373: Dr. Robert Cialdini On Using Influence And Persuasion To Grow An Ecommerce Brand

00:00
First off, I’m pleased to announce that tickets for the 2022 Seller Summit are now on sale over at SellersSummit.com. The Seller Summit is a conference that I hold every year when there’s not a pandemic that specifically targets e-commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online. And unlike other events that focus on inspirational stories and high-level BS, mine is a curriculum-based conference where you will leave with practical and actionable strategies specifically for an e-commerce business. Now, if you’re an e-commerce entrepreneur making more than 250K or $1 million per year,

00:29
We are also offering an exclusive mastermind experience with other top sellers. Now the Seller Summit is going to be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from May 4th to May 6th, 2022. And for more information, go to sellersummit.com. Once again, that’s sellersummit.com or just Google it. All right, welcome everyone. You are listening to the My Wife, Quartermaster podcast, the place where you bring on successful bootstrap business owners and dig deep into what strategies they use to grow their businesses. And today I have an extra special guest on the show, Dr. Robert

00:58
Chaldini. Now Dr. Chaldini’s book, The Psychology of Persuasion, literally changed my life and I’m thrilled to announce that he’s released a brand new edition featuring 200 more pages and a completely new persuasion principle. But in this episode, we’ll cover how to use persuasion to grow your ecommerce brand. But before I begin, I want to thank Klaviyo for sponsoring this episode. Always excited to talk about Klaviyo because they’re the email marketing platform that I personally use for my ecommerce store and it depends on them for over 30 % of my revenue.

01:27
Now you’re probably wondering why Klaviyo and not another provider. Well Klaviyo is the only email platform out there that is specifically built for e-commerce stores and here’s why it’s so powerful. Klaviyo can track every single customer who’s shopped in your store and exactly what they bought. So let’s say I want to send out an email to everyone who purchased a red handkerchief in the last week. Easy. Let’s say I want to set up a special autoresponder sequence to my customers depending on what they bought, piece of cake, and there’s full revenue tracking on every single email sent. Klaviyo is the most powerful email platform that I’ve ever used.

01:56
and you can try them for free over at claviyo.com slash my wife. That’s K-L-A-V-I-Y-O dot com slash my wife. I also want to thank Postscript for sponsoring this episode. Now, if you run an e-commerce business of any kind, you know how important it is to own your own customer contact list, and this is why I’m focusing a significant amount of my efforts on SMS marketing. SMS, or text message marketing, is already a top five revenue source for my e-commerce store, and I couldn’t have done it without Postscript, which is my text message provider.

02:24
Now, why did I choose Postscript? It’s because they specialize in e-commerce stores and e-commerce is their primary focus. Not only is it easy to use, but you can quickly segment your audience based on your exact sales data and implement automated flows like an abandoned cart at the push of a button. Not only that, but it’s price well too and SMS is the perfect way to engage with your customers. So head on over to postscript.io slash Steve and try it for free. That’s P-O-S-T-S-E-R-I-P-T dot I-O slash Steve.

02:51
And then finally, I wanted to mention a new podcast that I recently released with my partner Tony. And unlike this podcast where I interviewed successful entrepreneurs in e-commerce, the Profitable Audience podcast covers all things related to content creation and building an audience. No topic is off the table and we tell it like how it is in a raw and entertaining way. So be sure to check out the Profitable Audience podcast on your favorite podcast app. Now onto the show.

03:18
Welcome to the My Wife, Quitter, Job podcast. Today I’m thrilled to have Robert Cialdini on the show. Now, Dr. Robert Cialdini is known globally as the foundational expert in the science of influence and how to apply it ethically in business. And he’s literally known as the Godfather of influence. So in the event that you don’t immediately recognize his name, Dr. Cialdini is the author of Influence and the Psychology of Persuasion, which is my favorite business book of all time. And I’m not even exaggerating here.

03:48
It is literally the book that changed everything for me. So for 17 years, I was an electrical engineer who sat behind a computer all day designing hardware. And when I was thrust into the world of online business in 2007, because my wife wanted to quit her job to take care of her kids, I had no idea how to sell, market or influence anyone, especially my wife of whom I still have limited influence today. But after reading influence and the psychology of persuasion, I incorporated the strategies in the book to create two seven figure businesses.

04:16
So if you’ve never read this book, it is literally my number one recommended read. And in today’s interview, we’re gonna talk about influence and persuasion in the context of selling physical products online. And with that, welcome to the show. Bob, how are you doing today? I’m doing well and I’m glad to be with you, Steve. So Bob, I know you’re a professor. Do you still teach classes today? Because if you are, I would actually consider going back to college to take one of your classes.

04:43
No, I have retired officially from my university positions. I still have an office, I still do research, and I still go in to write every day. But I don’t teach in the university hierarchy. We do have seminars that my organization, Influence at Work, provides, and I provide instruction within those, but not in the classroom. OK.

