Episode 18
Harnessing the Principles of Influence to Boost Sales
Dennis Collins, sales trainer and founder of Wizard of Ads, discusses using Dr. Robert Cialdini's principles of influence to ethically improve sales skills. He covers how to apply each principle - reciprocity, scarcity, authority, consistency, liking, social proof, and unity - during different stages of the sales process. Dennis provides examples of using the principles and stresses using them ethically. He also introduces Dr. Gregory Neidert's Core Motives Model for knowing when to apply each principle.
Transcript
Ecamm Live Recording on 2023-10-26 at 13.34.32: Hi, it's Dennis again.
Speaker:Time to Connect & Convert.
Speaker:About 20 years ago.
Speaker:I had the great.
Speaker:Fortune and honor going out to Phoenix Tempe, Arizona to
Speaker:the Arizona State University.
Speaker:And I got to meet and study with Robert Cialdini, Dr.
Speaker:Robert Cialdini.
Speaker:Yes, Dr.
Speaker:Robert Cialdini.
Speaker:The godfather of influence.
Speaker:I think in the mid 80s, I first became aware of him.
Speaker:He wrote the definitive book on the principles of influence.
Speaker:It's been used by anybody who's been in sales or marketing or any, related field.
Speaker:We've all used it.
Speaker:I used it and I had a chance to meet him.
Speaker:He had a, workshop called influence at work.
Speaker:There was only about.
Speaker:Eight or 10 of us in that workshop, but he taught most of it.
Speaker:And wow, what an experience.
Speaker:So yeah, I'm a fan boy of Robert Chaldee have been for a long time.
Speaker:And he basically taught me how to get to yes, very fast and ethical way.
Speaker:And he's taught.
Speaker:Millions of people how to get to yes in an ethical way.
Speaker:All of a sudden, recently, they decided to form the Chaldean Institute, and I was
Speaker:fortunate enough to be one of the founding members of the Chaldean Institute.
Speaker:What does that mean?
Speaker:That means that I have access to all of Chaldean's research, all of his works
Speaker:everything that I can teach and use.
Speaker:In any way that I see fit, of course, in an ethical way and I love that.
Speaker:I love the fact that I'm now a qualified Chaldean coach, an ethical
Speaker:practitioner of influence, a founding member of Chaldean Institute.
Speaker:So I guess that puts a little pressure on me now because I'm
Speaker:supposed to know the answers, right?
Speaker:And I get a lot of questions, particularly.
Speaker:How does this relate to sales?
Speaker:When I started using it back when I first was introduced to this, I
Speaker:was running radio stations in Miami and I said, how can this stuff work
Speaker:in our marketing, our advertising?
Speaker:How can it work in the communications that we put out there?
Speaker:And also, how can it work in our sales?
Speaker:Obviously we had 20, 25 salespeople at the time, how can we use the principles
Speaker:of influence to improve sales?
Speaker:Guess what I found out.
Speaker:Yes, it worked all the way around.
Speaker:So again, I am a devotee.
Speaker:I'm a fan.
Speaker:I'm a believer.
Speaker:I definitely had a drink of the Kool Aid.
Speaker:And today I want to talk a little bit about how this can help you in sales.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:First of all, as already, I'm sure our brain has two systems.
Speaker:System one and system two.
Speaker:System one is that automatic brain.
Speaker:It's on autopilot.
Speaker:It's 90 plus percent of the thinking that we do.
Speaker:The system two brains are our factual brain.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:When we need to make a particularly tough decision, not a decision we're
Speaker:used to making every day, we engage the factual brain and the slower
Speaker:thinking brain, the system one brain.
Speaker:Fast.
Speaker:It works on heuristics.
Speaker:It works on, it, works on automatic responses to things.
Speaker:And that's how we can influence the sales situation because most buyers, I don't
Speaker:care what level of customer you're talking to, they buy with system one brain.
Speaker:We all do 90 percent of what we do is system one and the principles
Speaker:speak directly to system one.
Speaker:Okay, not that there's anything wrong with system two.
Speaker:That's just not what we normally do.
Speaker:So why not go with the part of the brain that's exercised most system one.
Speaker:So his works are iconic but I'm often asked now that I have
Speaker:the name in my credentials.
Speaker:How do we use these things?
Speaker:Yeah, we know there are, there were six and now there are seven.
Speaker:How do we use these?
Speaker:Oh, I did also meet one of them in Phoenix, a gentleman by the name of Dr.
Speaker:Gregory Neidert.
Speaker:He was a very close, and still is, a very close colleague of Chalbeny's.
