6

Say it the right way

6.1 Right time, right place, right channel

Eight billion people, all different. So how do we know how to persuade that given person sitting in front of us right now? Well, all the work we’ve done in Chapters 1 through to 5 will tell us how.

The reason why our persuasion efforts usually fail is that, normally, we dive straight in with our advice, with our suggestions, with how they’re wrong – and this just doesn’t work. Sure, it’s persuaded us, but that doesn’t mean it will persuade them.

You will only change their mind if they are open to listening in the first place and if you have a solution that they are likely to accept, and all of that comes from the work done in the previous chapters.

And you also need to know how to put that solution across to that individual specifically: what will work with one person won’t work for another – and, again, much of what we need for this comes from those earlier chapters.

Now in this chapter we’ll look at what else we can do to make our communication most compelling.

And first off is choosing the right time, the right place and the right channel.

Find the right time

Niki Lauda, the three-times World Champion Formula One Racing Driver, was racing in 1978 for the Brabham team, owned by Bernie Ecclestone. Lauda was being paid £500,000 per year and wanted a pay-rise but Ecclestone refused and rang all the other teams to persuade them not to give him a better deal. Lauda had no choice but to accept his current salary.

For the time being, at least.

A short while later, he and Ecclestone met with the food giant Parmalat to discuss sponsorship. Parmalat asked who was driving. Ecclestone said Lauda, which gave Lauda his opportunity. Very calmly, Lauda said no he wasn’t because he wasn’t paid enough and Ecclestone was forced to increase the salary to £2 million, there and then, because he needed to ensure the sponsorship.1,2

Lauda waited for that key strategic moment where he knew his request would have most leverage, but sometimes it’s simply about getting them in a good mood or a bad one. Professor Shai Danziger of Ben Gurion University conducted a study of over 1100 parole hearings in Israel and found a high correlation between the decision made and blood sugar levels: they were more likely to give parole if the decision was made shortly after food.3

Deciding on parole is an important and difficult decision and the default is to deny it. Any contrary decision would require a lot of thinking and this can only be done when their brain has sufficient fuel to do that thinking.

Find the right place

The place can make a difference too, it can help set the right atmosphere. Do you want it to be formal or informal? Do you want it to be at their place or yours?

In 2012 when two of the largest commodities companies in the world, Glencore and Xstrata, were merging, the deal hit a significant stumbling block. The major shareholders of Xstrata, the royal family of Qatar, did not like the terms and conditions of the deal and were blocking it from going ahead.

So how was the situation resolved?

Well, it turns out the Qatar royal family were very good friends with Tony Blair, who was also good friends with the chief exec of Glencore, Ivan Glasenberg. So, they all met up for dinner at Claridge’s, one of the best restaurants in London, and bashed it out. A multi-billion-dollar problem solved by good food and fine wine in a fancy restaurant.

Find the right channel

In recent years, the world has moved more and more online. This was true even before Covid-19, but the pandemic has accelerated it massively. So we now also have to consider the best channel.

Obviously online brings advantages – we can negotiate from anywhere on the planet. You could be typing away while sitting on the beach, you can include all parties and you don’t have to organise everyone being in the same place at the same time.

It’s tremendously convenient but this very convenience can be a problem too because email negotiations have their disadvantages.

For a start, it is much harder to explore topics, asking multiple questions in an open-ended, creative kind of way. So the solution reached is likely to be sub-optimal.

Plus, informationally it’s a very diminished channel because so much of our communication is in the non-verbals: the facial expression, the tonality and so on. None of these is there in the email which means nuance, irony, sarcasm, humour and emotions do not convey and so the likelihood is that we communicated something different to what we intended.

Emails are famously easy to misinterpret and also tend to be less diplomatic. We see this in other online contexts like trolling where hiding behind a screen enables us to write things that we wouldn’t normally say face-to-face and this then spirals out of control. One person writes something that they feel they need to say, the other person takes it in the wrong way and replies accordingly. Then the first person reads it and gets angry and slowly (often rapidly) it escalates. We have all been there.

