PRE-SUASION: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade
Author: Robert Cialdini
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Pages: 413; Price: Rs 699
Rs.699
Pages: 413
From Dale Carnegie’s bestseller, “How to Win Friends and Influence People” (1936) which has reportedly sold over 30 million copies world-wide, through Zig Ziglar and an endless list of writers in between and beyond, the not-so-gentle art of getting your own way has captured the anxious attention of millions: all of us are selling something! For, whether it is formal advertising or word-of-mouth – each has its own set of methods to “persuade” the “target” into crystallizing a need that was not felt before. Life Insurance “advisers” come to mind most easily, or rather, uneasily.
So, amidst the veritable flood of books on persuasion, negotiation, and all-that-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-selling, what more can be said that has not already been said? Maybe a step back from the challenge area? Could we do something that could set the balance in favour of the persuader, before the actual persuasion starts? Robert Cialdini in his latest presentation thinks so. His earlier books ‘Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion’ (1984) and the one he co-authored with Noah Goldstein and Steven Martin, ‘Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be More Persuasive’ (2008) have also played the same theme: Influencing others isn’t a matter of luck or magic, it is science. Cialdini claims that there are proven ways to help one to be more successful as a marketer/seller/persuader; he also feels that our ability to understand the factors that that affect people’s choices is “surprisingly poor”.
Pre-suasion is a near-facetious coinage emphasising the need for a battle plan prior to entering the arena – ground that has been covered by an untold number of books already. Dale Carnegie, for instance, talked about the importance of a person’s name and the necessity of ‘listening’; get the other person to talk about something he/she is passionate about. Before getting to this stage, Carnegie insists upon improving your own outlook – show interest in people, offer genuine praise, smile. Cialdini says that all this is “wise counsel”.
According to him, the present book adds to the body of behavioural science information – thus identifying “what savvy communicators do before delivering a message to get it accepted”. It is possible, he says, to learn scientifically established techniques that allow any of us to be more influential. The emphasis is on the sharp timing i.e. the science-based evidence helps not just in what best to say to persuade but also when best to say it; to learn how to recognise and monitor the natural emergence of opportune moment of influence; and to create those moments. “The individual who know how to time a request, recommendation or proposal properly will do exceedingly well.” If only!
Cialdini’s has condensed persuasive influence into six broad principles viz. Reciprocation (Give something so that they will want to give you something in return); Social Proof (people tend to look to those around them to guide their decisions and actions – calling to mind George Santayana’s famous statement: “Man is a gregarious animal, and much more so in his mind than in his body. He may like to go alone for a walk, but he hates to stand alone in his opinions.”); Commitment and Consistency (People are more likely to do something after they have agreed to it in some form – Dale Carnegie’s Principle 14 is to get them to say “Yes” to a series of questions and when you ask them the crucial question they are most likely to agree); Liking (People are more likely to favour people similar to themselves); Authority (People follow the advice or example of “experts” – we could have excluded Amitabh Bachchan’s endorsement of cement and Hema Malini’s on water purifiers but Cialdini says that the appearance of authority is effective – even if it is illegitimate); and finally the creation of Scarcity (the fear of the item not being available if you don’t buy it now) adds to the persuasive force. There are other research-based suggestions by the author … and let’s say marketing and sales personnel decide that they could master them all. What happens then? If what Cialdini says is true then we are placing a very powerful tool in the hands of people who can and will use it indiscriminately.
How then do we at the receiving end guard ourselves against, say, unethical practices? Against unscrupulous strategies of corporate houses or slippery tactics of the salesman? Where, in these circumstances, does ethical end and unethical begin? The situation lends itself to as many shades of grey as there are salespeople out there. And the manufacturers? The doctoring of products to enhance their addiction capacity (See the 1999 Al Pacino-Russel Crowe starrer: “The Insider”) or the use of subliminal appeals to prospective buyers, or genetic modification / steroid-based intervention – are all part of marketing strategy. Add to this the capacity of the marketer to delve into the users’ habits and tendencies as suggested by Cialdini…and you have the marketing horrors proportionate to Huxley’s “Brave New World”.
Cialdini has a chapter devoted to ethics in marketing and he calls it “Pre-pre-suasive Consideration” implying that ethics is a sort of precondition in situations of influence of one person over another. A major submission in this chapter is: “When these tools are used unethically as weapons of influence … any short-term gains will almost invariably be followed by long-term losses.” This assumes that humankind has suddenly woken from its Niemöllerian inertia. Chances are (and one sincerely hopes) that “Pre-suasion” will remain a good book of possibilities – just as all the Good Books of the world contain possibilities of universal brotherhood, and reaching out…but have failed in stopping our mutual annihilation so far.