05:12
Okay, but the research continues on? The research continues on because I am a curious fellow. So, Bob, I just finished reading the new sections of the latest edition of Influence last night. And I have to say the extra content, in my opinion, could have been a completely different book in itself. The new edition, I think, was like over 200 pages longer than the old one. That’s right, 220 new pages. it was like I appended a…

05:42
another book. I mean, I read the original back in 2007. I think the original one came out in the 80s. Why did you decide to update it after so many years? I’m curious. You know, there’s a couple of reasons. One is that there has been a lot of new research and new knowledge that’s developed within persuasion science that truly deserved place in the new book. And it wasn’t there in the earlier editions.

06:11
Another is the growth and flourishing of the internet in the 12 years since the last edition. It was important for me to demonstrate how these principles of influence have been migrated to new platforms and are enhancing the success of the people who harness those principles in e-commerce.

06:41
And then finally, there’s a new universal principle of influence, the seventh one. The other editions all had six, but I thought there was another one I had missed all these years called Unity. And perhaps we can talk about it during our conversation. definitely are. There’s actually one tidbit in the Unity section of your book that I’ve used on my wife. see. see how I’ll let you know about it once we get to that.

07:10
So that’s the problem. that’s the problem. Like these, these, I know we’re to talk about the ethics also, but like all these powers, they have to be used for good. Right. Right. So I’ve read the book many times at this point, and I must say each time I pick it up, I gained some new insight or a new nugget. And I want to tell you that most of the listeners of this podcast are in the e-commerce space selling physical products online. So what I was hoping to do today,

07:39
is have you walked through some of your latest and most impactful persuasion strategies to convince more people to buy? And I also obviously want to set aside some time to discuss the new principle of influence, unity, and how this principle can be applied as well. So not sure where you want to start with this, Bob. Well, you know, it probably makes sense to briefly walk through the principles themselves and maybe

08:06
emphasize the new one a little bit more since that’s not the one that’s been out there in the information environment. And then talk about any implications of all of that for your listeners. Yeah, let’s do it. Let’s do it. So what are the seven persuasive principles? The first is the principle of reciprocation that says people want to give back to those who have first given to them.

08:35
You know, in every human culture, this rule applies. So if we’ve got customers or clients or even prospects who were not raised in this particular culture, don’t worry. The principle of reciprocity applies in every human society. We are trained from childhood in the rule that you must not take without giving in return. And so what we find is that

09:04
people say yes to those they owe. There’s a very interesting implication of that. It says that, you know, the traditional business model in which we say to others, look, if you will do this first, if you will buy our product, if you will sign our contract, if you will agree to this particular exchange between us,

09:34
We promise we will give back to you everything you expect and more. That’s how we move people by providing this in return. Well, what the rule of reciprocity says is no, there’s another route in which we go first. We give something, we make the first move, and then people feel grateful if we’ve given them benefit and advantages.

10:03
information that’s valuable to them, or they feel obligated to give back to us in return. And so the implication is we, before we try to influence others, we should give them something, some benefit. And online, seems to me that’s information is most easily done and most costlessly done by providing

10:31
a white paper or some kind of a piece of information like the top three mistakes to avoid in this particular arena that we’re talking about today or the top five most effective things to say in a difficult conversation, something like that that gives them a way to increase their outcomes by this rule.

11:00
they need to increase our outcomes consequently. So I think it has a place in online platforms. I’m glad you started with this one, because out of all the seven, this was the actual one that had the most impact on me. And to me, it’s actually counterintuitive. My whole business, my wife quit her job is based on this premise of giving away all this information for free, like all the good stuff. And people

11:30
I get emails every day, people are indebted to me for this information that I’m giving and there’s a small subset of them will just buy anything that I have to sell. So this I would argue is one of the most important ones, at least to me in the online world. You know, there’s one additional optimizer of it and that is if we can segment our market so that what we are giving to our recipients

11:55
is something that is especially relevant to their particular challenges, their particular preferences, their particular needs and so on. That, that supersizes the effect, right? Yeah. In the e-commerce world, can you think of any examples of this? Yeah. So for example, there are organizations,

12:22
that sell, let’s say retail online clothing. And what I’ve seen or even in hotel spaces where there you reserve rooms or air flights and so on, so on. I’ve seen them say, now here is the best options for people with twins, right? Or, know, or

12:52
for people in the early 20s, this is the best thing for, there’s a culture online that will do hotel reservations. And they’ll say, are, this is the best for a romantic weekend. Here’s the best information we can provide you for a business stay. Here’s the best information we can provide you for.

13:19
a family vacation and so on. Oh, well now people feel even more grateful for that piece of benefit that they’ve been afforded. Yeah. So again, it’s the information angle even applies to e-commerce. Right. Yeah. And certainly we can give away free samples of what we offer because that causes people to feel, these, these people want us to really

13:49
try their product without having to incur a cost. That actually always gets me like, oh, so even even our interaction, there’s one thing that you did and you probably realize it, but when you sent me your book, you wrote a small note and that note actually meant everything to me. And I feel like I, I I’m going to do everything that I can to help you out as a result of that. mean, I don’t know if that was intentional, but that was the, that was the effect it had on me.