And, finally, less trust is built through email and this can be fatal to the conversation. Human beings are social animals and we build trust through proximity. Research on negotiations shows that the remote deals fail more frequently than face-to-face and even if they reach an outcome, it is likely to be a sub-optimal outcome. It is something we really need to address if we want to get good results from our interactions.4,5

Find the right blend

This isn’t to say that email is bad. We just need to be aware that we are usually over-reliant on it as a channel because it is the most convenient. Instead, the best approach is a blended approach.

If it is at all possible, face-to-face is better. Human beings are pack animals and there is something very primal about meeting someone in terms of building trust. If we have met someone once, we are likely to trust them more; if we have met them twice, we are likely to trust them even more still. So use that.

Face-to-face is typically much less convenient though, so video conferencing is the next-best alternative. You can see and hear them so it is still a rich channel of communication but you can also work at a distance so you can schedule to meet your New York and your Indian colleagues at the same time. Failing that, use the telephone and keep emails for short factual communications or where you need an audit trail or where the logistics are too difficult to resolve.

Don’t email simply because you always email. Each channel has its own advantages and disadvantages and you want to be aware of them and then choose consciously to best leverage their attributes.

And if it’s not going well in any particular channel, change the channel. If your emails are getting nowhere, pick up the phone. If that still doesn’t work out, meet face-to-face. Maybe try the coffee shop or the restaurant.

Maybe even Claridge’s.

6.2 The best words are their words

As we saw in Chapter 5, getting them to create the answer is the key. If your ticket was specifically for the train that just left, asking them to let you on the next one might get a curt refusal. But if, instead, you tell them of the problem and let them come up with the answer, you might get ‘Oh, don’t worry about that, give me your ticket, I’m sure we can change it’.

We’ve now given them the opportunity of feeling good about themselves because (a) it was their solution and (b) they are doing a good deed. You never know, cognitive dissonance might even bump you into First Class!

If it’s their idea, you’re on to a winner. The ‘not invented here’ syndrome means if it’s not their idea, they will probably fight against it; but if they think it is, they will fight for it.

And why not give them credit for it even if it wasn’t their idea. So phrases like those below will get you a long way:

• ■‘As you said earlier. . . ’
• ■‘I love your idea that. . . ’
• ■‘Building on your earlier comment. . . ’
• ■‘You’ve given me an idea. . . ’.

Never let your ego get in the way of your outcome.

Persuade them with their words

Letting them come up with your answer is the ideal but it isn’t always possible. If you are going to make a suggestion, though, keep it as close to their thinking as possible and the simplest way to do this is to use their words.

If they have used a specific word in a particular context, consciously or subconsciously they have chosen that word; if we use any other word (a word we might think means the same), we are risking getting it wrong.

Them: What I need right now is a holiday.

Us: Yes, get away from it all.

Them: No, I’m not going anywhere, I’m just going to stay at home and chill.

If we’d just stuck with ‘holiday’, we would all have been in agreement.

Now, it is different if we need to check our understanding of something, in this instance we would use our own words: when our boss says he needs the report quickly, we might think by the end of the week is quite quick, they might think the end of the day. But for influencing purposes, using different words simply increases the chances they will disagree. We can be confident they won’t disagree with their own words; anything else brings in doubt.

Persuade them how they told you to

If we don’t use their exact words, at least use their style of words. While your impeccable logic is perfect for persuading yourself, it will not necessarily change anyone else’s mind, so you need to put your message in terms of how they make their decisions.

For example, some people are risk-averse, others are ‘go-getters’. To motivate the former, talk about the problems that will arise if they do not take this course of action. To motivate the latter, talk about the benefits that will accrue by taking it. This small change in emphasis will increase your chances of buy-in.

We’ve seen already in the book that people tell you how they make their decisions all the time. So, if you did your research in Chapter 2 and you listened deeply in Chapter 3, you will know exactly how to persuade them. This is the place where all that work pays off.

And then you work with these and you put your message in terms of these and it is more likely to get through.

