This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Greetings, what's up and welcome. My name is Chris Guillebeau. You are listening to Side Hustle School, beginning a new week classroom episode, the six factors of persuasion, part one. Episode 1199, how about that? Almost to 1200, which will be, well, I guess that will be tomorrow.
This is also week number two of the Money Tree launch. I was supposed to be on tour to 40 different cities. I was looking forward to telling you about, let's see, being in New York, Boston, Washington, DC, this week, et cetera. Well, I'm not in any of those places, but I am every single day speaking to lots of listeners, readers, groups across the country virtually. I'm doing that through a variety of formats, daily Instagram live, my new YouTube channel, Twitter, email, Zoom, elsewhere, through the website moneytreebook.com and more.
I really want this book to get out to as many people as possible. I truly believe it can help a lot of people during this difficult time. So once again, it's called the Money Tree. Now here on the program, last week was all about the power of your own small army, a relevant topic to me in this age of no book touring. So this week and next week, we're going to talk about persuasion.
This is a topic that is so important, it is therefore divided into two weeks. If you can learn some basic psychological principles of selling, understanding why people make purchasing decisions, what causes them to say yes, it's something you can apply over and over for the rest of your side hustling journey. So this is not going to be relevant just for one thing, it's going to be relevant for years to come. And I think of it a lot like learning some basic tech skills. If you don't have to be a programmer, if you're not a coder, if you're not oriented that way, that's okay.
But if you can learn your way around WordPress and how to set up an email campaign, just using some simple basic tools, you'll have a major advantage over the previous version of yourself that didn't know those things. So you can think of it as minimum viable knowledge, high impact knowledge, a little knowledge goes a long way. And we'll apply that today and next week to the topic of persuasion. Now, by the way, I did say selling, I did use that word selling, it's okay to do that. After all, sometimes I worry I'm actually too soft and I'm always teaching people about building relationships and you don't have to be super salesy, et cetera.
But I worry sometimes I'm too soft because it is okay to make money. In fact, that's the whole point of this program. A lot of people are struggling right now. A lot of people are in debt and facing this time of uncertainty. It's okay to make money, I wanna help you do that.
I want you to be able to sell your products and services to present your offers with confidence because after all, if you have made something that can help people, you're doing them a disservice if you don't try to get it to them. Okay, so when I say persuasion, what do I mean? I want to right up front acknowledge the work of Robert Cialdini, whose classic book "Influence" has affected the way a lot of people view this concept. And some of what I say here will come from his model. I will then build on it, particularly in the second week of the series.
And I'm also gonna present his characteristics in a different order that I feel is more logical or at least more logical for our purposes. So persuasion is the art of getting people to believe or act in the way you want them to. And as applied to marketing, it is effectively the art of making the sale, which begins with convincing people that they need, not want, need what you are selling. And the more they feel that way, the less effort will be required to get them to say yes. How you do this is both an art and a science, but we're gonna actually talk mostly about the science.
Cialdini and other researchers discovered a few specific characteristics that most influence purchasing decisions. So all things being equal, the more of these characteristics you have on your offer, and it's not just about them being present, it's the quality of them, the stronger they are, the more people will respond. If you have an offer for a product you know is helpful and that offer is not performing well, you might want to look at it in the context of these characteristics. And we will look at all of them in some detail, both what they are and how you demonstrate them in your offer, along with any of your messaging, your sales copy, your emails, et cetera. You wanna think about these things as you create both your product and your pitch.
So the first characteristic is authority. People have to believe that you are a trustworthy expert. Just imagine you're going to a doctor with a health issue, and that person, the doctor, he or she says, you know what, I'm having the same problem you are. I really wish I knew what to do. How would you feel?
Like that might be relatable to some degree, but it's not authoritative, right? When you go to the doctor, you want that doctor to be authoritative. If you have a problem, you need it solved. Authority can be combined with relatability, but ultimately, authority is more important. If you're trying to demonstrate both of them, you might explain how you have walked in that person's shoes, but not just on that, how you have come out better on the other side.
That's the key point. It's not just being like them. Again, you go to the doctor, you want them to be an authority. It's nice if they're relatable, but ultimately, you want them to solve your problem. You'd rather go to a doctor that's kind of rude and standoffish, but actually helps you, than go to one who's a really nice person, but doesn't have the solution for your problem.
So how do you demonstrate authority? The classic example is the white lab coat. Do you remember those commercials? I'm sure they still have them. Could be for a medical product or even some kind of laundry detergent.
It could be for anything, a cleaning solution, whatever it is, but they have this advertisement and you see somebody who looks like a scientist or a doctor or some vague figure of authority, and you think your mind makes the connection, that person is qualified. They must have a master's degree in evaluating different detergents. That's just kind of what you think. Your mind goes to that shortcut. So your potential buyer/ideal customer needs to perceive you in that white lab coat as it applies to what you're selling.