14:18
Well, I’m glad to hear that, but I’ll give you a piece of evidence that again seems counterintuitive, but really makes the point. There was a study done in a fast food restaurant where for a week when customers came in, a third of them were simply greeted warmly by the manager. And then they went to the counter to order food.

14:47
Another third was given a gift, a very nice little key ring, right? Expensive key ring. That caused those people to buy 12 % more food if they received a key ring before they started to order. That’s just the principle of reciprocity, right? You give back to those who have given to you, but the key was another set of people were given a small cup of yogurt.

15:19
Any economist would say, what? You’re giving people food. Now they’re going to be less hungry. They’re going to be less interested in buying a lot of your food. Those people bought 24 % more food at the counter. Why? Because they got a gift that was personalized to their needs. Why do you go to a restaurant? Because you’re hungry. Somebody gives you free food.

15:48
Now you feel especially grateful to that person for understanding your situation and trying to meet your challenge. So that’s the issue. mean, we need to be sure that we recognize what the challenges are of our potential buyers and be sure that we

16:17
offer them something that’s relevant to those challenges. I know in the example of your latest version, you had an example of McDonald’s giving a balloon out. Is this similar? It’s similar, except that this is about the earlier thing we said about reciprocity is that you have to go first. So in this study, this was done actually in South America, Brazil and Colombia. When

16:45
families came into the McDonald’s, the families in all cases were given a balloon for each child. Half of them were given the balloon as they left each child as a nice thank you for their patronage. The other half were given a balloon as the family came in. Those families bought 45, excuse me.

17:13
25 % more food. It’s amazing. Now here’s the key that I love about this. If you look into the data, that 25 % increase also showed a 20 % increase in coffee orders. The kids weren’t ordering coffee. The parents were ordering coffee. But the key here is

17:42
You do something for my child. You’ve done a personal favor for me. And I’m gonna repay it. So what’s funny is we’ve been experimenting with giving away a free handkerchief with every order, just giving it to them. We put it behind like a text message paywall right now where you have to give a number to get it, but that’s actually been working out really well. I haven’t run the stats. I am curious if it’s increased average order value though, now that we’re talking about it.

18:11
Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Oh, I know we got seven to go through. maybe we should just go through them and then revisit. Yeah. I want to focus on the unity one also. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the next principle of course is liking. Nobody be surprised that we prefer to say yes to those we like, but there are two small things we can do to increase the power of the liking rule by getting people to feel a rapport with us.

18:41
One is to locate genuine similarities that exist between us because we like those who are like us. The other is to give genuine compliments to those individuals because we like those who do like us and say so, right? So those two things, if they are offered in an exchange, increase liking.

19:10
and people want to do business with those they like. Next principle would be the principle of social proof. When people are uncertain, they don’t look inside themselves for answers. They look outside.

19:26
and one place they look is to those around them like them. If a lot of people like us are raving about a new restaurant or a new piece of software, new film, whatever it is, that reduces our uncertainty that this is the right thing for us to do. So if we can give people honest evidence of

19:55
movement in our direction, or if a lot of people have given us positive ratings on the internet and so on, we’ll be much more likely to get them to move in our direction, reduce their uncertainty, get them off the fence where they’re diddling around and hesitating, well, should I go or should I get more information? As soon as they hear that a lot of other people have done this,

20:23
those people have beta tested the choice for them and they will then say, okay, I can reduce my uncertainty. I can go ahead and move in that direction. And now the most recent research that my team has done along with some, team at Stanford University is to show, if we can show trends in our direction, it doesn’t have to be just a lot of people who are doing it. Even if we still don’t have

20:53
a majority, even if we’re a startup, we don’t have a lot of market share and so on. If we can show a trend to that place where we are now, even if it’s a minority, that causes a new form of social proof, future social proof, because people project that trend into the future. So that was actually one of my questions. So if you don’t have any social

21:22
If you don’t have enough customers, you can just talk about the trends. And I know in the book you mentioned a subtlety when you’re mentioning trends, which I’ll let you get into right now. Yeah. It’s when you, when you mentioned the trend, you should have three data points. So you should be able to say to people, not just a lot of people are doing this or, or more people are buying our

21:52
this model, you should say more and more people are doing so. That gives people three data points. More says two data points, start here, now we’re up to more. If you say more and more, now you’ve got three data points and that’s a trend.

22:18
And if you have actual numbers, presumably that works better, right? If you have three data points. Absolutely. Okay. You can characterize those numbers by saying greater and greater, better and better, more and more and so on. Are there any other ways that you can increase your social proof if you don’t have like a whole bunch of testimonials and customers? You can use testimonials that you do have and put them

22:48
at the top of your messaging so that that evidence infuses everything you are about to say even before you’re going to say it. You’ve got buy-in from people around you. And the key to making that buy-in optimized is that those should be comparable others.

23:18
to your market. They should be people who others can see as like them.

