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The
absolute cornerstone of your ability to persuade—what it all rests upon—is the level of
credibility you have with the other person. When you speak, do they believe you? Unless
they do, there is no possibility that you can get them to do what you want them to do. People will listen to you,
but they won’t act—until they believe you. Let me stress that one more time.
People won’t act unless they believe you. So if you’re a salesperson
trying to get an order, you should always be thinking, "Do they believe me?"
Because, if you haven’t built enough credibility they won’t place the order. If you’re a manager,
and you’re trying to get your people to accept a new program, you should always be
thinking, "Do they believe me?" Because if you haven’t built enough
credibility, they’ll give lip service to your program, but they won’t
enthusiastically support it. If you’re a parent,
does your son believe you when you say, "Don’t do it son, I tried it once and
lived to regret it"? Or does he feel you’re trying to manipulate him, and are
being less than truthful? Fortunately, you can build
credibility with a few simple techniques. In my book "Secrets of Power
Persuasion" I teach fifteen tips to raise your level of credibility with other
people. Here are the first 5 tips: CREDIBILITY TIP 1: Never
assume they believe you. Power Persuaders have three
"never assumes" that are always uppermost in their thoughts. 1) Never assume poverty:
that they can’t afford what you’re selling. 2) Never assume they
understand you. 3) Never assume they believe
you. The last "never
assume" is the most important one. Never assume they believe you. Let’s face it, we get
downright offended if someone questions our credibility. We hate it when a bartender cards
us, or when a bank teller asks us for identification. So when we’re persuading
people, we don’t like to admit that the other person is sitting there thinking
"prove it to me." If you’re a salesperson,
you can present a glorious list of benefits that will descend upon the buyer when they
have the common sense to make an investment. But it doesn’t mean a thing until
you’ve built the credibility needed to make them believe it. You may be a manager
whose persuasion challenge is to talk a key employee out of quitting. You can talk until
you’re blue in the face about the wonderful future that awaits them just around the
corner, if they stay with your company. But it won’t mean a thing until you’ve
convinced them you’re sincere, and that you really do have the power to make it
happen. Don’t be offended by
people’s natural unwillingness to believe you. Remember that we live in a world where
a thousand advertising messages are screaming at us everyday. We can’t possibly
believe everything we hear. To take everything at face value in today’s world would
be a shortcut to disaster. So Power
Persuaders learn instinctively to build credibility into their presentations. Never assume
they believe you. CREDIBILITY TIP 2: Only
tell them as much as they’ll believe. I was visiting my son John,
when he was a student at Menlo College in Atherton, California. He’d just completed a
final and another student asked him how he did on it. "I think I may have aced
it," John told him. "All right!" the other boy said, and gave him a high
five. A few moments later another boy came by and asked John how he did on the test.
"It was tough," John said, "but I hope to get a B." "What’s going on
here," I asked John, "you told the first boy that you got an A, and the second
that you got a B." "The first guy
was the best student on campus, he’d believe I got an A. The second guy would never
believe it. Haven’t you learned
that you should never tell anyone more than you think they’ll believe?" Now
that’s smart! I don’t think a thousand psychologists with an unlimited research
budget could come up with a greater truth than that. Even if you’re telling the
truth, if the other person begins to doubt it, your chance of persuading them is falling
like a rock. Many years ago, I was the
merchandise manager for a large department store. We
were heavily promotional, which means that our business went up dramatically when we
advertised a sale and business died when we didn’t. So we’d run a big Sunday,
Monday, Tuesday sale, and then come back with a Thursday, Friday, Saturday sale. The problem was, how could
we run the biggest sale of the year, twice a week, year round. Soon, we’d lost all
credibility with our customers. The salespeople would try to close a sale by saying,
"Get it now, while it’s on sale." Only to have the customer respond,
"Yes, but you’ll have another sale next week." You’ll recall that Sears ran into the same
problem. And eventually made the switch to year round low pricing. There’s a law of
diminishing returns that’s directly tied to diminishing credibility. Of course you
have to be excited and enthusiastic in making your case, but the moment your claims pass
the point of credibility, your chance of persuading them drops off abruptly. The principle of "never
tell them more than you think they’ll believe," may sound folksy and cute. But
it’s supported by a great deal of sound research. For example, for decades,
psychologists have conducted studies to determine the effectiveness of fear, as a
persuasion tool. To their surprise, early studies indicted that people were just as
persuaded by mild threats as they were by powerful threats. Curious, they continued to
conduct studies that nearly always produced the same conclusion. Finally, they realized
that fear is a powerful persuader, only up to the point where people feel genuinely
threatened by it. The moment they begin to doubt that the threat is as great as it is
being made out to be, the power of fear as a persuader diminishes. So a fundamental rule for
building credibility is, "Never tell them more than you think they’ll
believe." You may genuinely have a product or service that will far exceed their
expectations. However, if you can’t make them believe it, you’re better off to
temper your claims. CREDIBILITY TIP 3: Tell
the truth, even if it hurts. Some brilliant advertising
people have taken advantage of this. Remember the old Volkswagen sedan, the round top one
that didn’t change design for twenty years or so? It was one of the ugliest cars ever
made. Nor did it have any extra features about which an advertising person could brag.
