Here is an excerpt from an article by Peep Laja featured by the Conversion XL website. To read the complete article, please click here.
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You want to be persuasive.
The power to influence people to get what you want is sometimes all it takes to be successful. These are some tactics, discovered through psychological research, that you have probably not yet heard about, but have the potential to increase your persuasive abilities.
I’m not going to cover reciprocity, scarcity or social proof and all those widely known persuasion principles. You already know all about those (in case you don’t, stop everything and read this book by Cialdini).
[Here are the first two of the 17 “Jedi mind tricks.”]
1. Be confident, talk fast
The best way to persuade audiences that are not inclined to agree with you, is to talk fast. Fast pace is distracting and people find it difficult to pick out the argument’s flaws. When talking to an audience who is likely to agree (preaching to the choir), slow down and give the audience time to agree some more.
Want to boost persuasive power? Talk with confidence.
Don Moore from Carnegie Mellon’s Center for Behavioral Decision Research has published research
showing that confidence even trumps past accuracy in earning the trust of others.
We prefer advice from a confident source, even to the point that we are willing to forgive a poor track record. Moore argues that in competitive situations, this can drive those offering advice to increasingly exaggerate how sure they are.
People naturally associate confidence with expertise. Know your product, know the facts about its benefits and believe in what it does – true confidence becomes from knowing and believing what you’re saying. It’s essential that we communicate our confidence to others in order to persuade them.
2. Swearing can help influence an audience
Light swearing, that is. (Go overboard and lose all credibility.)
Researchers divided 88 participants into three groups to watch one of three slightly different speeches. The only difference between the speeches was that one contained a mild curse word at the start:
“…lowering of tuition is not only a great idea, but damn it, also the most reasonable one for all parties involved.”
The second speech contained the ‘damn it’ at the end and the third had neither. When participants’ attitudes were measured, they were most influenced by the speeches with the mild obscenity included, either at the beginning or the end.
The word ‘damn’ increased the audience’s perception of the speaker’s intensity, which increased persuasion. The audience’s perceived credibility of the speaker did not change.
So that’s the secret of Gary Vaynerchuk and Dave McClure. I thought they’re just cool guys, but turns out it’s the swearing that got me
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To read the complete article, please click here.
http://conversionxl.com/17-lesser-known-ways-to-persuade-people/
From the horse’s mouth….
“Hi, my name is Peep Laja
“I’m the face of ConversionXL. My unusual name (to most people) is actually pronounced ‘Pep Laya’. I am from Estonia, but live mainly in the US these days.
“I’m an entrepreneur and a conversion optimization junkie. I run a unique conversion optimization marketing agency called Markitekt (we make existing sites better and build new conversion optimized websites) + several niche internet businesses like T1Q and others.
“I deliver trainings and workshops on conversion optimization and internet marketing, consult businesses in need and plan the architecture of websites that sell.”
To read other articles, please click here.