23:29
If you sell on Amazon or run any online business for that matter, the most important aspect of your long-term success will be your brand. And this is why I work with Steven Weigler and his team from Emerge Council to protect my brand over at Bumblebee Linens. Now, what’s unique about Emerge Council is that Steve focuses his legal practice on e-commerce and provides strategic and legal representation to entrepreneurs to protect their IP. So for example, if you’ve ever been ripped off or knocked off on Amazon, then Steve can help you fight back and protect yourself.

23:57
Now, first and foremost, protecting our IP starts with a solid trademark and Emerge Council provides attorney-advised strategic trademark prosecution, both in the United States and abroad for a very low price. And furthermore, the students in my course have used Steve for copyrighting their designs, policing against counterfeits and knockoffs, agreements with co-founders and employees, website and social media policies, privacy policies, vendor agreements, brand registry, you name it. So if you need IP protection services, go to EmergeCouncil.com and get a free consult.

24:27
And if you tell Steve that I sent you, you’ll get a $100 discount. That’s E-M-E-R-G-E-C-O-U-N-S-E-L dot com. Now back to the show.

24:38
And okay, so you have to have knowledge, I guess, of who your target customer is, and then you want to select testimonials. Again, that kind of leads into the principle of unity, right? Does that kind of bleed into that? It does. Right. But we’ll get to that. get to that. I also wanted to highlight one of these studies, which I found fascinating with the McFlurries and McDonald’s. If you want to elaborate on that and how that can be applied to e-commerce as well, that’d be great. Yeah. So

25:07
There was a study, again, in those South American McDonald’s that my colleague Steve J. Martin led. And why is it always South American? I’m just kind of curious. Well, he had a he had a contract from the the marketing of the South American McDonald’s franchise. OK.

25:32
And so they had a lot of McDonald’s locations and they were willing to do some behavioral science research to see how they could increase in this case, the willingness of their customers to buy desserts. Most people at McDonald’s don’t buy a dessert until Steve asked the people behind the counter to say at the end of the order,

26:02
Would you like to try a McFlurry? It’s our most popular dessert. And McFlurry orders went up 45%. So does that imply then that in an e-commerce store, we should just highlight these products and just mention it’s like a best seller? We would be fools of the influence process if we didn’t point to what is already most popular.

26:31
That’s a cue people use to stop getting information and act. Okay, this is the most popular. So you can say, this is the most popular product. This is our most popular feature. This is our most popular payment plan. Whatever we have, you can just point to it and it produces these big effects, costlessly and ethically.

27:00
because you’re not fabricating anything, you’re not counterfeiting any of this information, you’re pointing to something that people use to reduce their uncertainty and act. We kind of glossed over the liking, but this just kind of came to my head, so I wanted to bring it up. When it comes to getting customers to like you, would you recommend just like posting videos of yourself to allow your customers to get to know you as a person? Does that increase your likeability?

27:30
There’s research that shows that. Here’s another piece of research that shows that what you can do online, there’s research to show that having a welcoming letter significantly increases liking and purchases. A welcoming letter is like what you do to somebody who comes to your door, a visitor, come on in, glad that you’re here. Let me show you around.

28:00
Right. You know, there’s an example from my store. I just want to mention. the first email after someone makes a purchase is in fact a thank you letter. It’s written in a very personalized way. We want to thank you for your first purchase from us. Just want to let you know that we’re a small business and we’ll do whatever it takes for you to be happy. And we get, it’s an automated message, but it gets tons of replies. I would take that message and move it at the, to everybody who goes to your

28:29
site before they bought. We’re a small business. We’re very committed to customer service. We’re glad that you’re here. Let me show you around, essentially. It increases conversion significantly. You know, what’s funny is a lot of the students in my class are afraid to put their pictures and be personal on their sites. I encourage it. But if it’s coming from your mouth, that has a lot more authority.

28:59
Well, you know, there’s another place. There’s always an about us section in our on our websites. And when we go there, what we see is the professional backgrounds of people along with a picture. Usually, we should also include personal aspects so people can see connections between ourselves and them.

29:28
So you would include that you’re a Packers fan, for example? I’m a Packers fan. I’m the oldest child. I’m a former baseball player. It’s in high school. All those kinds of things. Yeah. Should we actually just talk about Unity next, since we’ve alluded to it? Yeah, let’s talk about Unity. This is the latest one. And for all of you listening, you probably haven’t heard of this one because it’s brand new to this book.

29:58
This is the one that says that people say yes to those communicators who can convince them that they share an identity, that they are members of the same we group, the kinds of groups that people use the pronoun we to describe. So it would be if

30:26
If I could, if you can convince me to say, know, Steve is like us, that’s good. That’s good. That’s you’ve got the liking principle working for you there, right? We like people who are like us. But if you could convince me to say, Steve is one of us, that’s an entirely different level of willingness to promote

30:56
favor and follow you, Steve. So you mentioned that I’m a Green Bay Packer fan. I grew up in Wisconsin. And a few months ago, I saw an article that described the favorite NFL teams of celebrities. And I learned that Lil Wayne,

31:27
And.