As an example, researchers at UC Berkeley found that most pro-environmental arguments in the media were framed in terms of caring for the natural environment and protecting it. Now, these are values that resonate a lot more with liberals than with conservatives. Conservatives, however, were more likely to be enrolled by articles that stressed protecting the purity of the environment and which showed images of dirty drinking water and pollution.6

Along similar lines, Professor Christopher Wolsko of Oregon State University did a similar experiment where he gave participants two different messages, exhorting them to implement more environmentally friendly policies: the first appealing to care and compassion for the natural world, the second to the purity of the environment and to patriotism. Liberals were much more likely to respond to the former and conservatives to the latter.7

Sell it how they told you to

We can see how this works in sales. Perhaps you have a great product with lots of amazing features to set it apart from the competition. If you are lucky, you are talking to a technical person who will understand straightaway how they can use those features.

Most customers, though, do not buy on features. That amazing widget you’re selling with an incredibly exciting tool for digging stones out of horses’ hooves? The client doesn’t care.

Spell out the value though, the value to that particular client in their specific current situation, and you have a sale.

• ■If they have told you they want to cut production time, tell them how this will cut production time, tell them by how much (based on figures they gave you) and then show how much money it will save them each quarter.
• ■If they have told you they are trying to get into a new market, tell them how these features will help break that market and remind them of how much the market is going to be worth in the next five years (again, based on figures they gave you).
• ■If they have mentioned a fear over the organisation’s reputation, show how these features will bolster the reputation.
• ■If they once mentioned an interest in life after death, don’t go that far, all claims must be ethical and based on facts but you get the idea.

And, by the way, it is your professional duty to do this. You are working with things that they have told you are important to them. And, surprisingly, they sometimes forget this. They will try to push you down on cost; they will say you are more expensive than your competitor. But all of this is a distraction from what is actually really important to them.

After all, the money saved by the reduction in production time will be much more than your costs. The value of the new market you will help them break into will be much more than your costs. The value of their reputation will be much more than your costs.

Keep them focused on this and they will buy from you.

Persuade them with compelling words

And if we are using our own words, find the best ones. There is often a choice of words that will fit the context and one will be more compelling than the other. Choose that one.

The words we choose create a reality and so we want to create the most persuasive reality we can. Professor Elizabeth Loftus and John C Palmer, both of Washington University, showed people a video of a traffic accident and some people were asked, ‘How fast were the cars travelling when they contacted the other car?’ and others, ‘. . . when they smashed into the other car?’. The second group’s estimate was nearly 30 per cent higher than that of the first group.8

Insurance companies have found that people pay twice as much for a medical policy that covers death ‘by any disease’ than they will for one that covers death ‘by any reason’, even though the latter includes the former. But it is less specific and therefore less vivid and therefore has less of an emotional impact.

6.3 Say the words they want to hear

Perhaps the best words are the words the other person wants to hear, the ones that make them look good.

Flattery has long been known to be a great influencer. Everyone likes to think they are rational and make their decisions based on the facts and logic; but throw in a few compliments, and their judgement is all over the place. We can’t help but be charmed.

As Lady Randolph Churchill said, ‘When I left the dining room after sitting next to Gladstone, I thought he was the cleverest man in England. But when I sat next to Disraeli I left feeling that I was the cleverest woman’.

No one is immune. In an article called ‘The slime effect’,9 published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Roos Vonk showed that when we read flattering descriptions of other people, we often believe the flatterer was a slimeball. However, the same flattery written about ourselves is perceived as honest and insightful!

Asking advice from someone is an implicit form of flattery and this too will get them on your side. If you ask advice from your boss’s boss, from your prospective client, from your negotiating counterparty, from that person of the opposite political persuasion, it can be a very effective way of getting them on your side.

Flattery has a bad name, though, so a sophisticated reader like yourself (did you see what I did there?) might not be comfortable with it. Let me suggest another word: complimenting. It’s basically the same and much more socially acceptable. Complimenting is a key element of charm and charisma. And as long as you are authentic and honest with your praise, helping the other person feel good about themselves can only be a good thing.