Speaker:And Neidert created what he calls the Core Motives Model.
Speaker:Now, what the heck is that?
Speaker:He wanted to define the seven principles and where they can
Speaker:be used the most effectively.
Speaker:Not all seven principles should be used in every situation.
Speaker:If you use the wrong principle of influence in a certain situation that's
Speaker:not appropriate, it's not going to work.
Speaker:And then you're going to throw it all out and say this crap doesn't work.
Speaker:That's why Neider created this is to say there are times when each of the
Speaker:seven principles Can't play a role.
Speaker:Okay, so he divided it into three.
Speaker:Different tasks, if you will, the number one task, how do we cultivate or begin
Speaker:a relationship and fails, how do we.
Speaker:Bring on a new client.
Speaker:How do we meet people?
Speaker:How do we cultivate that, that new fresh relationship in sales?
Speaker:Number two, how do you reduce uncertainty about you or your company or your product?
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So there are principles that apply to that.
Speaker:And third, how do you motivate action?
Speaker:How do you get somebody to, how do you get somebody to make a decision?
Speaker:How do you get to close?
Speaker:So depending on which you're in new relationship, remove
Speaker:uncertainty or get action that.
Speaker:Defines the principle of influence you should use.
Speaker:THIS IS THE NEXT EPISODE.
Speaker:Ecamm Live Recording on 2023-10-26 at 13.34.32: So let's break that down a little bit.
Speaker:There are three principles that are most helpful.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:When you're trying to build a new relationship, let's take First,
Speaker:unity involves the blurring of the boundaries between ourselves and others.
Speaker:It's creating a sense of we ness, a sense of belonging, a shared background.
Speaker:Think of your college.
Speaker:Think of perhaps a church that you're affiliated with.
Speaker:Think of a club or a group that you belong to.
Speaker:Think of that we ness.
Speaker:I'm, I, for one, I'm a Miami Dolphins fan through and through.
Speaker:I've lived through some tough years.
Speaker:This year, Look better.
Speaker:So I have a weenus with people who wear the aqua and orange when
Speaker:I see that I say that's my tribe.
Speaker:Those are my people.
Speaker:There's some confusing confusion.
Speaker:I'm sorry about that.
Speaker:The principle of unity.
Speaker:It's often confused liking the principle of liking.
Speaker:We'll talk about that as well.
Speaker:But liking is saying yes to people who are similar to us, similar people.
Speaker:We like to cooperate and say yes to people like us.
Speaker:Unity is about saying yes to people who belong to the same group as us.
Speaker:Maybe they live in our neighborhood.
Speaker:Maybe we play tennis with them.
Speaker:That's a very powerful.
Speaker:An easy yes.
Speaker:When we are appealing to a group that we belong to in common.
Speaker:There's also some confusion with unity and social proof.
Speaker:Social proof will talk about well as well.
Speaker:That says that we will say yes to a request based on the actions of others.
Speaker:We look to others to get a clue of how to act.
Speaker:And Unity says yes again because we belong to the same group or community.
Speaker:So they're similar but yet different.
Speaker:Have you ever heard of a guy, named Ponzi?
Speaker:You probably have.
Speaker:It's usually in reference to a Ponzi scheme.
Speaker:Have you heard of a Ponzi scheme?
Speaker:This guy was really named Ponzi.
Speaker:There was a real Ponzi and he's an, he was an Italian immigrant to the
Speaker:United States, and he will forever be known by the bad stuff that he did.
Speaker:He created a Ponzi scheme, which is a pyramid game where he promised high
Speaker:returns on investment, except the problem, he was paying those high
Speaker:returns from the next guy's money and the next guy's money, the pyramid scheme.
Speaker:And of course he got caught and he got, went in jail.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:But how did he recruit these people?
Speaker:Because they were from the same ethnic group.
Speaker:He recruited other Italian immigrants.
Speaker:They're going to say, Oh, he's one of us.
Speaker:I can trust him.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Trusted him right to the poor house.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Able to carry it out by appealing to their heredity.
Speaker:We're in the same group.
Speaker:We're in this all together.
Speaker:We're all immigrants, the same background.
Speaker:Oh, There was a recent case here in the U.
Speaker:S., we won't mention the name, but you probably know it was
Speaker:a very similar situation.
Speaker:Okay, what's the second?
Speaker:And again, let me be clear, that is an unethical use of the Principle of Unity.
Speaker:We all care about ethical, but we use that to describe it, showing you How it
Speaker:works, but that is not the proper use of unity or of any of the principles.
Speaker:Let's jump to reciprocity.
Speaker:Everybody's heard of that.