31:31
Timberlake, what’s name? Justin Timberlake. Justin Timberlake are avid Packer fans. Steve, I immediately thought better of their music. And I wanted them to be more successful. Inside the boundaries of we, people say yes to us. If we can arrange for them

32:00
to honestly see us as sharing one of those identities, one of those category memberships, here’s what the research shows. They believe us more. They wanna cooperate with us more. They’re more persuaded by us and they’re more willing to comply with our requests. They trust us more besides. I know that works for me. When I see Asian American film artists

32:29
I’m much more likely to support them and like them because they’re Asian Americans. One thing I wanted to ask you though, is does this work in reverse also? Like if I’m not a Packers fan and you find that out, will that make you dislike me? Not unless there’s an intense rivalry between the Packers and so, yeah. where you, so what I always say is do your homework first, go on.

32:59
LinkedIn, go on Facebook, people are telling us about themselves, all kinds of things about ourselves. When you find one of those connections, then go there. Don’t go to one that isn’t a connection or even maybe a negative one. When you find one of those connections, oh, really, you’re a runner? I’m a runner. You’re an only child? I’m an only child. When you find those things, go there.

33:28
It creates this sense of we-ness and everything becomes easier for the influence process.

33:37
in an online world where you’re not actually having physical conversations and you list some of these things, let’s say on your about page, could that possibly have a negative effect and turn away certain people? It’s conceivable if there’s a rivalry, that’s much more, that’s, much more rare than a connection that people will see. Right. Okay. That makes sense. That makes sense. So how can

34:03
What are some other ways that we can apply? I know you have lots of case studies. Do you wanna just highlight some of your favorite ones in terms of how unity has changed behavior? Yeah. Let me give you two. The first one is sort of about not just business relationships, but personal relationships, especially romantic relationships. And then I’ll provide an example of how that applies to a business relationship.

34:31
but it has to do with a lovely study that was done in Texas where researchers brought couples, romantic couples into an experiment. They had been together for at least two years. And they asked these folks, is there a problem in your relationship, some disagreement that you have that you just haven’t been able to resolve overall this time? And it continues to aggravate

35:01
each of you that you’re at loggerheads on this thing. And they said, what we would like you to do, and they flipped a coin and they said, one of you, we’d like you to be the persuader and try to persuade your partner to move in your direction, right? So come up with one of these problems, the two of you, and then one of you is gonna try to convince the other one.

35:29
And then the researchers left the room. Well, they didn’t really leave the room. They had cameras going and tape recorders running. So they knew what was going on. And they found three kinds of persuaders. One type they called the coercive persuader. They would say to their partner, look, we’ve been at this problem for years and

35:57
You won’t move in my direction. And you know what? If you won’t move now, I’m going to have to do something you won’t like. You’ll be sorry. Right. Not only did that fail to move the partner, it caused the partner to move even further away. Right. Trying to be coercive. a stutter to tell that. That tactic never works. Or never. Yeah. There was a second kind of persuader that the researchers called the rational

36:27
approach, who took the rational approach, they would say, look, if you’ll simply examine the situation more deeply, you’ll see that my position is the more rational, reasonable one. Now that didn’t produce polarization. It just produced laughter. And they, the partner just dismissed that and no change at all.

36:54
but there was a small group of people who hit on a strategy that was costless and the only one that made a difference in causing change in their direction. They would say, you know, we’ve been together now for two years as a couple. I really appreciate it. If you’d move in my direction on this one, I can see how that’s more effective, but I’m curious what the science is behind that.

37:23
The science is they now brought to consciousness the we nature of the couple, of the relationship. And now all the things I mentioned earlier that research shows occur in we relationships, more trust, more cooperation, more persuasion, more compliance with requests.

37:52
all of those now apply to the situation. These people were brilliant. They wouldn’t sit still for the cognitive set that the researchers gave them. Think about a difference between you. Think about something that you can’t agree. In other words, something separate that separates you. These people said,

38:21
maybe there is this thing, but we’ve been together for two years as a couple. And they brought unity to mind, togetherness to mind. And in that category that is now prominent in consciousness, people said, of course, yes, I will. By the way, there was a second strategy that

38:49
some others use that had the same effect for the same reason. They just simply use the pronouns, we, our, and us in making their case for a change. And that was enough. Again, bringing to consciousness the idea of unity. You know what’s funny? As you’re telling me all these things, I’m just picturing your mind because you and your wife are a husband, wife team and me and my wife are husband, wife team.

39:19
I guess the difference is that your wife knows all these principles. So I can just imagine you two going with each other going, honey, we’ve been together for so many years. And I’m just between you and your wife, I’m wondering how it works out. Well, she’ll catch me on this, here’s the, here’s, she is also recognizing, I’m saying that I’m telling her the truth. What I’m saying is let’s get away from this. Let’s get away from this difference here or

39:49
have a context for it, which is the great majority of the space around us is togetherness defined. Now, here’s the other thing that she knows from this research that I described to you. By the rule of reciprocation, what these researchers found was that when the partner moved in the direction of the persuader,

40:16
persuader then moved in the direction of the partner too. And they met in the middle. So you get the rule of reciprocation taking care of both sides by doing this. Someone’s got to take the first step forward. That’s right. And, break the set, the cognitive set of difference. Right? So here’s the, here’s, here’s the business.

