How to Persuade People Who Don't Want to be Persuaded

Get What You Want -- Every Time!

Joel Bauer, Mark Levy

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781118040102
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Negotiation

The art of persuasion as taught by one of the world's most sought-after speakers and pitchmen
In this daring book, Joel Bauer teaches you how to persuade by making your messages entertaining. Learn the secrets behind "The Fright Challenge, " "The Transformation Mechanism, " and other persuasion tactics used by pitchmen, carneys, and conjurors to convince people to their way of thinking. Along with coauthor Mark Levy, Bauer has taken these ethical, entertainment-based techniques, and has made them practical for everyday use-capable of influencing one person or a thousand, in business and in life.
Joel Bauer (Los Angeles, CA) is an expert in performance-based live marketing who The Wall Street Journal online referred to as "undoubtedly the chairman of the board" of corporate tradeshow rain-making. Mark Levy (Chester, NJ) has written for the New York Times, has authored or coauthored three books, and is the founder of Levy Innovation, a consulting firm that makes individuals and companies memorable.

1

DRAW IN THE LISTENER

What you’re about to read is a bit frightening. Sometimes seminar attendees walk out on me as I deliver this material because they’re disturbed by what they hear. These are smart people walking out. I don’t blame them for leaving. This is the stuff of nightmares.

As you continue reading, you’re going to learn to persuade in a way you never imagined possible. Not in a Dale Carnegie way. Not by smiling and tossing in people’s 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 “a feat of mass obedience that must be seen to be believed.”)

My persuasion model is unusual, but deadly effective. I didn’t read about it in a magazine or develop it with a team of university scholars. Instead, it comes from my 37 years’ experience in front of audiences and from my study of those true masters of influence, show folk; mostly show folk in the “dark arts.”

Yes, all I know about persuasion I’ve learned from carnies, fakirs, hypnotists, magicians, mentalists, spiritualists, and, particularly, pitchmen. Naturally, I’m taking liberties here with who I call show folk, but let’s not split hairs. Their methods are the important thing, not the taxonomy.

These mentors of mine, whom you’ll learn about throughout the book, share several traits: If they don’t 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, let’s call their ways “theatrical,” and my model the “Theatrical Persuasion Model.” (Things always seem more real when you name them; there’s your first lesson.)

So if you’re ready for an underground education in influence, read on. If you’re anxious to learn what magicians dub “the real work,” this is the only place to find it. It’s all very doable, and you’ll be able to use the model no matter what your situation—that is, if you don’t 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 barker’s ballyhoo used to snare people strolling the midway: “Ladies 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!” The more the carny protests, the larger the crowd grows.

If I was successful with my pitch, you didn’t 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 audience’s size and intellectual makeup. Everyone—and I mean everyone—responds 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 writer’s voice and see how he or she goes about developing an argument. In person, though, it’s a different story; if you take too long setting the challenge, you cross the line from provocateur to menace.

When the people I’m trying to influence are standing before me and want to know how I earn a living, my Fright Challenge is to the point: “Are you sure you want to know? It’s a little frightening. Most people can’t handle it.” When they say yes, and they always do, I conspiratorially add: “Move in closer. I don’t want everyone hearing this.” Suddenly, I have their attention in a way that makes them hungry for my words. They’re mine for the moment.

Reading How to Persuade People Who Don’t Want to Be Persuaded will be an experience for you. Much of what you’re about to learn is available nowhere else.

Ladies and gentlemen, can you bear it? It’s 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 don’t 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 you’re a Casanova- or vamp-in-training, you’ve come to the right place.

What Is the Book’s 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.

What’s the most famous high concept ever pitched? According to “Perfect Pitch,” a TV documentary, it was delivered by Aaron Spelling to sell his proposed series Nightingales. Spelling pitched the series as “nurses in wet t-shirts.” The studio bought it immediately.

So What Is This Book’s High Concept?

It shows you how to persuade by using the techniques of professional pitchmen. That concept may not be as sexy as Spelling’s, but it’s 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, it’s 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 sponsor’s 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. It’s a $35 billion a year industry. That’s $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 don’t think you’d find an obvious winner.

The thing that really separates these products is their companies’ positioning strategies—and the entertainment principles each uses in its marketing message. I’ve 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, they’re 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. It’s 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: They’ve 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 beer’s name, and a football game played between rival bottles of beer.

With exaggerated vehicles like those, it’s 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 isn’t necessarily lighthearted. A drama is entertaining. So is a horror film. In the work we’ll be doing together, you’ll be using the full range of human emotion to make your point forcefully.

What Are Some of the Techniques?

You’ve 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, you’re going to have to figure out ways of letting them sample your suggestion, idea, service, or product. Otherwise, they’ll doubt you, and that doubt may keep them from acting on your wishes.

I opened with the Fright Challenge because it’s an attention-grabber and it acted as a sample of what you’re going to learn. If you thought the challenge flimflam, then you instantly knew this book isn’t for you. Conversely, if you thought the challenge intriguing, then you’re 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. It’s an ethical way to win them over to your side. Later, you’ll learn the best ways to offer samples in situations professional and personal.

Besides the Fright Challenge and sampling, you’ll 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 you’re 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 you’re learning to entertain, you’ll also be learning good, solid business and influence practices.

I don’t 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 audience’s attention, lowers their defenses, and serves as a metaphor for your message. It’s a trick that makes a point. A major point. One that might spell the difference between someone’s 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 company’s 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 company’s 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 yesterday’s newspaper.

She thanked me for coming and said she’d get back to me. But I wasn’t leaving. The meeting had cost me time and money, and her get-back-to-me speech wasn’t 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 company’s 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 didn’t fit that early-adopter model at all—at least not in her mind. What I’m all about is drawing the largest trade-show crowds possible, and that’s not what she thought she needed. “The masses aren’t going to buy our product,” she said, “so I see no reason to attract and entertain them.” She confessed that the only...