Doug Houser: From Rea & Associates' studio, this is unsuitable, a management financial services podcast for entrepreneurs, tenured business leaders, and others who are ready to look beyond the suit and tie culture for meaningful, measurable results. I'm Doug Houser.
Businesses need people to survive and thrive. Without people, the men and women who help you create your products, provide your services, and patronize your establishment, your entire enterprise falls apart. While people are at the center of what we do, they can also be our biggest challenge.
Today's guest specializes in applying the science of influence and persuasion in everyday situations. Brian Ahearn, an international keynote speaker, author, coach, and consultant is one of only 20 people in the world who currently holds the Cialdini Method Certified Trainer designation. Hopefully I pronounced that correctly.
Brian Ahearn: You got it right.
Doug: In August, he published the book Influence People: Powerful Everyday Opportunities to Persuade that are Lasting and Ethical, which quickly rose to the top of Amazon's bestseller list in multiple categories.
On this episode of unsuitable, we're going to have a conversation about the difference between persuasion and manipulation, how to build strong lasting relationships, and the power of good questions. Welcome to Unsuitable, Brian.
Brian: Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Doug: I'm excited too, because I particularly like the power of good questions. As someone who sits here and tries to ask, at least attempt to ask, some interesting questions from time to time. Talk to me a little bit about that, the power of good questions.
Brian: Well, good questions when it comes to persuasion help you in a lot of ways. If you're asking good questions, you can connect on a principle we call liking. And liking tells us that people are more inclined to say yes to you if they like you. One way that you get someone to like you is by finding out what you have in common and then raising that to the surface and making that a point that you speak about. So that's one aspect of a good question.
The other thing a good question allows you to do is to understand the other person. So if you engage the principle we call reciprocity, which is when you give to somebody, they feel a natural obligation to want to give or do something in return. The more you can personalize your giving, the more power that the principal has. So understanding that other people through asking questions, knowing what they like, what they don't. An example would be, if I gave you a Starbucks gift card, you might appreciate that. But if you didn't drink coffee, you appreciate the sentiment. But if you knew that I heard you and specifically gave you that Starbucks card because you said you love Starbucks, that means a lot more.
Doug: For sure.
Brian: I learn that through questions.
The third thing that's really important about the power of questions is a principle known as consistency, which tells us we naturally feel better about ourselves and we look better to other people when we live up to our word. The best way to engage this principle is by asking good questions. You don't tell people what to do, you ask. When they affirm back to you, they're far more likely to do it.
Doug: Interesting.
Brian: Good questions just allow you to engage so many of these principles that make it easier to influence people.
Doug: Interesting. Yeah, I think back through my career, and I don't know that I knew that specifically. But intuitively I guess over time, you learn that the more you sit in front of a client or prospective client, try to ask them to elicit the responses that they want to provide you, then everybody feels more comfortable.
Brian: Absolutely. Dale Carnegie wrote about this when he said, "Show a genuine interest in the other person." One great way to do that is by asking them about themselves, and then when you hear that they're passionate about things, you just continue down that line.
Doug: Right, and typically for us is in dealing with closely held businesses or family business, you're asking the business owner about their passion, which is often their business. Right?
Brian: Absolutely.
Doug: That's great stuff.
Doug: Now persuasion versus manipulation. Can you talk to me a little bit about the difference there and dive into that a little bit?
Brian: Sure. People will get those confused quite often. Unfortunately, I think, in today's society, words are very loosely used and tossed around. When we talk about persuasion, the definition that I think is best is Aristotle's. Aristotle said, "Persuasion was the art of getting somebody to do something that they wouldn't ordinarily do if you didn't ask." If you think about this, there are so many things that we need people to do that they're not going to do until we make that ask.
Your kids probably aren't going to just get up and do their homework or their chores. You have to interact with them. People aren't going to necessarily buy your product unless you interact with them. Your employees probably are going to just do what they think is important, not necessarily what the organization says is important, until you ask. So it's all about the ask that we make.
Now when it comes to the difference between doing it ethically and doing that manipulatively when we talk about manipulation, manipulation ... Well, let me say this, to do it ethically, I'll give you three things. The first is, we have to be truthful. We cannot lie, and we don't hide the truth. Sometimes people forget about that. Like, "Oh, I hope he doesn't ask me about this. Oh, he didn't. Whew." But if you knew that would make a difference in someone's willingness to say yes, it's incumbent upon you, if you want to be ethical, to bring that into the conversation. There are ways to deal with that where you can talk about a shortcoming and still move into your strengths and still be persuasive. Then you gain honesty as well.
Doug: Absolutely. You're more transparent, right?