40:45
related example. A few years ago, I was preparing a report that had to be submitted the next day. And as I was reading over it, I saw one section of it that wasn’t at all convincing, and not sufficiently convincing to make my point, because it didn’t have some data to really seal the deal. But I knew that a colleague of mine had done a study

41:15
the year before and had collected that kind of data. And so I sent him an email. Let’s say his name was Tim. It wasn’t. I said, Tim, and I described that I have this report. It’s due the next day. It needs the data that you’ve collected. I know you have it in your archives. I’m going to call you and we can find a way to get me that.

41:42
that information in time for me to do this. Well, this guy, Kim, was known as irascible and soured, a very difficult guy in my psychology department, right? So when I called him, he said, hello, Bob, I know why you’re calling. And the answer is no. Look, I can’t be responsible for your poor

42:11
time management skills, Bob. You got yourself into this. I’m a busy man. Also, I can’t just jump and pull this out of my archives, get the data to you in time, right? And before I had read this Texas study, here’s what I would have said. Come on, Tim, I really need this. This thing is due tomorrow.

42:39
He’d already said no to that. So I said, instead, you know, Tim, we’ve been together in the psych department now for 12 years. I really appreciate this. And Steve, I had the data that afternoon. Amazing. You know, it’s funny, thanks to you, Bob. Whenever I read an email or an outreach cold email, I like analyze all the language that’s being used and

43:08
I’ve also found, I mean, I’m gonna definitely use these unity principles now, but I’ve also found that when people talk about me and what benefit that I would get first, I’m not sure what principle of persuasion that is. That works on me. Yep. Yep. Good. mean, that other orientation, right? That I’m not just in it to make a buck for me. I’m actually in it for you to have a good outcome, which I know

43:38
as a side effect will lead to good outcomes for me. Reciprocally, it’ll work. And I also know that when people say, hey, I went to Stanford University just like you did, that works on me too. So that’s unity, right? Absolutely. There was a great study that showed that if researchers put a young woman on a busy intersection on a college campus of walkways,

44:05
asking for donations to the United Way, she got some success. But if she said to them first, excuse me, I’m a student here too. She got 250 % more donations. You know what, I’m just thinking about there’s all these things running through my head right now. There’s this Facebook ad that I run from my handkerchief store that works. And not very many people use handkerchiefs anymore. But the ad was like,

44:32
Am I the only one who use handkerchiefs or message me or, know, if you’re a handkerchief lover and I’ll send you a special offer, that ad works really well. It’s probably because of unity, right? Yes, right. Because if you’re in a smaller unit group, you feel even more intense shared identity. And I’ll give you one approach that think that online marketers can use or

45:02
people who can provide physical items online. One of the things that we have found in the last 10 years that has been a massive success within the marketing community is co-creation of your products and services, right? So what we often do is to get our existing customers, clients, and so on to help us

45:31
create the next version or the next generation of our product. And we ask them to give us input as to what they would like to see and what they would like to be dropped away and so on and what they don’t especially like. And so they co-create with us that product or service. That creates a sense of unity with us.

46:01
because they have acted together with us in this process. And what you find is that you get much greater loyalty and much greater satisfaction from those people who have co-created with you. Even before that new product has come out, they feel of you, they feel one of you. Okay, well, when we do that,

46:30
What we typically say to our informants is, could you give us your opinion on how we could improve our product, you know, that sort of thing. And that’s a mistake.

46:47
When we ask for someone’s opinion, we get a critic. They step away from us. We’re over here and they’re over on the other side of the line between us. If instead of asking for an opinion or even the newest research shows asking for feedback, which is also problematic for the same reason.

47:15
If we ask for their advice, we now get them stepping over the line next to us as our partner. They’re in a togetherness state of mind. And research shows, for example, that in a study that was done online where people received a business plan for a new restaurant called Splash,

47:43
that was going to be a fast food restaurant that focused on healthy food, right? If they were asked for their opinion on this business plan, they were significantly less likely to give it a positive rating than if they were asked for their advice on the same plan. And when researchers looked into it as to why, it was because they felt

48:13
more together with the author of the business plan because they were providing him advice. A lot of things are running through my head right now. So right now I send out a survey to anyone who’s bought. Maybe I should frame it as I need your advice instead of the way I currently have it framed. Steve, that would be my advice. Yeah.

48:41
Yeah, okay. It’s very subtle, but I can see why psychologically that would work. Interesting. Yeah. See, this is the thing I like about this research and I put a lot of it in the new book. The smallest things you can do that produce the biggest impact on your persuasive success, small in terms of effort or time so that you have an enormous return on investment.