Compliment their behaviour to get more of that behaviour

You’ve probably heard of Pudsey the dog, if not do look him up. Pudsey was a remarkable dog who performed on stage, was a guest judge on several television shows and even starred in a film. His career began when he won Britain’s Got Talent in 2012. I always thought this was an indictment on Britain, that our best talent was a dog. But Pudsey was no ordinary dog: Pudsey danced, sang and recited the works of Shakespeare.

And Pudsey was trained using clicker training, a form of positive reinforcement that developed from the work of B.F. Skinner and Karen Pryor. Its basis is that if you reward a behaviour, you get more of that behaviour. The reward with dogs is initially a choccy drop and, later, a click. Dogs, not being too intelligent, seem to like clicks as much as choccy drops.

This method works for dogs and it also works for other animals like boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives, bosses and so on. For these animals, though, a simple compliment is usually more advisable than a click or choccy drop.

Let me give an example from my own life. When I was 8 years old I played in an organised football team for the first time. At that age, there are no set positions for the players, just a scrum of kids following the ball around the pitch. I found myself at the edge of that scrum and I turned, found myself in space, and, as I remember, ran the length of the pitch and scored a brilliant goal. My memory is a little hazy, it has to be said, and the last bit might not be entirely true.

But what I do remember for certain is that my coach called out from the sidelines, ‘Good turn, Simon’ and I heard that and it stuck. ‘I’m a good turner’, I thought proudly and from then on, every time I got the ball, I turned. And turning in football, in general, is a good thing to do – you find space, you change direction, there is an element of surprise. His reinforcement of the behaviour with a compliment produced more of it.

You can even do it on something the other person doesn’t do very often. Let me give you another example: I was once coaching someone on their public speaking and, as they practised an upcoming talk, they constantly walked from one side of the stage to the other which quickly became distracting so I thought it was a point I would raise.

Now, I could have told them to stop doing it, but many people are nervous about presentations and the last thing they need is something else to worry over and be self-critical about. So instead I said, ‘There was one point in the middle where you stood still and looked me, the audience, in the eye. That was really powerful. Do a lot more of that’. So he did.

So if your neighbour is always playing the bagpipes at night, just compliment them for that moment when they were quiet.

Say ‘no’ by saying ‘yes’

Typically people don’t like to hear the word ‘no’: the word ‘yes’ is much more satisfying to hear.

Our experience of being told ‘no’ is rarely pleasant. It is actually like taking a physical hit – it’s a painful experience, it triggers the amygdala and releases lots of stress-producing hormones and neuro-transmitters.

As such, it’s not a word you should use lightly but, at the same time, we saw in Chapter 4 how important it is to have a strong ‘no’.

So, if you can find alternative ways to say the same thing, that is often advisable. For example, saying ‘no’ to your boss can be extremely career-limiting and yet sometimes you have to, so being able to say it without causing offence is useful although not always easy.

A great way to say ‘no’ is to use the word ‘yes’ (with an important caveat on its way) and we’ve already seen in Chapter 5 the generative power of the phrase ‘Yes and. . . ’.

In fact, from one perspective, the answer is always ‘Yes, if. . . ’. In other words, your yes is conditional on something that you would like in return. This way, everybody can get their win. ‘Yes, I’m happy to stay late tonight if I can leave early on Friday because I’m going away for the weekend.’

Now, to be fair, we haven’t really said ‘no’, but we have used it to make sure we get something that we wouldn’t have otherwise. Most things have their price, even if exorbitantly high. Use this method to get that cheeky price.

Sometimes, though, you really do need to refuse but without offending. And again the best way is to start with ‘yes’. Then follow it up with something that you can agree to or acknowledge.

• ■‘Yes, that report does need to be finished tonight’.
• ■‘Yes, I understand why you say that and I would feel the same if I were in your shoes.’

Notice that although you’ve said ‘yes’, you haven’t actually agreed to their request.

