The Most Common Reason Your Target Says “No” and How to Overcome It. How to influence others from saying “No” to “Yes”

May 2, 2010 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Persuasion Skills 

From “No” to “Yes”

The Most Common Reason Your Target Says “No” and How to Overcome It

“No” is an instant reaction and doesn’t mean anything. People don’t know why they say “no. “ They don’t know why they do what they do; especially in retrospect and they will perform opposite behaviors depending on the words you use in each communication you have. In other words, people are utterly out of control . . . until the Covert Persuasion Expert walks in the door.

In order to understand how to influence others you need to understand how people make decisions, how they remember the past, and how they see the future. This is what has been missing for many and what makes persuasion a “numbers game” for most.

Covert Persuasion Trick
People remember peak experiences (especially the bad ones) and how things end.
When asking about your competitor, elicit the peak experiences and the customer’s last experience. (They wouldn’t be seeing you if they were totally satisfied.)
When changing your customer’s state of mind (if necessary), have him bring you to peak experiences and remember the last time he bought something that was a brilliant purchase.
People experience fear because they don’t see the future clearly. It’s ambiguous. It’s scary. It’s NO . . . until you bring them out there safely!

Key point: When matched with how people actually reported they felt at each interval in the moment (not later that night in a journal entry), memory reflected the end of the memory and not the entire experience. People remember how it finished and generalize it back to the rest of the experience.
Strategy: At each step, know that the person you are talking with does not operate with a video camera in his mind. He operates on his memories. It doesn’t matter if they are accurate or not. Therefore you need to clearly show how not acting (in a way he recalls as being painful in the past) will have dire consequences.
Do: Then you must show how both decisions could play out along with the probabilities of both.

For people who lost money in the stock market, you can understand their interest in staying in the money market. Unfortunately, the reality is that they are probably going to go broke if they do that. You simply can’t tell them to ignore the past. You must point out that it could happen again, though it is more likely that because the environment is not completely different, typical results are more likely.
The research in persuasion is clear. You must point out both possible futures for you to be successful. Otherwise, the person will be destined to go with what he feels instead of what makes sense. The phobia of losing is tough to get past without at least acknowledging and examining those possible outcomes.
Then finish with a very clear picture of a very likely future. If you paint it too rosy, you will both lose. The other person will feel manipulated. If you paint it realistically, there is an excellent chance that he will respond appropriately.

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