49:11
Right? An enormous ROI from changing a word from feedback to advice, you know, or, you know, instead of trying to say, we, I have the better logical position or I’m going to do this. If you don’t move, we just point to something like the extent to which we’ve been working together. I’ve learned that logic never works.

49:40
Over the years, yeah. So it’s interesting. Yeah. Incidentally, that was the thing in the intro. That was the biggest tidbit that I got out of the unity section with respect to interacting with and working together with my wife. Yeah. Right. I can see why. Okay. So we got in the interest of completeness. I do want to just kind of go over the remaining principles of persuasion. So I think we’ve talked about social proof, liking, unity. There’s four more, right?

50:09
We talked about reciprocity. Reciprocity, course, yes. The next one would be authority, which like social proof, serves to reduce people’s uncertainty of what they should do. If we can demonstrate our credentials, our experience, and our know-how in a particular area, people will defer.

50:38
to that, they defer to experts. Sometimes we can borrow that by once again, bringing testimonials from outside of our organization from legitimate experts who can be quoted as saying something either nice about us or about our idea, our vision, our concept.

51:08
If we’ve got that, then people defer and move in our direction. One of the things that I often correct when I see people who want to run an advertising campaign where I give them some advice on it is that they put the testimonials.

51:35
either from similar others or from authorities into the body of their presentation, of their appeal. Those things should go first. In the case of authority, if you see one or two or more testimonials from acknowledged experts, right, advocating what comes next.

52:02
everything that comes next is infused with that authority, with that legitimacy, and it makes it more successful as a persuasive appeal. And if you don’t have access to these experts, I know you mentioned a case study where someone just was dressed as a doctor and they ended up selling more. Is that also? Yeah, it’s that’s so.

52:30
That’s right, but it’s one I wouldn’t recommend because it’s not honest. Why don’t we just stay with the things that make us feel good about doing well? Right. Actually, I didn’t want to touch upon that. mean, your book is basically giving all these strategies that can be used for good and bad. And I know you want to just mention this in this interview. mean, what is that? That’s just your general stance, right? Use these powers for good, not bad.

52:58
Right. And the way to do it is point to them where they genuinely exist in the situation. If you have genuine scarcity, go with that. If you’ve got genuine social proof, go with that. If you’ve got genuine authority, point to it. If you’ve got genuine unity, just point to it. And it changes everything from that moment on. In terms of authority also, I’ve just found that just

53:28
putting out content period kind of just makes you become an authority even though you might not perceive yourself as one. Yes, if you can provide that content, especially in terms of a white paper or an article or an interview that you did with a journalist and so on, and you embed your content in there and people say, oh, geez, that’s great.

53:58
this is somebody I should defer to. This is somebody I can stop getting more sources of information from. I can use this person because he or she is a clear expert. And there’s one last thing about authority that I think is really underused. And that is you get the most horsepower as an authority voice when you

54:28
Don’t just talk about the strengths of your case, but you also mention a weakness or a drawback. That causes people not only to see you as knowledgeable about the pros and the cons, it causes them to see you as credible, as trustworthy, as a trustworthy source of authority influence, right?

54:56
because you’re willing to talk about not just the pros, but also the cons. But you show people how, after you say, know, this may take a little bit longer or this may cost a little bit more, or, you know, this is just, we don’t have a lot of market share yet on this. Then you always say the word,

55:29
and you go to your strengths right there that wipe away the weakness. And what’s left after the weakness is dispatched is a perception of you as a credible source of authoritative information. And they believe more everything you say next. So if I were to advise people in terms of how you present your case,

55:58
All cases have strengths and weaknesses, right? What we typically do is bury the weaknesses at the end or don’t mention them at all. What I say is if you want to know where to put your strongest argument, the most compelling feature of what you have to offer, it should go immediately after you’ve mentioned a weakness and said the word, but.

56:26
to lead into your strength because people are gonna believe that strength now more deeply and more fully than if you hadn’t mentioned the weakness. Is this the same principle as when I see a product online that has only five star reviews, I tend to discount them? It is the same principle that people who are only giving you the positives and not giving you the negatives,

56:56
There’s a study that was done that showed the most effective star rating that produces conversions to your products on your site is not five point reviews. It’s not a five point rating. It’s a range between 4.2 and 4.7. If it’s below 4.2, people are saying, hey, maybe this isn’t such a great thing.

57:25
If it’s above 4.7, people are saying, uh-oh, this might be a phony. These might be, um, you know, manufactured bought, uh, purchased, or, uh, they’re, weeding out the, um, uh, the negative ones. And in fact, I actually never read the five star reviews. only read the two and the three stars come to think of it. Yeah. Yeah.

57:55
Okay, so that’s authority. Here’s a last thing to say about that. If you do get a one or two star review, know, in what people always tell me is that kills me, that irks me because, you know, the majority of them are are much higher. But people look at that one. Here’s what I would say. Always respond to that review and say the following.

