How to Use the "6 Weapons of Influence" to Sell Anything Fast

Good morning. I'm not sure that there is another book that I have read more or applied more in my life than Robert Cialdini's influence and all of his books influence persuasion the whole thing studying social psychology led by my you know introduction to Robert Cialdini's work has been I think the deepest study that I've I've done. It's certainly in my all-time top five of of uh books. And as I'm looking back, this is, you know, journal number five.

I've been journaling almost every day for over 30 years. And that's what we're doing here is going through my journals and seeing the insights that are still applicable today. It's been amazing to uh to see. But one of the things that I do is when I take a book, when I something really is impactful, I'll take the book and I'll break down the core ideas into a mental model that I'll take it and I'll create in my journal worksheets where I'll kind of apply that mental model to the things that I'm doing.

And I've done so many of these over 30 years. Here's one in, you know, 1997 that I was using how to use the six weapons of influence to sell your house for top dollar fast. I was doing a lot of of stuff in the real estate uh world, but you could easily say how to use the six weapons of influence to sell anything fast. And so I would look at and I would list the the weapon of influence.

The first is reciprocity. And that means that this sense that we have among other humans that if they do us a favor, we owe them a favor. If you buy something for me, I owe you something. If you do a favor, I I owe you a favor.

And by you can trigger these because all of them elicit what Robert Cialdini calls a click were response that you hear this sound and immediately you are automatically activated into whatever your role in this uh in these social psychology frameworks here. So how I would look through and I would say how can we use reciprocation and it always means leading you go first. It's almost the best thing. Joe Polish has a great book called a little book called life gives to the giver and his big book is what's in it for them.

Both of those things are focusing on the same thing by doing things for people first. So I look at the I shared a couple of examples of how we used this to tell the stories of people who needed to sell their house and we we activate reciprocation by leading with a concession. I need to sell these six Muskoka home sites in the next 30 days and I'm willing to sell them for 33% below their current appraised value. We're leading.

I'm giving you I'm going first. I'm willing to give you 33% off of the actual value. That is an encouragement for people to now [cough and clears throat] want to see if this is something that's for them. Liking is the second weapon of influence.

And that means that we tend to do things, we tend to be more influenced by people that we like. And that's where the more you can tell people or be uh reflect who you really are or do it in a human way in a connecting kind of way. You're so far ahead. That's why we always start those ads.

This is I'm just sharing kind of the framework of how I got to where those things come from. So that ad started out I'm Don Naylor. We've been developing property in Muskoka over 30 years or when we were selling the the townhouse uh that I the model that I showed it's you know I'm my name's Tim Albert my wife and I have always wanted to live in the country we found our dream home telling the story humanizing making your situation real elicits liking scarcity. This is a powerful one because people want what they can't have.

We're wired to trig be triggered by something that is in diminishing supply. So one of the ways that we can do that is to create a auction type of environment where something is probably going to be gone. We would send we would get people all to come to the lots that Don was selling at the same time, 2 PM. We would get people to come to the open uh house that we were doing for any of the homes that we've used this process on.

We'd get everybody to come till two and we were future pace that we're going to be selling the home on Sunday night. So we let people know this is there's a scarcity there. And for me using a real scarcity is a u is a thing. There's a danger of what Robert Cialdini calls smuggling in scarcity.

And I don't think if you put arbitrary things like you see in marketing a lot of times is I don't know how long we can keep this up at this price or we you know get it now because we might take it down. But the arbitrary things are they're smuggling in scarcity. They're not real. There's a difference between I might take this down.

I might change my mind. I might not offer you this best price if you don't take action now trying to scare people into scarcity. But there's a better thing of when there's a real and imminent danger of missing out on something. m.

m. then you miss. That's a real scarcity you have when we're forced with a decision that can't wait. If you, you know, put any kind of delay in something, people always think, "Oh, we can wait till later or maybe we'll check this out."

But bringing scarcity into everything you're doing is an important thing. Authority, that's a powerful weapon of influence. And it's something that people always look at. People look at credibility when they're making a decisions.

So having a having a credible real authority around something is a is much more powerful than an arbitrary and subjective thing. That's why what Dawn was saying with those lots was 33% off blowout sale. But there was no indication of what that 33% off was. He was running those ads all summer with no luck because people often think, well, 33% off of what?

Right off your arbitrary inflated price that you've just decided that you're going to lower it by 33%. So, I learned combined this with Gerry Spence, how to argue and win every time, the power of telling the truth. That what we did was we got the home uh we got the lots appraised. Appraisal, an official appraisal brings an element of authority.

It's a stamp of officialness to something. So, that the actual appraised value is this. and you've got a chance to get it for 33% below the current appraised value. And we told the story about why in integrating all of these first four weapons of influence into the story right from the very beginning.

Commitment and consistency. This is a powerful one. It kind of fits with if somebody starts down a path, we're more likely to continue in a way that's that is consistent with that path or that choice that we've made. So, I use this all the time.

m. There's a commitment and consistency draw that I asked for this. I must be interested in this. and we use that all the time.

That's why when we're running ads for a uh when we're selling anything, ebikes, fences, all of the things, one of the things that we use most reliably is a catalog because it triggers commitment and consistency. If somebody asks for a catalog, it's pretty likely that they're outwardly expressing an interest in something that they're going to move towards. And it sends a message to their subconscious that, oh, this must be really important to us. And so, you're more likely to act in a manner that's consistent with that commitment that you've made.

And then social proof is the sixth weapon of influence. Now when you look at it that social proof is when we look to other people to see that we're on the right track here. And if you come to these lots and there are all of these other people uh at the same time going on the tour of the lots or coming to the townhouse, you take your cues that other people are here and value this. This must be valuable.

And that reinforces the scarcity that we might lose this now. Now you've got this perfect storm of influence that you completely engineered by processing it, thinking it through in your journal on the page, and applying it to whatever you're selling. This is going to be a big influence. I can't recommend Robert Cialdini's books, Influence and Persuasion, as a foundation for you.

I got a funny email the other day from Rick. It says, "Dean, question. Are you saying you can teach me to make fat stacks by hanging out at a pub drinking coffee like you?" And I laughed to myself because I was thinking, you know, yes, I I can do that.

That's what I do. Is the funny thing, what I really realized is that every idea that I've had, every dollar that I've made over the last 30 years has gone through my brain, through my pen onto a piece of paper in my journal before it went out into the real world. And if I can turn people on to that activity as a driver for what to do, what to think about, what to ask yourself to draw out, what the next most valuable action is for you, and how to find the most profitable things that you can install in your business. I'm all for it.

So this Friday at 100 pm I'm going to do for the first time a 50-Minute Profit Finder workshop and you're going to join me live on Zoom and we're going to go through a 50-minute exercise. Bring your pen. Bring a notebook or piece of paper. And I'm going to guide you through a thinking process that will help you identify where the lowest hanging fruit is in your business and maybe some fruit that you didn't even know was there.

But I'm going to show you where to look for it. So, it's free. It's for you. m.

this Friday. Just watch. Go to What did we call the website, Josh? >> 50-Minute Profit Finder.

m.