7 Secrets of Persuasion

Don't try to change or suppress existing desires that are deep-rooted in human nature. Instead show how your product, service or request fulfills universal needs hardwired into all of us - like status, belonging, esteem, achievement, self-actualization, certainty, variety, significance.

Tap into these latent motivations.

• Present your solution as an optimal way to satisfy these drives.
• Couch your pitch in the language of needs and desires that already resonate with people.

Asking people directly to explain their motivations and reasons for behavior yields limited insights, since much of our decision-making happens outside conscious awareness.

• Carefully study and observe actual behaviors to infer their emotional and psychological underpinnings.
• Ask indirect questions to unearth true drives and triggers.
• Understand that people often act first for unconscious reasons and rationalize after.

Mere features and factual benefits are not inherently persuasive on their own.

For emotional appeal, take care to translate the logical attributes of your product or argument into positive feelings and experiences that people intrinsically value - like pride, freedom, security, belonging, status.

Attach your case to people's deepest hopes, fears and ambitions. Demonstrate experiential and emotional payoffs, not just functional utility.

People's prior expectations, assumptions and beliefs heavily influence their actual perceptions, interpretations and experiences of events.

You can proactively shape experiences by carefully setting expectations - priming people to perceive your product or idea in the best possible light.

But beware unintended negative expectations that become self-fulfilling prophecies. Manage expectations strategically throughout the customer journey.

Subtly employ the arts of conversation, inference and the unexpected to make your messages "wantable" - engaging the nonconscious mind in ways that facts and logic alone cannot.

• Promote curiosity.
• Establish implicit understanding with the audience.
• Imply associations and qualities of your product obliquely through narratives.
• Surprise people and violate expectations to capture attention.

Using art, convey things the audience already knows deep-down but cannot articulate on their own.

The automatic mind relies heavily on mental availability and associations in memory to estimate value and likelihood. Make your product, idea or ask highly accessible through message repetition, vividness and salience.

Link your pitch tightly to positive existing associations that reflect people's highest aspirations - things like freedom, security, status, belonging. Forge neural connections to these conceptual networks.

• We are highly influenced by our perceptions of what is normal, popular and preferred by people similar to us.
• Strategically leverage social proof - using ads, testimonials, expert endorsements and bestselling claims to convey your product or idea as approved, valued and adopted by peers.
• Tap into the strong human need for social and cultural conformity.

• Mere facts, statistics and logical arguments rarely change instinctual, emotional choices and behaviors on their own.
• Carefully trigger appropriate feelings - both negative and positive - to motivate action. First convince on the emotional level, then rationalize with data.
• Understand that logic follows emotion. Moving stories change minds. Data at best reinforces existing feelings.