Speaker:Everybody thinks, okay, I know what that is.
Speaker:I give you something.
Speaker:Therefore, give me something.
Speaker:Not exactly.
Speaker:Yeah, close, but not exactly.
Speaker:When considering that gift, there are two things that you think about.
Speaker:Is the gift significant and is it unexpected?
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Reciprocity works best when it's a significant gift that's unexpected.
Speaker:Those are the two amplifiers of reciprocity.
Speaker:So what is the effectiveness of reciprocity?
Speaker:Always give first.
Speaker:Don't wait for somebody else to give.
Speaker:You give first.
Speaker:That's how we exercise reciprocity.
Speaker:Also, another mistake that's often made is everybody thinks
Speaker:it has to be something you pay.
Speaker:It's something.
Speaker:Most reciprocity is intangible.
Speaker:It's intangible.
Speaker:You can give your attention.
Speaker:You can listen to somebody.
Speaker:You can give information.
Speaker:You can share information.
Speaker:You can give someone your trust.
Speaker:You can give someone advice.
Speaker:You can do favors.
Speaker:Those are somewhat intangible.
Speaker:And yet, we don't claim those.
Speaker:So here's a pro tip.
Speaker:In sales conversations, time is There are many intangible
Speaker:gifts that we give out of habit.
Speaker:Of course, we fail to claim them.
Speaker:It's not perceived as a gift unless we claim it.
Speaker:We bring it to awareness.
Speaker:So what, are some of them?
Speaker:Hey thank you, sir.
Speaker:I've spent my time and I've listened to you carefully.
Speaker:I've gotten a bunch of good information and good needs from you.
Speaker:I've learned a lot from you and now it's time for me to go back and put
Speaker:together some custom options for you.
Speaker:And give you my best advice right in that sentence there's about four
Speaker:intangible gifts to activate reciprocity.
Speaker:Okay, let's jump to the principle of liking the third principle that works on
Speaker:building relationships we tend to like people who are similar to us gee whiz.
Speaker:Yeah, think about that.
Speaker:So true.
Speaker:By the way, even small similarities count.
Speaker:They did, a study of people with the same name or even a derivative of
Speaker:your name and they did a direct mail campaign and they got more response.
Speaker:If the person sending the direct mail was John Smith and they were sending
Speaker:it to someone by the name of Johnson or anything derivative of John, guess what?
Speaker:Yeah, the donations went up.
Speaker:That's a tiny little insignificant similarity, but it moves up the
Speaker:response to the direct mail piece.
Speaker:So what's the idea here?
Speaker:Become more interested than interesting.
Speaker:That sounds weird, doesn't it?
Speaker:Yeah, become more interested in the other person before you become interesting.
Speaker:Prioritize listening before talking.
Speaker:Listen before talking.
Speaker:That's a hard one for most of us, isn't it?
Speaker:And do your homework to find out.
Speaker:Some similarities.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Homework is back when I started selling the dark ages, it was hard.
Speaker:Now you make two or three keystrokes and you can have a whole list
Speaker:of things that could be similar interests and organizations
Speaker:that you share with that person.
Speaker:Here's another intriguing study by K.
Speaker:P.
Speaker:M.
Speaker:That's a big, financial services company.
Speaker:They wanted to know how the relationships between their account managers, their
Speaker:sales, basically sales guys, and their clients using a very complex
Speaker:algorithm that they've developed, they categories, categorize the
Speaker:relationships as either weak, average, or strong, weak, average, or strong.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:They're trying to find out if the quality of the relationship had
Speaker:anything to do, any correlation with the acceptance of proposal.
Speaker:And the club of financial services deals.
Speaker:Remarkable.
Speaker:The results were remarkable.
Speaker:Weak relationships, maybe 30 percent acceptance.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Average relationship jumped by 15 percentage points up to 45%.
Speaker:However, the strong relationship, are you ready?
Speaker:70 percent more than double that of a weak relationship.
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:So The message, build rapport, make a connection before diving into business.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Maybe 10 or 15 minutes.
Speaker:Again, be interested before you're in.
Speaker:Are you willing to invest 10, 15 minutes to possibly double their closure rate?
Speaker:How about that?
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Next one.
Speaker:How to reduce uncertainty.
Speaker:We've already talked about trying to get the relationship.
Speaker:Now we've got the relationship, but there's some uncertainty.
Speaker:The principle of authority.
Speaker:We rely on surface level cues such as title, uniform, dress, type of dress,
Speaker:type of car, type of house, articles published initials behind your name.
Speaker:We rely on that surface level cue to decide who is an authority.
Speaker:I did a personal experiment years ago.
