3 days ago I just read a chapter in the book “Influence.” The chapter talks about “concessions.” The book is all about how to influence people, a.k.a, how to get your own way, a.ka, how to manipulate people

This particular chapter teaches you to go in with a HIGH demand with the expectation that the person will reject it. Here’s the neat part…

It’s proven that when someone declines you, a small part of them feels a bit guilty for doing so. Now, if you come back at them and DECREASE your demand and re-position it, they’re mind thinks “Oh…he’s willing to work with me, he’s making exceptions” - I should say yes.

Here’s the example used in the book to explain this (I only roughly remember it):

As a research experiment, a few people set out on a campus to ask students the following question:

“Would you be willing to commit 2 hours of your time to help guide and mentor a young child?”

If I remember correctly, about 15% said yes and the rest said no.

As a part of the research, they changed it up. Now the LEAD question became:

“Would you be willing to commit 1 day a month to guide and mentor a young child?”

Not to their surprise and overwhelmingly large percentage said no. However, they had a follow-up “decreased” request:

“OK…we understand, that is a LOT of time, how about just 2 hours ONE TIME deal to help mentor a young kid really in need?”

Guess what the results were?

A 233% increase in the number of people that said “Yes.” From 15% to 50%! (Again, I don’t remember the exact numbers but the increase was HUGE).

The only difference was that they changed the LEAD question.

Why am I talking to you about this today?

A) It’s a freaking awesome strategy, I just realized how often I personally use it without even knowing.

B) I just realized how often it’s used on ME.

Also, the day after I read that chapter, I witnessed in-front of my very own eyes, the concession sales technique being used and it worked amazingly.

My roommate in Mumbai, Ankur and I were at dinner and he got a phone call from someone who was at the house trying to deliver a package (but we were not there).

Ankur asked if he could bring the package where we were and the man declined.

Ankur flipped on the salesman and pushed hard, but the man insisted that he had “other things to do…”

Immediately Ankur offered him a concession (realizing that the REAL problem was not that the guy was busy but that he did not want to pay the fare to come to where we were).

Ankur offered to pay the taxi fees for his commute if he would bring the package that night itself to where we were eating dinner.

The result? 30 minutes later, Ankur was collecting his package!

I laughed after seeing this and then also realized how many times Ankur has used these mind jedi tricks on ME. I’ll give you another example of when he used this very example on me.

Ankur does design work for me sometimes. About a year back, I was not happy with his design work and actually got upset. I was about to “fire” him or at least pull my projects from him and he again put his salesman ship hat on.

I told him that I could no longer afford his high rates for the quality of work and that I was going elsewhere.

He did not want to lose a client so his next offering was: “Fine, I want you to be happy with me and I refuse to lose you as a client - you don’t have to pay for this or pay me whatever you want, but I need you to be happy.”

How does someone say NO to that? Of course I said OK and since then he’s collected MANY new projects from me.

I can give you yet another example from when Ankur (again) used these tricks on me (I really need to be careful of this guy).

Again, for design work, he quoted me a price and I said “WO! way too much buddy…”

His concession:

Don’t pay it to me now, just pay me over 6 months…all of a sudden the cost was really just 1/6th to me. I said “that sounds fair, let’s do it.”

Again, MY thinking is that “Man, he’s really willing to work with me, how can I say no?”

So, there you have it Fighters - use the concession technique. Use it wisely and for good only.

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They like their own…

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What You’re About To Learn: Learn how to present your ideas to others so it gets accepted. If you present it as YOUR idea, most won’t like the idea right off the bat.

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A very interesting lesson I’m learning the more I dive into the “sales” role in our company has been how to position my sales pitch. I’m using these strategies to close “corporate accounts” but the strategies are not different for your everyday life (I use these new findings with my friends and family all the time).

The basic lesson is that when you want someone to do something, it’s your idea, not theirs, right? Your natural instinct is to go in and “convince” people, to make a case for why they should agree with you.

You’re going about it the wrong way, just like I always did…

I’ve since learned the art of “leading people into my own decisions…”

Don’t Convince Someone, Lead Someone…

Think of it this way, how likely are you to buy something when it’s YOUR own idea rather than if it’s someone else hounding on you to buy it.

Or, how likely are you to “start exercising” because you have yourself decided you need to lose weight, rather than having your friend tell you that you’re fat. You’ll actually resent your friend rather than listen to them.

Same goes with every other decision you need someone to make - ESPECIALLY at work. Are you trying to convince your boss to do something? Well, good luck, you’ll likely have very little success.

The art of getting your ideas accepted…

Don’t come right out and present your idea and start defending it. Do the opposite. Ask probing questions, questions that lead to answers which obviously lead to your idea.

Great sales people are the masters at doing this with Yes/No questions.

Let’s Assume You’re Trying To Sell Someone Something…

Let’s say it’s a “sales team management” software. You call a client and want to initiate a sale. Instinct would be to start telling them about all the great features and all the problems it solves, right?

Try this instead…

Start the call by asking them questions…

Background Information:

-> How many sales agents do you have?
-> What do they currently do the manage their leads?
-> etc…

PROBING Questions:

-> Wouldn’t you agree that “managing your follow-up calls” is a big problem John?
* Notice how I didn’t ask “what are your problems” but am leading John towards talking about a problem I have a solution for.

* I’d like ask some follow-up probing questions to his answer based on his reply - always keeping the conversation pointing towards problems my software solves.

-> John, you’re saying that you your inefficiencies probably mean you forget to follow-up with 30% of your customers right? If you even closed 10% of those, that means you’re missing out on 3% of overall sales - I guess that amounts to about $100,000 in revenue PER sales agent?

Wow, really sorry to hear that, that’s definitely a problem and I can see why it hurts so much!

* Notice how I’m starting to get John to really THINK about the problem and how bit it really is in the sense of lost revenue.

-> John, you’re probably also having multiple agents calling the same people right?

* Leads to another feature of the software…

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Anyways, you get the point. The above questions are all LEADING to John thinking up his OWN solution. John will probably come out of this thinking - “Yea! Wow, if someone could just create some automated solution for this, I’d save so much money!”

Congratulations! You’ve officially GIVEN YOUR idea to John and he just sold HIMSELF.

I know I just used a business example, but think about it - you can use things like this anywhere with anyone.

The basic idea is to always “LEAD people into a decision that you want” rather than to ask them to “MAKE a decision on that you want…”

Being a fighter means having full control on the situations around you and being able to fight for your own ideas is a huge part of it.

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