Only in later years did it even have a gas gauge: you could get so many miles per gallon
of gas, that you simply drove it until it ran out. Then you switched to a small reserve
tank, which was more than enough to get you to the next gas station. When the Doyle, Dane,
Bernbach Advertising Agency won this account they must have groaned! What could you say
about the car? It only had two features. It was cheap to run and it was reliable—but
everybody knew that. What more could they say about it? Then they hit upon a brilliant
flash of inspiration. They decided to tell
the truth! I can imagine every
advertising person in America, coming off their chairs and saying, "You’re going
to what!!??" They ran a whole series of
ads. that said, "This car is ugly, it
looks like a bug—a beetle." "This
car is slow—you’ll be lucky if you ever get a ticket." The results were phenomenal. People loved the
campaign, and sales shot up. The truth, simple pristine
truth, is an astounding force. Doyle, Dane
went on to use the same principle with Avis rental cars. In a world where everyone was
scrambling for some excuse to say they were the biggest and the best, the new Avis
campaign proudly shouted "We’re number two!" And followed it up with the
sub line, "So we try harder." It had an interesting affect
on the employees of Avis and the number one company, Hertz. A survey showed that the Avis
employees really were trying harder, but the Hertz people were taking it easy on Avis.
Even they were sympathetic to Avis’ underdog positioning! These two campaigns
revolutionized American advertising. They were startling in their impact. Everybody was
running around Madison Avenue saying, "Why don’t we try a Doyle, Dane ad."
Meaning, "Why don’t we try telling the truth?" Nobody had ever pointed out
the disadvantages of the product before. Nobody had ever paid millions to let the public
know that the competition was more successful. Telling the truth, even when
it hurts, is an astounding force. CREDIBILITY TIP 4: Point
out the disadvantages. Many years ago, Benson and
Hedges came out with a campaign for their new long cigarettes that bluntly stated,
"Oh the disadvantages!" Mary Wells, at the ad agency, showed scenes of people
smoking in elevators and getting their cigarette caught in the door; and other tongue in
cheek situations where a long cigarette would be a disadvantage. These advertising people had
touched on a very important key to persuasion. If
you point out the disadvantages, it makes everything else you say much more believable. Research has shown that there are four sound
reasons for also presenting the other side of the argument: 1) It makes the other side
believe that you have objectivity. 2) It flatters the listener
that you believe them intelligent enough to be aware of the disadvantages,
and still be persuaded in favor of your proposal. 3) It forces you to
anticipate objections, and rehearse counter arguments.
And… 4) It gives credibility to
everything else you say. Remember the retail chain
that had structured their line of appliances so the salesperson could sell down, off the
most expensive one? They’d really structured the profit margins so they made more
profit on the middle of the line, than they did on the high end. Not only were they making
more money that way, they were building a powerful plus. The salespeople gained so much
credibility doing it, that when they recommended the service contract—one of their
most profitable items—they met with very little resistance. CREDIBILITY TIP 5: Use
Precise Numbers. People believe precise
numbers more than they believe rounded numbers. The Ivory Soap people figured this out
decades ago when they started claiming "Ivory Soap is 99.44 percent pure."
Obviously we wouldn’t challenge them if they told us that Ivory Soap was 100 percent
pure; but the precise figure is subliminally more believable. We assume that somebody had
gone to a lot of work to figure out that the soap wasn’t 99.43 percent pure, or 99.45
percent pure. Why bother to say that
Taster’s Choice Decaffeinated Coffee is "99.7 percent" caffeine free. They
could probably get away with simply saying, "Caffeine free." The reason is that
we believe specific numbers far more than we believe rounded numbers. We can use the believability
of the odd figure syndrome as a persuasion technique. Let’s say you’re buying a
piece of property. They’re asking $220,000. If you offer $200,00, it doesn’t
sound as firm a figure as if you say this: "We’ve done a thorough research on
the property, and after running all the numbers, we feel that a fair price would be
$198,700." Studies have shown that when you take that approach, the seller will
respond with a counter offer that is, on average, $4722 less than if you start at
$200,000. No! I have no idea what the real number is, but it sure sounds more believable,
doesn’t it? I once bought a hundred
acres of land in the State of Washington. They were asking $185,000 for the land, and I
asked Marge Winebrenner, the real estate agent, to make an offer at $115,050. She said,
"Roger, what’s this fifty dollars? Where did that come from?" "Marge," I told
her, "I’ve just been buying land for so long now, that I have a formula that I
use. I punched in the numbers and that’s what came out." In fact I knew that I
was less likely to get a counter offer from a specific number like that. Marge did a
terrific job of presenting the offer, and the seller accepted it. So to build credibility, use
precise numbers. Strangely enough, you’re better off to claim that your new word
processing machine will increase the productivity of their secretary by 87 percent, than
to claim it will double his or her productivity. |
