The Realistic Key to Your Persuasive Power (And Fighting Over Popcorn)
There is so much talk about the newest and slickest techniques in persuasion that some of the most basic, time-tested and powerful rules are often forgotten (or never even learned). I’m not talking about the kind of stuff you learn in a course on secret language patterns. I’m talking about the core principles that fathers tell their sons, the stuff an old Chinese man probably wrote down a few thousand years ago.
Recently I was reminded of the most crucial key to winning at persuasion.
Despite repeated attempts, I’ve yet to make it into a cinema without buying popcorn. Going to see the film Inception a few weeks ago was no exception.
“One small please?” I requested.
“We only have medium and large containers left,” replied the twenty-something guy behind the counter.
“That’s OK…” I say glancing up at the menu displaying “Small £3.75” and “Medium £4.25” “…I’ll have a small popcorn inside of a medium container.”
He stood there dazed for a few seconds.
In the persuasion context, we would call this an incongruence or pattern interrupt. By saying something unexpected while he was in his routine, I had knocked his cognition slightly off-line and opened a window of opportunity to give him further suggestions. But I missed it and the window shut again.
He started shaking his head.His boss had probably told him that since there were no small containers left, to just up-sell everyone to a medium popcorn. Discussing the topic would have likely resulted in knee-jerk resistance, I decided to keep things moving along.
“Yep, that’s OK,” I said knowing he’d take this as meaning I was willing to pay full-price for a medium.
He filled the medium container to the brim and just as he was about to press the button on the till I blurted out “£3.75, right”?
Shaking his head, he came back to the counter and explained the situation again, but I played dumb.
“Oh, I thought you said you would just put a small amount of popcorn in the medium container?”
My thinking was that if continued with the transaction, that I could then interrupt him and utilising soft deception assert he misunderstood me, rendering a bit of guilt on his part and tipping the scale slightly in my favour.
He was still a step ahead of me and this didn’t work either.
This was a sloppy persuasion approach and it is not surprising that it failed.
Things came to a head. We were stuck in a“Yes” vs “No” battle.
“£3.75 for a small in the medium container.”I requested again.
“No, I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.”
“No, I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. It’s all right,” I insisted, slightly nodding like an idiot as if there was any hope left for subconscious, non-verbal influence.
Anyone overhearing our conversation would have thought I was wasting my time. My persuasion attempts had all failed and verbally it was going nowhere.
But it wasn’t about the popcorn any more. (It’s not always about the popcorn.)
We’d locked horns. It was about the game. I wanted to win.
And more importantly….I could see cracks forming in his emotional armour.
A shift in posture away from me showed his discomfort.
A quick flinch back towards the popcorn door showed he considered giving in.
He was inching closer and closer to the edge.
“Just put the small popcorn in the medium container and I will pay you £3.75” I say with a smile and a downward, commanding and friendly tone.
JACKPOT! Sort of….
He emptied some popcorn back into the bin…and then some more…and then too much!
I knew if I had asked him at that point to put some back, it could have ruined my progress, so once again I let him continue.
I can’t say I was psychologically ahead of him at that point, but at least we were in stride.
“Thank you,” I said handing over my debit card.
When the transaction was finished, following on with our pattern of compliance, I asked “Thank you very much and there is usually more than that in a small right? So could I have a bit more please?”
Half-defeated, half-happily, he took my medium container and shovelled a bunch more popcorn into it.
By the skin of my teeth…. or was that a popcorn kernel?
Persuasion is messy.
Your influence skills won’t always work. Situations where you need to be persuasive sneak up on you quickly. There is no way for you to be on top of your game all of the time.
When things do come to a head and your outcome has become the spotlight of the conversation, straight-up, in-your-face, hard-nosed insisting may be your only realistic option.
Insisting is best used when you have a sense the other person is considering giving in.
However, resorting to ugly “insisting” is not what this post is about. Being insistent is not where the true power lies.
The realistic key to your persuasive power is in being persistent.
