Persuade People Who Donât Want to Be Persuaded will be an experience for you. Much of what youâre about to learn is available nowhere else.
Ladies and gentlemen, can you bear it? Itâs overview time!
OVERVIEW
Who Should Read This Book?
I wrote it predominantly for businesspeople. My techniques will help executives, managers, entrepreneurs, salespeople, marketers, advertising staff, human resources personnel, presenters, job seekers, and just about anybody looking for a way to make people receptive to suggestions.
Of course, you donât have to be in business to profit from this book. Anyone who wants to influence others to his or her way of thinking will want to read it. That audience includes activists, counselors, negotiators, performers, physicians, politicians, public speakers, and teachers.
An audience that deserves special mention is singles. My persuasion strategies are naturals when it comes to meeting and impressing people. If youâre a Casanova- or vamp-in-training, youâve come to the right place.
What Is the Bookâs High Concept?
Before I answer, let me explain what a high concept is. The principle is critical if you want to be a powerful persuader. The term high concept is most often used in the TV and film industries, particularly during pitch meetings, in which writers throw condensed ideas at a studio executive, hoping that the executive will buy one of them and turn it into a series or a movie.
Those condensed ideas are high concepts. They take a complex plot and reduce it to its most compelling point. The resulting sentence or phrase is what the writer fires at the executive.
Whatâs the most famous high concept ever pitched? According to âPerfect Pitch,â a TV documentary, it was delivered by Aaron Spelling to sell his proposed series Nightingales. Spelling pitched the series as ânurses in wet t-shirts.â The studio bought it immediately.
So What Is This Bookâs High Concept?
It shows you how to persuade by using the techniques of professional pitchmen. That concept may not be as sexy as Spellingâs, but itâs accurate. This book brings the secrets of show folk to the boardroom. It teaches you how to use entertainment to influence.
Think these premises sound odd? Then I suggest you switch on your television. If the success of television has taught us anything, itâs this: People will open themselves up to a commercial message if you entertain them. Take away the entertainment, and the viewer surfs off to another station while the sponsorâs message goes unheard.
Product sales rise and fall based upon the entertainment value of their messages. A message that tickles the public can be worth billions. At times, an entertaining message may be the only thing separating one product from another.
Bottled water is a good example. Itâs a $35 billion a year industry. Thatâs $35 billion for a product not substantially different from what you can get out of your faucet.
Obviously, the people in that industry are bright. They not only created a market, but they work hard at making each brand seem different from its competitor. One water is from a stream. One is from the mountains. One is from France. One has added vitamins. One comes in a squirt bottle for people on the go. The list goes on.
I would argue that very little separates one water from the other. If you were to conduct a taste test among the top three brands, I donât think youâd find an obvious winner.
The thing that really separates these products is their companiesâ positioning strategiesâand the entertainment principles each uses in its marketing message. Iâve seen brands advertised by models in flowing robes, by glamorous movie stars, and by beautiful, sweating athletes.
Models, movie stars, and athletes have little to do with water. They have a lot to do with telling an attention-grabbing dramatic story, fast. In other words, theyâre there to entertain you. For no other reason.
Perhaps the entertainment component in bottled water is subtle. After all, most companies in the industry take a dignified approach to pitching their product. Itâs not so with beer.
The beer industry is all about associating its product with good times and wild entertainment. To push their product, brewers have used a wide variety of entertaining means: Theyâve flown blimps over sporting events; run contests with a billion-dollar prize; and aired commercials featuring women wrestling in mud, a dog with human girlfriends, frogs croaking a beerâs name, and a football game played between rival bottles of beer.
With exaggerated vehicles like those, itâs easy to dismiss the brilliance of the beer industry. That is, until you realize one thing: In 2002, beer sales totaled $74.4 billion. Say what you like. Entertainment sells.
Will My Techniques Require You to Become an Entertainer?
You will not have to sing, dance, act, recite, get up in front of crowds, or wrestle in mud, unless you want to. When I talk about entertainment as a persuader, I mean that you will use compelling, often whimsical strategies designed to put people in a receptive mood for what you have to offer.
And keep in mind, entertainment isnât necessarily lighthearted. A drama is entertaining. So is a horror film. In the work weâll be doing together, youâll be using the full range of human emotion to make your point forcefully.
What Are Some of the Techniques?
Youâve already experienced at least two techniques. The Fright Challenge was one, and contained within it was a second technique: sampling. If you want to persuade people, youâre going to have to figure out ways of letting them sample your suggestion, idea, service, or product. Otherwise, theyâll doubt you, and that doubt may keep them from acting on your wishes.
I opened with the Fright Challenge because itâs an attention-grabber and it acted as a sample of what youâre going to learn. If you thought the challenge flimflam, then you instantly knew this book isnât for you. Conversely, if you thought the challenge intriguing, then youâre no doubt eager to tear through the rest of this book and make its strategies your strategies.
Sampling helps people draw conclusions quickly and honestly. Itâs an ethical way to win them over to your side. Later, youâll learn the best ways to offer samples in situations professional and personal.
Besides the Fright Challenge and sampling, youâll also learn how to persuade using dozens of other tactics. Among them: the Body Metaphor, the Paper Metaphor, the Quick Pitch, and the Platform Pitch. All are entertaining. All are effective. You and the people youâre persuading will have fun while you get your way.
Of course, not every technique in this book functions solely to entertain. Your offerings should be flavored with entertainment principles, not drowning in them. While youâre learning to entertain, youâll also be learning good, solid business and influence practices.
I donât want to leave this introductory chapter without putting the spotlight on an influence technique particularly dear to me: the Transformation Mechanism.
What Is a Transformation Mechanism?
It is a demonstration that gains your audienceâs attention, lowers their defenses, and serves as a metaphor for your message. Itâs a trick that makes a point. A major point. One that might spell the difference between someoneâs taking your suggestion or dismissing it. Let me give you an example of a Transformation Mechanism I used to make a $45,000 sale. It involved a rubber band.
My prospect was the head of marketing for a West Coast software firm. Her company was renting major booth space at an upcoming convention, and she had contacted me as a possible hire for the show. My job? To act as the companyâs pitchman and draw people to her booth.
Because it was she who had called the meeting, I thought the sale would be easy. Was I ever wrong. When I asked her about her companyâs goals for the show, she was vague. When I showed her client testimonials and photographs of me drawing overflow crowds at previous shows, she glanced at them as if I had handed her yesterdayâs newspaper.
She thanked me for coming and said sheâd get back to me. But I wasnât leaving. The meeting had cost me time and money, and her get-back-to-me speech wasnât giving me false hope. If I left, I would never hear from her again.
I rose from my chair and pretended to pack up. As I shut my laptop and repositioned imaginary items in my briefcase, I asked her the same questions I had just asked her, only I softened them. For instance, rather than asking about her companyâs goals for the upcoming show, I asked about her best moments from previous shows, and how she planned on duplicating them. After a few moments, I smoked out her objection to my services.
Her company had always relied on winning over early adopters who would get the word out about the new software to their fellow hard-core users. This strategy had served her firm well. It had doubled in size over the last three years by catering to early adopters.
My service didnât fit that early-adopter model at allâat least not in her mind. What Iâm all about is drawing the largest trade-show crowds possible, and thatâs not what she thought she needed. âThe masses arenât going to buy our product,â she said, âso I see no reason to attract and entertain them.â She confessed that the only...