Speaker:I was playing with this and I was speaking to a group of about 25 people.
Speaker:It was a planned speech and I decided to try an experiment.
Speaker:For this speech, it had nothing to do with the principles of influence,
Speaker:but I wanted to try something.
Speaker:I donned the attire.
Speaker:Of what would appear to be a maintenance man.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:I had a hard hat on.
Speaker:I had a working vest.
Speaker:I had a tool belt.
Speaker:I had a credentials around my neck.
Speaker:I had my tool.
Speaker:I dressed up to appear to be a maintenance man for the hotel.
Speaker:This man was in a hotel and the people who were attending this
Speaker:were People staying at that hotel.
Speaker:So they didn't know me.
Speaker:So I came in and said, Hey here I am.
Speaker:Let's say that I came up to your room number and I knocked on the door.
Speaker:And I said, Hey, I'm here.
Speaker:There's a problem with your electrical system in this room and I've been sent
Speaker:up here to fix it so that it doesn't cause a fire or cause a big problem.
Speaker:And I said, how many of you based on what what I look like and, what I said
Speaker:would have let me from almost a hundred percent, almost a hundred percent.
Speaker:And I was a total fraud.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Total phony.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:That's scary, isn't it?
Speaker:But not, unusual.
Speaker:Here's another one.
Speaker:This one's crazy.
Speaker:There were some nurses who received a phone call.
Speaker:They were working in the hospital.
Speaker:They got a phone call and it said, give this specific
Speaker:medication to a certain patient.
Speaker:It was against policy of course, to do that over the phone, to
Speaker:take instructions over the phone.
Speaker:It was not approved for use.
Speaker:And if they had administered the dose that was recommended by the
Speaker:caller, Double the daily maximum dose.
Speaker:The phone call was from someone they had never met, but they identified as Dr.
Speaker:So and and guess what?
Speaker:95 percent of the nurses prepared to administer it, even though it
Speaker:violated third major policies, however, they were stopped.
Speaker:They didn't do it.
Speaker:This was an experiment.
Speaker:But they were prepared to do it.
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:How could this happen?
Speaker:It's blind obedience to the title.
Speaker:The voice on the phone said they were a doctor.
Speaker:They sounded right.
Speaker:It, they sounded like a doctor.
Speaker:They gave their name and they told, they mentioned the name of the patient.
Speaker:So they had a lot of information that only the doctor could have.
Speaker:But they're used to following instructions and directions from a doctor.
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:System one.
Speaker:Takes control.
Speaker:So in our sales efforts, who holds authority in the eyes of your audience?
Speaker:If 10, 000 people said that Dennis Collins is the greatest
Speaker:sales trainer in the world.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:However, if sales guru, author, speaker, Jeff Blum says, Dennis
Speaker:Collins is the greatest sales trainer, who would you believe?
Speaker:The 10, 000 people or the sales guru?
Speaker:That's easy.
Speaker:Which one is more persuasive?
Speaker:Social proof.
Speaker:Next one.
Speaker:When we are trying to reduce uncertainty, you've got a customer
Speaker:who just, they're on the fence.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:Guess what?
Speaker:You're in luck.
Speaker:People decide what to do based on what other people do.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:I'll give you an example.
Speaker:Have you ever gone online to book something on orbits or booking.
Speaker:com or whatever some of these are, and notice they've started doing
Speaker:this years ago, but I really notice it more now, X number of people are
Speaker:looking at this same hotel or at the same air flight right now, and.
Speaker:Only two left at this price or today we have booked 1000 people
Speaker:in this hotel in the past day.
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:Social proof.
Speaker:Dessert sales at McDonald's.
Speaker:Cialdini's people did a study.
Speaker:McDonald's wasn't selling enough desserts in one particular location.
Speaker:So they asked Cialdini, Hey, what can we do?
Speaker:What principle can we use?
Speaker:Person on the intercom when you pull up to the drive thru, making, what
Speaker:do they order their hamburger, their French fries, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Hey, would you like a dessert today?
Speaker:And those people said, no, not today.
Speaker:They added a line.
Speaker:Hey, could we interest you in the dessert today?
Speaker:Our most popular dessert is the XXX.
Speaker:I forget what it was.
Speaker:Guess what?
Speaker:Just adding those few words, social proof, people are buying this.
Speaker:It's our most, and it wasn't a lie.
Speaker:It's our most popular choice.
Speaker:Doubled and tripled sales of dessert.
Speaker:Making a few changes in words.
Speaker:What can you change in your approach in sales pitch?
Speaker:What can you change?
Speaker:So social proof and authority.
