Hello PRL!
Have you seen the Netflix series Stranger Things? It’s like a classic 1980s adventure movie, a mix of ET and Stand By Me, stretched out over eight episodes. If you’ve not seen it and you can handle a little PG-13 horror, check it out.
Warning: minor plot point ahead, here until the end of the short dialog below
In episode 7 of Stranger Things, the Goonies-like squad of middle-schoolers have a plan to rescue their friend. (more…)
Welcome to Persuasion Reading List. This is the next part in a series of Executive Summary posts of the book My Life in Advertising. Find previous posts on this book here, and thanks for your visit.
In Chapter Two of My Life in Advertising, Hopkins writes about his childhood jobs. Hopkins learned the importance of a good product or good service. He cornered the flier delivery in his hometown by being the only boy to deliver to all of the homes on his routes. The other kids weren’t so thorough. Consistently great service attracts business.[tweetthis display_mode=”button_link”]Consistently great service attracts business. [/tweetthis]
Later, during his door-to-door sales work, Hopkins learned that selling with a demonstration or a sample made selling many times easier. Persuasion without a sample was far more effort. Samples, samples, samples! This is the cornerstone of his later career. (more…)
Hello PRL, thanks for joining me.
This is my first post directly related to Executive Summaries for the Persuasion Reading List. I’ll be posting notes and lessons from books focused on Persuasion and Influence, to save everyone time from reading the full text. In the process, I hope we can have some discussion and learn a lot about methods of Persuasion.
We’re going to start with My Life in Advertising by Claude C. Hopkins. Hopkins was a pioneer in effective advertising in the early 1900s, working to standardize his methods into what he named Scientific Advertising.
Dr. Robert Cialdini, author of Influence, discusses his new book PRE-suasion. Listen to this fascinating 1 hour podcast now!
Have you ever felt obliged to do something for someone to repay her for her efforts? Maybe you sent a thank-you card to a great aunt for that fruitcake. That time when you tipped at a restaurant when grabbing takeout. Someone held a door for you and you hurried through, trying to not waste his time.
Obligation goes beyond wanting to do something. You feel like you have to do something. This is reciprocity. You might call it tit-for-tat.
We recently covered anchoring, setting a large opening bid to help sway a negotiation towards that anchor. Reciprocity is almost the opposite.
My father-in-law recently gave me a great example of reciprocity that he uses in his college classroom. (more…)
“What are these?” my boss asked. He was standing near the mail delivery in the front of the office, holding a new computer. But not the right computer. “Where are the laptops we ordered?”
My boss looked around the office. No one knew who had ordered the wrong hardware. Except, I knew that it was me. I could see my boss welling up with the frustrations of the week. No one wanted what was coming next.
Some day, you’ll find yourself painted into a corner. Maybe even the target of a character assassination. Your coworker is torpedoing your chances at that promotion. The police officer catches you speeding. Your spouse is going for the kill in the middle of a dinner party.
What can you do? (more…)
Hello PRL!
Ever feel like you’ve got the bad end of a bargain? Maybe it doesn’t feel like a bargain at all. Maybe you’re not sure why you accepted that deal. Or maybe it was a great deal, all things considered. Time was short, options were few.
Years ago, I had concert tickets to a summer festival in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. I bought the tickets months before the show. I bought them knowing my wife would be more than seven months pregnant at the show. Still I was certain that she’d want to dance in the fields of Wisconsin. In the middle of July.
Good day PRL readers!
Last week we touched on ways that you can negatively influence an outcome: The Poochie Effect. By immediately presenting a solution to a question, we shut people out of the solution process and remove their intrinsic desire to be valuable.
Today I want to talk about pacing. Pacing is when you get early agreement in a conversation, and slowly lead somebody to reach your goal.
Pacing is the opposite of the Poochie Effect, and it’s essential to Persuasion and Social Hypnosis. (more…)
Last night I was picking up some adult beverages when my phone lit up. Incoming call from what Google’s Caller ID displayed as US Internal Revenue Services, from Oakland CA. Wary but curious, I picked up.
Immediately, the man knew my name and address. Score one for believably. “Paul White” gave me a case number and started to explain why he was calling: the IRS was doing an audit of all Americans to crack down on fraud, and I had under-reported income from 2010-2011 tax year by $1000 per month. I owed $850 in back taxes for that $12k, said the man.
I was uncomfortable and disbelieving. But it was also a heart-racing scenario if this were true. Al Capone went down like this. Was I next? (more…)