Whether you’re overtly insisting or covertly influencing, persistence must be the undercurrent of your persuasion. Persistence leads to success.
I’ve seen it in business countless times. Especially in buying and selling.
A negotiation is rarely battle of wits, but a battle of will.
By being persistent, you are applying psychological pressure in order to break down the other person and you will succeed as soon as this pressure is stronger than the resistance they have to accepting your outcome.
When have you given in too early? As soon as someone says no, or maybe if it just seems like they might say no, do you give up?
By giving up, you not only fail to persuade, but you persuade yourself to fail.
Each time you give up, you teach yourself to respond that way again in the future. You teach yourself to NOT be persistent!
So you need to flip this around. And you will do it through intention.
Set your intention to be a more persistent persuader.
This is not to be confused with being a more insistent persuader. Insisting is to be avoided except as a very last resort!
If you want to be more persuasive, then BE MORE PERSISTENT.
If you are a persistent persuader – even if all of your persuasion skills fly out the window – you are still very likely to get what you want.
DISCUSSION
What do you think about persistence in persuasion?
Where in your life would being more persistent get you more of what you want?
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Interesting post. Although I couldn’t help but also think that toward that end of that popcprn story it became a more of an ego thing rather then a persistance thing? I think its a man thing to not want to back down lol. I may be wrong…
As for persistance in persuasion – i think it depends on the circumstance (even though persistance also means you have to get rid of your ego to some extent). I feel like sometimes persistance can get a bit annoying – and it’ll have the opposite effect…
Persistence was the strategy. Ego/masculinity/competitiveness was the motivation.
True, persistence can certainly get annoying when not balanced with some sort of contrast. Good point!
I struggle with the concern over appearing annoying myself and is the main reason why I am often not persistent enough. Of course I could not care about the other person, but that’s not really persuasion; more manipulation. The key has to be to feel good at having gotten what you want and allowing the other person to feel good for having been persuaded.
I agree Ben. I think it becomes difficult to persuade people if you are not offering them something back… and it doesnt have to be something tangible.
Doesn’t manipulation come hand in hand with persuasion? I kind of believe all human interaction is some type of manipulation involved in it.
I too suffer from not being persistant enough. I do think persistance works though, its just tackling it from the right angle depending on the circumstance and allowing that person to believe there is a win-win scenario rather then being an “annoying persuader”.
jp, you have a great writing style… authentic, naturally flowing, and easily digestible.
i think you could have expanded on the simple part of “That’s OK…” I say glancing up at the menu displaying “Small £3.75” and “Medium £4.25” “…I’ll have a small popcorn inside of a medium container.” – now that’s thinking outside of the box… quite literally… thinking outside the box… lol (that’s me laughing at my own jokes again hehe)!
seriously though, that small thought is actually pretty powerful – you could probably make a metaphor out of it as that’s what most people do in life… they stay in the confines of their own, somewhat limited thinking… and there are many solutions present… when thinking outside the box!
great post though ;o)
John, Great idea, as always.
Just a thought or two, tags into a couple of things that have been raised above…
Why not appeal to /his/ ego? He’s the boss of the confectionary stand afterall? Now I’m not an expert in the carrot and the stick, so I couldn;t say if it would be better to pamper his ego or challenge it, but either way, if you could make him want to give you what you’ve asked for, you’re there. Or ambiguously “I’m sure you can help me out here, unless anyone else can do it?”
Or use collusion, “Hey I’m not going to tell anyone how you bent the rules for me, I just appreciate your help, most people don’t have that kindness or courage”
Great idea though John! As an advert for somthing once said “challenge everything”. Consider what you have to loose: paying full price for somthing…. Consider what you have to gain, practice in persuasion, complicated human interaction practice, negotiating techniques, body language study, language application. And you might just get some pop corn!
Thanks Paul! Great point in the other persuasion approaches. Appealing to ego works wonders. It’s a classic “play low-status to be high-status” move. There area a bunch of things I could have done. I think this particular scenario snuck up on me so unexpectedly that I was failing before I realised I was in it.