Speaker:That's how we try to reduce uncertainty.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:And now we're down to.
Speaker:Motivating action.
Speaker:How do we motivate action?
Speaker:We're down to consistency.
Speaker:Okay, we human beings are interesting species.
Speaker:We want to avoid what's called cognitive dissonance.
Speaker:That's the experience that we have when we make a statement and Are not true to that
Speaker:statement when we stake out a position.
Speaker:It's important to note that we must be mentally consistent with Things we have
Speaker:publicly said that's why in sales we get what's called micro commitments.
Speaker:So maybe we have Seven or eight micro commitments during sale.
Speaker:Why do we do that so that the customer is consistent with their?
Speaker:Commitment to make a purchase.
Speaker:We ask the micro commitments in an effort to get a series of commitments
Speaker:that they might be true to.
Speaker:So we act in a manner consistent with what we have previously committed to.
Speaker:The more public the commitment, the better this principle works.
Speaker:I'll give you an example.
Speaker:There was a restaurant, a popular restaurant in Chicago.
Speaker:I don't remember the name.
Speaker:I think the guy's name was Gordon, last name Gordon, but I don't remember
Speaker:the exact name of it, but he was having a problem with no shows.
Speaker:He was a very high end restaurant.
Speaker:And of course, if he had a limited number of seats, no show was.
Speaker:A big problem for him.
Speaker:And people weren't letting him know.
Speaker:So his people were on the phone with the reservation came in.
Speaker:Hey, I'd like to make a reservation or next Saturday for people at 8 p.
Speaker:m.
Speaker:And the receptionist would say certainly we have availability.
Speaker:Your reservation is confirmed at Saturday, 8 p.
Speaker:m.
Speaker:Please call if you if you have to cancel call, if you
Speaker:have to cancel and discussion.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:He was getting 30 percent no shows.
Speaker:He said, I got to fix this.
Speaker:So he went to Chaldini, said, how can we do this?
Speaker:So Chaldini looked at this and he said, all you have to do is add two words.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:What are those two words?
Speaker:Will you put, will you please call if you need to change or cancel your reservation?
Speaker:Will you please call?
Speaker:And the answer was everyone said, yes.
Speaker:Guess what?
Speaker:You got it.
Speaker:They made a commitment to call small.
Speaker:It doesn't have to be signing your life away.
Speaker:It can be that small of a commitment.
Speaker:They made a commitment to call.
Speaker:They reduced no shows from 30 percent to just 10%.
Speaker:The transformation occurred because he gained an active
Speaker:commitment from his customers.
Speaker:Last but not least, our principle of scarcity.
Speaker:Now, this is the one, in my opinion, that's usually misused.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Limited time.
Speaker:Only last one in stock.
Speaker:Act today.
Speaker:The price goes away.
Speaker:Now I'm not saying those aren't true, but they sound very unethical
Speaker:and manipulative and most of us who are hit with that rejected.
Speaker:So the principle of scarcity, though, is very powerful when it's used ethically.
Speaker:The principle that I like the most is scarce information.
Speaker:Okay?
Speaker:It doesn't just have to be scarce.
Speaker:Commodities.
Speaker:Let's say you have information that is very hard to come by.
Speaker:A database that you set up you have some kind of secret network that gets you
Speaker:information that most people don't have.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Let's say you have that.
Speaker:How can you leverage that with customers?
Speaker:If you have a proprietary database that can't be reached anywhere else, bingo.
Speaker:But you can't say that you've got to use that.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:We happen to have information that's proprietary and scarce.
Speaker:It's not available to everybody, but we make it available to our customers.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:As a VIP customer, you would have access to that.
Speaker:No one else has that.
Speaker:Ooh.
Speaker:So I'd love the whole scarce information concept, not just some obviously
Speaker:something that is in short supply, Okay.
Speaker:It's scarce.
Speaker:That's obvious.
Speaker:But what's not so obvious is sometimes we have information or we know
Speaker:something or we have a methodology.
Speaker:We have a way of doing business that we and only we do.
Speaker:That's scarcity, too.
Speaker:So that's the one that's usually forgotten.
Speaker:So scarcity.
Speaker:Consistency.
Speaker:Those two principles are you motivate that.
Speaker:That's a very quick run through.
Speaker:of using my core motives model to say, okay, when do we use this?
Speaker:I know some of you may want more on this and I will give more.
Speaker:I will try to take one of these episodes and we'll focus on just
Speaker:one of the principles of influence.
Speaker:How would that be?
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Hope this was helpful.
Speaker:It's Dennis Connect & Convert until next time.