The next step is to give your reasons why you will have to decline and then say ‘no’. It is important to do it in that order. If you say ‘no’ first, they will just hear the ‘no’ and won’t hear the reasons. Give the reasons first, however, and they will hear them and be primed for the decline that follows.

Then finish off with another sweetener (‘. . . I hope you get it sorted’ or ‘. . . leave it on my desk and I will do it first thing tomorrow’) and you’ve got across your refusal without losing the deal or the relationship.

So, putting it all together in an example for illustration: Let’s say you’re selling your beautiful car to a friend and they put the emotional squeeze on and ask you to knock off another 5 per cent because they’re a good friend; don’t say ‘no’, say, ‘Yes, you’re right, we go back a long way so I’m giving you the best deal I can, and I’ve already knocked off more than I should really so I’ll have to stick to this figure this time. But you’ve got a fabulous car there at a great price. You’ll love every moment you drive it’.

You can keep your friends, your job and your deal by knowing how to say ‘no’ smoothly.

Now, I said there was an important caveat on its way. In certain situations, your ‘no’ must be unequivocal and saying ‘no’ with the word ‘yes’ can be considered equivocal. Some people, minded to hear agreement, will pick up on the ‘yes’ and take it you’ve agreed.

I was reminded of this by a friend who had two teenage daughters and she was, of course, absolutely correct. So make sure you have an unmistakable categorical ‘no’ available to you when necessary; but in more diplomatically sensitive times, other language might be more befitting.

Use your customers’ language

6.4 What is your body saying?

So far in the book, we’ve learnt from ducks, squirrels and lobsters. In this last chapter, we will look to the great philosopher of the ocean – the cuttlefish.

Cuttlefish are remarkable creatures for many reasons including the facts they have three hearts, eight arms and two tentacles. None of them speaks English, however, and so we’re specifically interested in how they communicate, especially the fact they communicate with their bodies.

In their skin, they have millions of pigment cells and so they can change their colours, chameleon-like, and this is how they communicate. Their ‘language’ has up to 75 chromatic elements and some cuttlefishologists believe their communication even has a grammar to it.

They can even change the texture of their skin, for example, making it spikey as a warning signal before a fight. In fact, during mating, the male can communicate different signals at the same time. The side closest to the female will have a smooth, lovingly romantic texture but if a rival wanders by, the side closest to the rival will be aggressively spikey.

Humans are nearly as intelligent as cuttlefish and we too communicate with our bodies. Less so with colour (although ever find yourself blushing?) but more with posture, gestures, facial expression and non-content attributes of voice.

In fact, your body language talks very loudly, so make sure it agrees with what you are saying.

Are you projecting the right status?

For a start, your body language conveys status and we saw in Chapter 4 how, for pack animals like humans, status is extremely important and the higher status you are, the more likely people will buy into your message. But status is not absolute, there is no grand register where you can check your innate status score – what counts in status is what is perceived and that, in turn, depends on what is projected.

So what status do you project? Do you walk timidly into the room, hoping not to be seen, talk quietly and rarely give strong eye contact? Or do you sit and stand tall, give a good handshake, lots of eye contact, and talk with a strong voice? Or are you leaning forward with unwavering eye contact, pointing fingers, banging tables and shouting?

Are you projecting credibility?

Linked to status is credibility. Do they believe you will deliver on your promise? Do they believe you believe what you are saying?

Deborah Tannen, Professor of Linguistics at Georgetown University, considered chief executives who often have to ‘make decisions in five minutes about matters on which others may have worked five months’. How do they do this? As much on how confidently it is presented as on content.

Make your case and pack it with ‘erms’ and ‘errs’ and ‘possiblys’ and ‘maybes’, while shaking the head and looking down, and they simply won’t buy into it, even if it is true. But back it up with lots of confident and assertive body language and they will sign up, even if the reality is not quite as straightforward as you suggest.

Are you projecting approachability?

Of course, it’s not all about showing how strong and confident you are. The other side of the coin is communicating openness and approachability. Many people want to work with people they like and a positive relationship will definitely help your case.