Brian: Yes. So is what I'm saying true?
The second thing would be, am I using psychology, or what we call these principles of influence, in ways that are natural to the situation?
So let me give you an example. Have you ever had somebody knock on your door, and they're going to sell you siding, roofing, guttering, or something for your home?
Doug: Sure, yeah.
Brian: Have you ever had that salesperson say something like, "Doug, if you sign tonight, I can save you 15%. But if I have to come back, I can't give you that discount." You've had that?
Doug: Oh, yeah.
Brian: Yeah. That taps into a principle we call scarcity. We naturally want things more when we think they're less available are going away. But the question you have to ask is, what's really scarce there? Now he or she may tell you it's their time. They might say, "Well, I've got a full slate of customers that I'm going to be seeing over the next week, and I can't come back." I would look them in the eye and say, "You mean if I guarantee a sale, he won't come back? You'll go meet with 10 more people and maybe make one or two sales, but you won't come back to the guaranteed sale?" There's nothing truly scarce there.
Now if that salesperson said, "Have you heard about the hurricane that's coming into the East Coast? If it strikes, our building supplies may be in short order, and I can't guarantee you this price in a week or two weeks, because we don't know what's going to happen." That's legitimate. I think that's really using the principle that's natural to the situation, but not creating this false sense of scarcity that, "I'm so busy, I can't come back to see you." Does that make sense?
Doug: Yeah, absolutely. Because, one, the second scenario obviously feels much more truthful and honest and transparent. I think ultimately, most people see through that. Although in today's world, you have to be careful. Obviously, there's a lot of misinformation with regard to a lot of things. I think it causes me personally, and I know a lot of business owner clients that we deal with that, "What can I really trust? Where's the trust? How do I know that what you're telling me is true and accurate?" So how do I kind of breakthrough that? Let's say that there's a little more of a screen put up there. Is it through asking those good questions?
Brian: Yes. I think you do need to ask, for instance, "Why can't I have that discount?" or anything else that you're feeling in your gut.
Now, an interesting thing with Robert Cialdini, when he wrote his book Influence: Science and Practice, at the end of every chapter, he puts in a section about what to do if you think you're being manipulated. Quite often, we know in our gut, and that gut feeling may come from a variety of things. It may be the look in the person's eye, it may be the incongruity between what they're saying and what their body language is revealing. But we know, but we can't quite put our finger on it, and we need to learn to trust our gut. At least to step back from the situation and try to understand, "Why am I feeling this way?" Sometimes it's coming through things that would seemingly be good. But if you like the salesperson you just met too much, you have to ask some questions about, "What's going on here that I suddenly like this person so much that I want to buy this particular thing from them, this high-value item?" I need to step back and look at the merits of the item a little bit more than just trusting my feeling about that individual.
Doug: Yeah, that's interesting. I think there's a lot of instances where people try to connect personally like that. They establish some personal belief that makes them think, "Okay, I'm going to just be attached to that way of doing things," or whatever the case might be. But without taking a step back and looking at the real process, the real product, all of that.
Brian: It's fine to like that other person. I mean, we all want to be liked, and everything seems to be a little smoother when people like each other.
I'm talking about when it's inordinate for the situation, where you're feeling it so much, where you've just met this person, and you're all of a sudden thinking they're like your best friend. Something's probably not right there. We don't make friendships that quickly.
I've experienced salespeople who will say or do anything to make that connection to try to get you to sell. I literally walked one out my door once and I said, "I teach salespeople. I appreciate you want to make the sale, but there's nothing you can say or do that will get me to sign today." He kept persisting about things that just became ridiculous in terms of his ability to connect on things that we had in common. That's just trying too hard. I mean, it's like going on a date for the first time and saying, "Will you marry me?" Like, wait a minute.
Doug: Whoa!
Brian: Something needs to slow down here. But those are two of the three things that we talk about.
The third thing is creating situations that are, to use Stephen Covey's terms, win-win. That what I'm asking you cannot just be good for me. It has to be good for you, too. While in a sales situation you might always want to pay less, and as a salesperson, I'd like to sell something for more, when we can meet in the middle and we can both leave saying, "You know what? I'm glad we did business," there is a win for you, a win for me.
So if we're being truthful, using psychology naturally, and we're creating situations that are mutually beneficial, we can feel good about the fact that we're operating in an ethical manner.
Doug: I think that's the most beneficial thing that I've learned over the years. It's not a zero-sum game. With client relationships, you want both parties to feel like they're benefiting from that. That's exactly what you're talking about. I think those that look at it as a zero-sum game, where I win, you lose, those never last, right?