If you're not confident in the promise your product makes, why would a prospective customer feel enough confidence to purchase? So that's authority, probably the most important of all, at least on a foundational level. Now let's talk about commitment and consistency. These two things kind of go hand in hand. And when I say commitment and consistency, I'm actually not talking about your commitment and your consistency.
I'm talking about the commitment and consistency of your buyers, of your readers, followers, subscribers, prospects, whoever those people are who are considering your offer, who might be a good fit, but they haven't yet crossed over. So the principle here is people like to be consistent with their previous actions. And they feel a sense of dissonance when they are inconsistent. Now here's an example from Cialdini who explains this best. He says consistency is activated by looking for and asking for small initial commitments.
In one famous set of studies, researchers found rather unsurprisingly, that very few people would be willing to erect an unsightly wooden board on their front lawn to support a drive safely campaign in their neighborhood. However, in a similar neighborhood close by, four times as many homeowners indicated that they would be willing to erect this billboard. Why? Because 10 days previously, they had agreed to place a small postcard in the front window of their homes that signaled their support for a drive safely campaign. That small card was the initial commitment that led to a 400% increase in a much bigger, but still consistent change.
Isn't that interesting? Now think about this, how do you cultivate this principle by getting people to make small commitments such as joining your email list? This also reinforces the principle of reciprocity that we'll look at later. If you give people something, you give them some helpful information, a tool, a video course, whatever it is, then they feel this need to reciprocate in some way. But focusing here on consistency, when it comes time to sell something, if you've done your job well, the sales process is just another touch point in an extended sequence of commitments.
Your ideal customers are pre-qualified and ready to buy. In a moment, we'll cover one more characteristic for the first half of the two weeks and you'll get your assignment for this week. First, I would like to thank our sponsor, thank you so much sponsor, for making all of this series completely free to you. [Music]
All right, we are back. And we're gonna talk about this next characteristic.
We went from authority to consistency and commitment. Now let's talk about social proof. Social proof also very important. Whenever you buy something, or often when you buy something at least, you are worried about making the wrong choice. So you want reassurance from people you trust, or at least from neutral parties.
So I'll give you an example here. I recently talked with James Clear, who is the author of "Atomic Habits". And this is his debut book, it did fabulously well. His debut book has sold more than a million copies in the first year, tremendous, tremendous success. So we were talking about what worked well for him.
And one of the things he said that worked well was his carefully constructed email campaign during the launch week. So he'd already told everyone about the book in advance, of course, but on the first day of release, or maybe it was the second day, he was on the Today Show. But that same morning, he got the video, got the video from his appearance, he embedded it in a second email and sent it out. Now this reinforced the sense in his community that the book was a big deal. Some of his readers might be thinking, oh, this guy's a nice guy, he's a blogger, he's helpful, he's written a book.
But then they're like, oh, he was on the Today Show. Okay, that reinforces both authority and social proof. He also included lots of links to other interviews he was doing, other people that were talking about his book, just trying to show again that this was kind of an event. It wasn't just a book that was out, it was a big thing. So how do you do this if you can't get on the Today Show?
You do it by using testimonials. Why do so many websites have testimonials? Because they work. They are effective in communicating to a potential customer that other people like them endorse this method, person or product. Now here's a tip, whenever possible, you wanna ask for testimonials to be specific.
If you've got customers that have been happy, you wanna go to them and say, hey, can I tell your story? Ask them to be specific. Don't just say, you know, say something nice about me. Don't just say, send me a testimonial. I want you to consider these two options here.
Imagine that you're looking for a real estate agent and you're looking on this person's page and you see a testimonial that says, Sherry is a great real estate agent. And then you see a testimonial that says, I listed my home with Sherry and it's sold in two days at a record price. Do you see that difference? That second one is so much more specific. We wanna trust in the outcome and the results.
It's nice that Sherry is a great real estate agent. It's far more important, far more consequential, far more trust building to know that somebody listed their home with Sherry and it's sold in two days at a record price as a potential buyer, as someone who's considering hiring her. So let's summarize. We want to see that authority. We want to be led along the way through a series of small commitments and we want to know we're not the only one.
Other people like us have taken that big leap to press the buy button or sign that contract and they are better off because of it. Those are the first three of six characteristics of persuasion. Next week, I'll give you the other three, along with more examples of how you can use these principles to make your life much easier and your offers convert much better. So for now, it's your turn. Each classroom feature will include an assignment.
Your assignment today is to make a small but significant improvement, a tweak you might call it, in each of the three areas we talked about. So that is authority, commitment and consistency and social proof. What can you do to change just one thing in your messaging, your sales copy, the description of your offer, some part of it that demonstrates more authority, encourages more commitment and consistency and provides more social proof. You can read notes for this episode and every classroom episode, in fact, at sidehustleschool.com/classroom. I hope you enjoyed it.
It was once again, episode 1199. I'll be back tomorrow, episode 1200 and beyond. Thank you so much. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School.
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From the Onward Project.