And that is a whole different set of body language elements.

Smiling, lots of facial expression and head movement, lots of hand gestures and sentences finishing on the up (like an implied question-mark) all tend to suggest approachability and friendliness; in contrast to silence, lack of facial expression and movement and staring stony-faced back which people typically find uncomfortable to be with.

You can also build rapport by matching the other person’s body language. Remember in Chapter 3 we looked at the work of Professor Uri Hasson and how he found the more people’s brains were synchronised (the greater the neural entrainment, in other words), the better the conversation was judged to be?

Well, neurophysiologist Giacomo Rizzolatti discovered a part of the brain called mirror neurons that notice movement in other people and fire an impulse for the same movement in ourselves. They are the conduit by which the motor sections of the brain become synchronised. So if you match someone’s posture, making similar gestures and generally following their lead in the non-verbals, the brains will become more entrained through the mirror neurons and, subconsciously, people will tend to feel more comfortable in your presence.

Don’t copy, they’ll think you’re a freak

Now, obviously this is not to copy. If you overtly copy them, they will notice, start to edge away from you and think you’re a freak! There is no quicker way to lose rapport. But there is a way of doing it artfully, so that you don’t copy but, in some kind of way, you do something similar and this is what you should aim for.

That said, you will find most people are not consciously aware of body language or gestures, either theirs or yours, and consequently you have more margin to play with than you think before they think you’re weird (unless, of course, you’re weird).

And, indeed, sometimes you want to mismatch. If you want to close down a meeting, steer the conversation away from the current topic or subconsciously communicate disagreement with what is being said, mis-matching their behaviour can be the best way of doing it. It will communicate all of these without actually saying anything verbally.

Body language is the grandaddy of all languages: it persuades, it builds friends, it dances, it sings. Be like the cuttlefish. Use your body language to communicate and make sure it agrees with what you are saying.

6.5 Setting the right frame

Consider this thought experiment:

Parallel universe 1: You are in a car boot sale and you come across a vase that you like and you decide to buy it. How much would you expect to pay?

Parallel universe 2: You are in a mid-range department store and you come across the same vase. How much would you expect to pay here?

Parallel universe 3: You are in a highly exclusive antiques store in the poshest part of town and you come across the same vase. How much would you expect to pay here?

This is a thought experiment, it is not real, but I imagine that you came up with very different prices for each setting, even though it was exactly the same vase. So how we value things depends a lot on the context.

Framing impacts our reality

This is the nature of framing – depending on how we look at things, we will view them differently. Let’s take a look at a couple of examples.

• ■Is the glass half-full or half-empty? Take an empty glass and fill it up to half-way, 88 per cent will say it is half-full. Take a full glass and pour half of it out, only 31 per cent will say the same.10
• ■In a study where doctors considered the merits of surgery on cancer patients, of those that were told 10 out of 100 who went through surgery died, only half considered it a good option. Of those that were told 90 out of 100 survived surgery, 84 per cent thought it recommended.11
• ■If you are told a venture has a one-in-six chance of succeeding, you are far more likely to give it a go than if you are told it has a 16 per cent chance of success. And if you are told it is 84 per cent likely to fail, you just won’t bother.

In each of these cases, we are presenting identical data differently, framing it differently, and so it receives a different evaluation and we give the vase a different price.

Professor Vernon Smith conducted an experiment where he got one group of people to negotiate with their ‘opponents’ and another with their ‘partners’. The ‘partners’ got much better results than the ‘opponents’ because they were more collaborative. That’s framing.12

We can manage the context within which the discussion takes place and thereby manage their perception and their reaction in order to get better results.

The price is itself a frame

The frame impacts our evaluation (for example, the price) but interestingly the price can, in turn, be part of the framing.

Take the vase:

• ■If you paid a few pounds for it at a car boot sale you would take it home but quite possibly never get around to putting it out on display.
• ■If you bought it from the mid-range department store and paid the corresponding price, you would probably put it on display in the kitchen or in the bathroom.
• ■But if you bought it from the exclusive antiques store and paid top-dollar for it, you would put it in pride of place in the middle of the dining table or by the front door so that everyone who comes around will see it.

