100. When People Say No the First Time, They Often Say Yes the Next Time

Imagine that you are giving a presentation to your local school board. You are part of a group of parents who would like to get new playground equipment. The parent group has selected you to approach the school board and ask for $2000 for the playground equipment project.

At the meeting where you are making the presentation and request, you shock the rest of the parent group by asking for $5000, not $2000. The members of the school board say, “No, no, we can’t possibly spend that much money for playground equipment.” You look disappointed and then say, “Oh, well, we do have a reduced plan for $2000.” They ask to see the reduced plan, and you walk out of the meeting with the $2000 project approved.

What just happened is called concession. When the school board said no, and you accepted that no, the no acted as a gift to the school board. As a result, they had incurred a debt to you. When you offered the reduced plan for $2000, they could relieve the indebtedness by saying yes to the reduced amount.

This tactic is sometimes called rejection then retreat. The initiator asks a favor that is well above what most people would agree to. After the refusal, the initiator then asks for another favor that is more reasonable and receives exactly what he or she wanted in the first place.

Image Concession builds commitment too

Cialdini (1975) stopped people on the street and asked them to chaperone a group of troubled youth on a one-day trip to the zoo. Only 17 percent of people said yes.

Some of the time, he first asked people to spend two hours a week as a counselor for the youth for a minimum of two years (a larger request). In that case everyone said no. But if he then asked them to chaperone a group of troubled youth on a one-day trip to the zoo, 50 percent agreed. That is nearly three times the 17 percent who agreed when they were only asked to chaperone. That’s concession working.

But Cialdini found an interesting side effect. Eighty-five percent of the people in the concession group actually showed up, compared with only 50 percent of the group that did not go through the concession process. Concession increases commitment to the action.

The Difference between the Request Sizes Matters

For concession to have an effect, the first offer has to be beyond what people will normally agree to, but it still has to be considered reasonable. If the first offer is totally outlandish, the retreat (second) request won’t work. In addition, the retreat offer has to be seen as fair.

Build Concession into Your Talk

Since you are going to build a call to action into the end of your talk, find a way during the talk to ask for something larger. Then at the end of the talk you can make the smaller request.

Takeaways

• If you ask for something and the person says no, they have incurred a debt, so that if you next ask for something smaller, they will feel that they have to say yes.

• When people initially say no and then agree to something smaller, it increases their commitment.

• Build in a way to ask for something large during your presentation so that you can come back with a smaller request in your call to action.

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