Brian: Yes, and most businesses want repeat customers and want them to share their information with other people. The only way you're going to do that is by being ethical and upright with people and having them feel good about having done that transaction.
I would like to say one more thing about the ethics. If it weren't for ethics, I would not be doing what I'm doing today. Because when I first encountered Robert Cialdini's material, what really resonated with me was the fact that as a sales trainer, it's very specifically helped me understand here's the psychology behind the sales techniques that are taught.
The second thing was, I liked that it was based on empirical data, more than six decades of research from social psychology, behavioral economics. And I liked his stance on ethics, where he was very clear about non-manipulative ways to do things.
Now, the reason that ethics got me into what I'm doing is, when I saw that first video of him presenting at Stanford, I loved it. I signed up for Stanford's marketing, and my company started buying some of the other videos. They had great resources. But one day, one of the marketing flyers came across my desk, and it had his picture. And in bold letters at the top, it said bestseller. Right below it in bold letters, it said, "Call it influence, persuasion, or even manipulation," right in the headline. I thought, "I can't believe they actually use that word."
The moral part of me, I like to think that I'm an ethical person, I felt like it needed to be addressed. So I emailed Stanford, and I basically said, "I don't know anybody who wants to be a good manipulator, nor do I know anybody who wants to be manipulated. That word cannot be helping your sales, but it really could be hurting." I never heard from Stanford. But sometime later my phone rang, and it was Robert Cialdini's office.
Doug: No kidding.
Brian: One of his representatives said, "I'm calling to thank you personally on behalf of Dr. Cialdini. Because you sent that email to Stanford, they're changing the marketing of our materials."
Doug: Wow.
Brian: That was the start of my relationship with him and his organization. That was in the early 2000s, I think 2003 or so.
Doug: Okay. That's fantastic. How do you get that to resonate, then, with your clients, where you're trying to instill a sales culture and change those kinds of modes of thinking?
Brian: Well, I think that the story first and foremost is powerful. That when we begin to talk about ethics, and if somebody is still skeptical and I can say, "If it were not for ethics, I wouldn't be here." That story, I can tell, I've done this long enough, I can read my audience. It really takes them back. I can start to see that it settles in.
The second thing that I like to talk about on the heels of ethics is the principle of liking, that the more somebody likes you, the more likely they are to say yes to you. But what I tell them is, "It really isn't about you getting the other person to like you." So this isn't about me getting you to like me, Doug. It's about me coming to like you. The very same things that will make you like me, will make me like you if we find out what we have in common. If I pay you genuine compliments, if we work together in a cooperative way and we have success, all of those things will make you like me more.
Doug: Absolutely.
Brian: Lots of studies show that. But here's the interesting thing. The very same psychologies that work on me. When I find out you and I have things in common, I like you more. When I see things that are praiseworthy, and I give you that praise, I am convincing myself that you are a good person. The strategy should really be going into situations saying, "How can I come to like this other person?" I'm going to focus on these things not to get you to like me, but for me to convince myself what a good person you are.
Here's why it impacts manipulation and ethics. I believe people will not manipulate their friends. The more I come to like you and can say, "Friend," the less likely it ever is that I would do something that's not in your best interest.
Doug: Great point. Great point.
Brian: For audiences, that quite often the game-changer. You can see that they're tilting their head, and their eyes are up, and they're thinking, "I’ve never viewed it that way before, but I wouldn't manipulate my friends. So I need to do what I can to come to like the people that I serve, the people that I work with, our customers, vendors and everybody else."
Doug: Yeah, that's a great point I think, because otherwise, you make yourself susceptible to that, or there are people that really don't have those ethics. We know who they are out in the business community or wherever you might be, and you try to do what you can to say avoid those people. Yet they still find ways to treat people that way. It's unfortunate, I think, and particularly in today's world.
When you are trying to instill this type of sales culture in your clients, do you find a typical size or type of audience that it resonates most well with? Or is it kind of across the board?
Brian: It's really across the board. When I'm doing workshops, I may have anywhere from a dozen to two dozen people. If I'm speaking at a larger event, there could be 100, 200, 300 people. I think when it's a larger event like that, the ability to get into the crowd makes a difference. If I'm at a venue where you can literally walk down the aisle or circle around and you can start looking people in the eye, people get very fixated on you, they pay more attention, and you have a better opportunity to drive home a point like this.
Doug: Yeah. Now how long do you think it takes to change and really alter that culture if you're being honest?
Brian: Really hard. Changing culture is really, really hard because a lot of people obviously have their way of doing things. People are resistant to change. When you bring the new people in, they say, "Well, this is just how it is here," and it's much, much easier.