Even though it is exactly the same vase. The price itself has impacted our evaluation.

So bear this in mind when you price your services. If you are cheap, you are communicating cheapness to the market; but if you have a top-end price, you are communicating a top-end service.

Now, you then have to make sure that you deliver a top-end service but your price is part of your brand and how people perceive you is impacted by your price.

Framing can impact your health

This is a very real physical effect. Dan Ariely conducted an experiment on the efficacy of a new painkiller. Volunteers were given electric shocks of varying intensity and were then given the tablet and asked to report any change in the level of pain.

Of those volunteers who were told the tablets cost 10 cents each, about half reported a reduction in pain level. Of those who were told they cost $2.50, nearly everyone did.

The ‘painkiller’ was actually a Vitamin C tablet.13

It can be even more tangible than that. Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer found that two-thirds of hotel chambermaids did not view their work as physical exercise, despite the fact that they are on their feet working hard all day.14

So she took 84 chambermaids and split them into two groups: one group was educated into the number of calories they burnt at work and how that work qualified as exercise, the other was left as the control.

After one month, both groups had their measurements taken again and the educated group had all lowered their weight, fat percentage and blood pressure while the control had all stayed the same. Framing their work as ‘exercise’ led to a measurable improvement in health.

Framing can be a very powerful way of changing how they see the situation and therefore their likely response.

Ownership is a frame

In an experiment where people were shown a mug, one group was asked how much they would buy the mug for (implying they did not own it already) and, on average, said $2.88. The second group of people were asked how much they would sell it for (implying they did own it already) and their average price was $7.12.15

Ownership is a frame – if I own it, I will value it higher than if I don’t.

Now we can ascribe ownership by giving choice. Langer gave one group of people a lottery ticket each and allowed another group to choose their own. They were then instructed to sell the tickets: the group who had chosen theirs asked for four times the price than the other group.16

So, if we give choice, we give ownership; and if we give ownership, they will value it more.

This is a key aspect of persuasion. Let them choose. If we tell, they will likely fight against it; if we let them choose, they will fight for it.

So when your client asks you to provide a service for them, give them different options and let them choose. Perhaps your proposal outlines three ways of working:

Option A: Full scope, full price

Option B: Minimum scope, minimum price

Option C: Something in between these two.

Whichever they choose, they will be more invested in it because it was their choice. Also, the cognitive bias is such that they normally choose Option C and will go away feeling they have negotiated and got a better deal, even though you haven’t reduced your rate at all: you have just changed the price by changing the scope.

Framing the sentence

Framing is useful at a micro-level too if, for example, you have something to say that may not be received well. It will be received better if you mention your intentions first.

The simplest example is if someone is talking and you would like to say something: the interruption will be more graciously indulged if you started with ‘Sorry, can I interrupt?’ or ‘Can I ask a question?’.

By asking permission, you are giving them the opportunity to say ‘no’ even though it is exceedingly unlikely they will do so.

In each of these situations, the upfront honesty and the request for permission will probably help it land more successfully. Of course, don’t use it as an opener for some soul-crushing personal character assassination; but if it is authentically trying to progress the conversation, pre-framing a difficult statement with your intention will generally smooth its reception.

6.6 Telling the right story

People are rarely excited about listening to sales pitches, party political broadcasts or sermons of any kind and usually switch off very early on.

People love stories though. So tell a story and they will listen.

We have evolved to tell stories. We have the templates in our head, you just have to fit your content to the template.

And we have evolved to listen to them; we listen attentively wanting to know exactly what happens next. They are easy to understand and they are easy to remember because the templates provide the links between the different parts of the story.

When we listen, we live the experience of the story ourselves in a very real way – for example, reading the word ‘lavender’ activates the olfactory regions of the brain.

So they are powerful ways of changing minds.