58:25
Well, thank you for your response. We’re so happy that the great majority of people have not experienced, have not had your experience with us. So you move immediately to the social proof that’s truly there. You diminish that one by saying you’re an outlier. We’re so glad that the great majority of people have not had that experience, but we certainly regret that you did.

58:54
and we will take steps to make sure that it never happens again. That’s the best way to respond. That’s ingenious actually. In this world of like just Amazon reviews, that sounds like a really great response, especially since it applies the principles of persuasion here and social proof and. Right. Yeah. I think we have a couple more left. I believe scarcity is one of them. Scarcity I want to emphasize because there was a study done of online e-marketing

59:24
uh, uh, and showed that of all of the principles of influence and all six of them, uh, did make a difference, but scarcity was the one that was the most powerful telling people about a limited supply at this price or a limited supply with this feature or a limited supply with a particular inducement or bonus.

59:51
That was the one that had the most power in producing conversions. I vaguely remember in the book, there’s a subtlety there though, right? Well, that works very well. It works better than limited time offers. Limited time doesn’t have competition associated. If you’ve got a limited number,

01:00:20
That means people have to move. They have to get off the fence. If you’ve got a limited time, they can wait until whenever that within that time, they don’t, doesn’t spur them into immediate action. Whereas if you say there’s only five of these left, right at this price, right at this price, I guess, uh, if that’s not true though, you shouldn’t do that. Never, but you can always have an inducement, uh, like a bonus.

01:00:50
And there were only five of them left that have this bonus. Yes, that’s correct. Right. So in my case, like you get a free hanky for the first five people or something like that. Yeah. For the first 100, know, yeah. Yeah. I know, um, on my site, ever since I started putting, like when things get below like 10 units in stock, I like highlight the fact there’s only 10 units left. And I found that as soon as that product hits that threshold, that product sells out much faster. Right.

01:01:20
Scarcity. Yeah, scarcity. It’s interesting. Yeah. So it’s subtle. So limited products versus limited time always works better. And then the last one is commitment and consistency. People want to be consistent with what they have committed themselves to. So if we can arrange for people to make a small step or press an agree button or get to the next stage easily.

01:01:48
then they are more likely to continue to behave in that way in order to be congruent with what they’ve already done. So how can that be applied? Well, so for example, what does it say on your, on the, you know, the thing that you’re a button, right? What it should say is, yes, I want to go on to the next level. It shouldn’t just say yes.

01:02:18
or it shouldn’t just say next, it should give them a commitment that they’ve made a commitment to go on. Interesting. So you’re saying changing that language can have dramatic effects? Yeah. I’ve noticed that on certain things. Yeah. It’s also the case that if you’re trying to get people to subscribe and they have to fill out a long questionnaire, a lot of people are

01:02:45
are reluctant to go through a lot of information. I talk about a study that was done where if you reduce the number of fields that you ask people to complete on the first page of the form, that significantly increases the number who complete it because they’ve gone through the first page easily. And then once they’ve gone through that first page,

01:03:14
they’re more willing to go on to the end. You know, come to think of it, the surveys I’m most likely to fill out are the ones that are one question per page where I keep hitting next. Yeah. Yeah. As opposed to a big long page of questions. principle, right? Right. So that winds up our tour through the 7th. So I just want to tell the listeners out there, I mean, this is an entirely new book. I’ve read the original version many times and this one, as soon as you get it,

01:03:44
It’s, would arguably, I think it’s like twice as thick as the old one. It’s almost like a whole new book. So even if you’ve read this book before the new edition goes way beyond, it went way beyond my expectations. And I’m not just saying that. So Bob, where can people find more about you, the book in just in case they haven’t heard of you before prior to this? The best place is our website. It’s a influence at work.

01:04:14
dot com. Okay, influence at work all one, which is all one word.com. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. As I mentioned before, I’m a huge fan and it is a great honor to have you on the podcast. Thank you so much. enjoyed it, Steve.

01:04:30
Hope you enjoy that episode. Now even if you’ve read the first edition of Dr. Cialdini’s book, you’ll definitely want to catch the new edition. With 200 new pages, it is literally like reading a completely new book and you’ll always get new nuggets every time you read it. For more information about this episode, go to mywebcuderjob.com slash episode 373. And once again, I’m gonna thank Postscript, which is my SMS marketing platform of choice for e-commerce. With a few clicks of a button, you can easily segment and send targeted text messages to your client base.

01:04:58
SMS is the next big own marketing platform and you can sign up for free over at postscript.io slash div. That’s P-O-S-T-S-E-R-I-P-T dot I-O slash div. I also want to thank Clavio, which is my email marketing platform of choice for ecommerce merchants. You can easily put together automated flows like an abandon card sequence, a post purchase flow, a win back campaign, basically all these sequences that will make you money on autopilot. So head on over to mywifecoderjob.com slash K-L-A-V-I-Y-O.

01:05:25
Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash KLAVIO. Now I talk about how I use these tools in my blog, and if you are interested in starting your own eCommerce store, head on over to mywifequitterjob.com and sign up for my free 16 mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.