But when I go and talk with organizations, these principles that I teach, and they ask, "Well, what is going to be the best way for us to implement this?" I tell them, "It's got to become part of your vocabulary. It has to become the justification for why you're going to do what you do." If you're going to change your sales scripting, people are going to want to know why. And if you can back it up with the psychology and the research that's behind that, it gives it more credibility. If you're going to implement changes in your HR plan and things, you need to consider how are people going to respond to that?
Doug: Yeah, absolutely. I think people have to buy in at all levels, because if you don't, then they just say, "Well, it's another program, and I'm checking the box. And okay, I'm going to go, but I'm not going to change anything."
Brian: I think organizations, if they take the viewpoint that we don't move people to action because of authoritative position, and we don't try to coerce people into things, we try to ethically influence people by using the psychology that's going to create the situation that will be good for them and good for us. Then you start doing it by teaching people, well, what is that psychology? Why do we apply that? How does it impact our customers and our vendors?
Doug: Right. Absolutely. I think that's very important. Go back to the initial point when I'm trying to understand, say, persuasion versus manipulation, and you want that to be honest and transparent. I want to be persuaded, as you indicated. If I'm in the midst of something, how do I understand the signs of manipulation? How do I know if I'm being manipulated?
Brian: When you're interacting with an individual, how do you know that?
Doug: Yeah.
Brian: Well, first thing, I was talking with somebody recently, and they were saying about how they wanted to use this in coaching. Then they jumped right into, "Well, I'm going to go up, and I'm going to make small talk." I said, "Well, stop right there because you need to have laid that foundation." If you're coaching somebody, you need to have laid that foundation that says to them that you truly like them right off the bat. Not in the middle of, I'm going to be really nice and ask about your kids. And now, 'Oh by the way,' and come in with something else. That's where I think people feel that it's disingenuous.
Other things that we want to look for though is the, as I said earlier, the incongruency. If people aren't looking you in the eye if they tend to be fidgeting ... These are things that we have to learn over time, but we kind of know, in our gut. There's a lot of research around that.
So have you ever heard the name Dr. Albert Mehrabian?
Doug: Yes, I've heard the name, but I don't ... Yeah.
Brian: He studied this, and this has been misinterpreted quite a bit. You might have heard something like only 7% of your communication is the words you use, 38% is tone of voice, 55% is body language. That's not really true. The truth is when you-
Doug: I was being manipulated. I'm kidding.
Brian: Well, I think well-meaning people read it, and then it takes on ... You tell somebody who tells somebody who tells somebody, and it gets bastardized. What he studied was when the message and the messenger are incongruent, humans will tend to look for other cues. That's where if we see that they're fidgeting if we sense something in the tone of voice that just doesn't seem to align with the message that they're giving, that's where the very words they're using starts to fall. Because we're not trusting the words coming out of their mouth when their body and their tone of voice is telling us something different.
So those are certainly things to pay attention to if you're starting to get a sense of, "I don't think this interaction here is really up and up." Begin to pay attention to the tone of voice, what somebody is doing with their eyes, what they're doing with their body language. See if that registers with you, that it's incongruent with the message. And if it is, then you need to really step back from that situation and start thinking long and hard about whether or not you want to do what this person's been asking of you.
Doug: Yeah. Then they're probably not a friend, so to speak. They're not necessarily persuading you. It's into that manipulation.
Brian: Exactly.
Doug: Yeah. So I think that's great stuff. So take away one, know the difference between persuasion and manipulation, right?
Brian: Yes.
Doug: Second, we talked about building strong and lasting relationships and doing that. And then three, I think this is one I love particularly, the power of good questions. We can all learn how to better ask good questions. That's great stuff.
If you're interested in more of this, be sure and check out Brian's book Influence People. It's a great read, and I encourage everybody to check it out. So thanks for being on today, Brian. It's been fantastic and a great learning experience for me, and I'm sure our audience as well.
Brian: It was my pleasure. Thank you for having me on.
Doug: Absolutely. If you want more business tips and insight or to hear previous episodes of unsuitable, visit our podcast page at www.raecpa.com/podcast. Thanks for listening to this week's show. You can subscribe to Unsuitable on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts, including YouTube. I'm Doug Houser. Join us next week for another unsuitable interview from an industry professional.
Disclaimer: The views expressed on unsuitable on Rea Radio are our own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Rea & Associates. The podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and is not intended to replace the professional advice you would receive elsewhere. Consult with a trusted advisor about your unique situation so they can expertly guide you to the best solution for your specific circumstance.