Let’s say your child comes back from school upset because they didn’t do well in an exam. You could exhort them to work harder, but don’t you think they’ve thought of that already? The logical answer isn’t what’s needed right now.

Instead, perhaps sit down alongside them on the sofa and listen to them fully and then tell them a story of how, when you were younger, you did badly in an exam and you felt just as bad as they did now. You had all kinds of setbacks but then at one point you realised there was no use in moping and so you picked yourself up and got down to some more work for the re-sit. In the end you got an A*.

Or remind them of the game when their favourite team was losing at half-time but they came back and turned it around. Or simplest of all, watch Rocky together or The Full Monty or any of the million Hollywood films about triumph over adversity.

It’s the story that will shift their mind much more powerfully than any advice.

Stories and the Vulcan Mind-Meld

When it comes to changing minds, the gold standard is undoubtedly the Vulcan Mind-Meld, first brought to human awareness by Mr Spock in the original series of Star Trek. And we saw in Chapter 3 how the work of Princeton Professor Uri Hasson showed that neural entrainment was, in fact, the basis of this process.

Perhaps that is a claim too far, but his work does show that the more closely the brains have become synchronised, the better the conversation is considered by its participants.

It turns out that telling stories is an extremely powerful way of linking brains. Not just the auditory areas of the brains, not just the linguistic areas and not just the areas encoding the factual components of the story either, but much higher-order areas too.

And these areas remain coupled as the story unfolds in an ongoing process of dynamic synchronisation, dancing together to the same beat and the same story.

Tell them about the dream

Perhaps most of all, a good story will inspire.

Carmine Gallo, author of the best-selling Talk Like TED, says tell a story and start with your passion: if you can’t inspire yourself, how will you inspire anyone else?17

He tells the story of how Clarence Jones, speech-writer for Martin Luther King, sat listening to King as he spoke to a crowd of 250,000 people from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. ‘Five score years ago’, he began and Jones knew what was coming next because he wrote the speech.

Except for one thing. Standing very close to King was the gospel singer Mahalia Jackson and she called out, ‘Tell them about the dream, Martin!’

King heard it and Jones heard it too. Jones watched King as he leaned back to look at the crowd. Jones whispered to the person next to him, ‘These people out there don’t know it yet but they’re about to go to church’.

And Martin Luther King put aside his carefully crafted speech and, in full Baptist preacher mode, continued off-script: ‘I have a dream. . . ’.

If you can inspire with your story, you will change their mind; maybe you will change many minds.

I told them my story

In summary

What persuades you is not necessarily the same as what persuades someone else. So you need to take care about how exactly you present your message to them.

• ■The when, where and how is important

  Pick your moment carefully: choose the time and place where they are most likely to be supportive of your message. And, despite its convenience, don’t depend too much on email: phone or face-to-face will probably work much better.

• ■Work with what they give you

  Use their drivers, use their reasons, use their words. People are so helpful – they give you lots to work with; it would be impolite to use anything else. And it would certainly be less effective.

• ■Don’t be an energy vampire

  People like being around people who help them feel good and they are more likely to be persuaded by such people too. So charm, compliment, say thanks, acknowledge their effort and say ‘yes’ much more than ‘no’. Yes?

• ■Your body communicates too

  So make sure it agrees with you. Use your body language to project status, credibility and approachability. Humans have hundreds of millions of years of history where non-verbal communication was the only communication, so tap into that and use it to support what you are saying.

• ■Set the frame

  You can manage how someone sees a situation by how you frame it. This works at the conversation level (e.g., giving them a choice increases their chance of saying ‘yes’) or at the sentence level (e.g., asking permission to ask a sensitive question will help it be received more generously).

• ■Tell them a great story

  People love a good story so if you want them to listen, tell them a great story. They’ll buy because of the story more than the logic.

And the great news is that most of what you need to succeed in this part of the process, you will have picked up from doing the work in Chapters 1–5. And if not, go through Chapters 1–5 again because there was probably something else you missed that will make all the difference when it comes to changing the other person’s mind.