<ul><li>We are highly influenced by our perceptions of what is normal, popular and preferred by people similar to us.</li><li>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.</li><li>Tap into the strong human need for social and cultural conformity.</li></ul>

Leverage Peer Preferences  

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.

Shape Experiences via Expectations

It is often easier and more effective in persuasion to change specific behaviors and actions rather than trying to change abstract attitudes, beliefs and feelings.<ul><li>Make the desired action easy, normal, rewarding and congruent for your audience.</li><li>Tweak environmental factors that shape behaviors to cue the wanted response.</li><li>Promote step-by-step attainable actions rather than vague aspirations.</li><li>Remove friction and barriers to the behavior.</li><li>Shape the path of least resistance to guide people effortlessly into your preferred behaviors.</li></ul>

Change Behavior, Not Just Attitudes 

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

Fulfill Innate Motivations

Asking people directly to explain their motivations and reasons for behavior yields limited insights, since much of our decision-making happens outside conscious awareness.<ul><li>Carefully study and observe actual behaviors to infer their emotional and psychological underpinnings.</li><li>Ask indirect questions to unearth true drives and triggers.</li><li>Understand that people often act first for unconscious reasons and rationalize after.</li></ul>

Unearth Motivations Indirectly 

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.

Translate Attributes into Feelings

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

Focus on Feelings Over Facts

The instinctual, automatic part of our brain that controls most decision-making and behavior responds best to certain elements like availability, association, action, emotion, and social proof.To persuade the "lizard brain", craft your messaging to appeal directly to the nonconscious mind rather than just presenting facts and logic.<ul><li>Make your request or product mentally accessible through repetition and salience.</li><li>Link your product or idea to positive associations that people already value deeply like freedom, self-esteem, or achievement.</li></ul>

Persuade The Lizard Brain

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.<ul><li>Promote curiosity.</li><li>Establish implicit understanding with the audience.</li><li>Imply associations and qualities of your product obliquely through narratives.</li><li>Surprise people and violate expectations to capture attention.</li></ul>Using art, convey things the audience already knows deep-down but cannot articulate on their own.

Use Art to Engage the Nonconscious

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.

Stress Availability and Associations

7 Secrets of Persuasion is a book written by James C. Crimmins and published in 2016. It provides an exploration of the science behind the art of persuasion and how people can use this knowledge to their advantage. The book covers a range of topics, including persuasion techniques, the power of emotions, and the neuroscience behind decision-making. It also provides practical advice on how to apply these insights to create persuasive messages that can influence people's decisions.

"Jim Crimmins explains what really drives human behavior. For anyone who hopes to influence what people do or what they buy, Jim's book is required reading." —Keith Reinhard, chairman emeritus of DDB Worldwide and a member of the Advertising Hall of Fame 7 Secrets of Persuasion is the first book to take the latest scientific insights about the mind and apply them to the art of persuasion. It directly translates the revolution in neuroscience that has occurred over the last 40 years into practical new techniques for effective persuasion. Whether your goal is to persuade one person--a husband, child, or boss--or the millions who might purchase an Apple Watch or a Budweiser, 7 Secrets of Persuasion will show you how to: <ul><li>Unearth the motivation that actually changes a behavior like smoking, voting, or buying, even though people don't know why they do what they do.</li><li>Tap into the mental process that gives religious symbols, political symbols, and commercial logos their power.</li><li>Make a promise that is delayed, uncertain, and rational more compelling by making it immediate, certain, and emotional.</li><li>Transform your candidate, service, or product into the one people want by utilizing what psychologists call the "fundamental attribution error."</li></ul>