You may find many but ideally there are eight most effective and useful persuasive techniques that you can follow to change the mind of anyone, even the person who oppose your views and opinions the most.
Persuasion is done at the best when it works at the subconscious mind. This is where you have to hit in order to yield top results. You will have to understand the other person and use the techniques properly.
The 8 techniques
Here are some of the best persuasion techniques that are based on a few specific principles. All these techniques have the best real life applications.
Foot in the door principle:
This is the best technique to follow that involves asking for a smaller favor before asking for a nigger one. This will help you to make the other person steadfast to helping you. That means the other person will have agreed on helping you technically and therefore you can further ask for the bigger favor as a continuation of this agreement later on.
For example:
- When a tourist asks you for directions first and then ask you to walk you down rather than the other way round or
- Admitting your irresponsible behavior to miss your class and ask for the notes of that class and then for the entire semester gradually.
Door in the face principle:
This is one of the persuasive techniques, which is just the opposite of foot in the door principle. That means you first ask for the bigger favor. If the person denies, then you can for something that is relatively smaller and easier to provide.
For example:
- You ask your classmate to tutor you about the class that you have missed or not studies at all. They deny due to time constraints which is when you ask for the notes and it is granted or
- When you follow up your denied request for a $100 loan with a $20 dollar, most of the time it will be granted.
Anchoring principle: In most decision making there is a cognitive bias present. For example, to know whether a product is good you usually compare it to a similar product to make the decision.
In real life its application can be:
- You come across a product marked $10,000 and bargain with the salesman and succeed in buying it for $7,000. You think you made a good bargain but actually the value of the product may be much lower than $7,000. Here, the initial price of 10,000$ acts as the anchor so that you perceive anything lower than that as a ‘good’ deal or
- It can be same when you bargain for a job at 10% higher than the initial wage offered which is still much lower than your actual value.
Some other type of persuasive techniques that you can follow includes:
- Commitment and consistency principle: If you can commit someone to do something small, you can make them consistent in their beliefs and actions based on their initial commitment.
- Social proof principle: This is one of the most noticeable persuasion techniques where it works on the principle that ‘Everyone believes in it and therefore it must be true.’
- Authority principle is another you can follow as people typically look up to authority in any aspect or subject. Make yourself seem to be the most authoritative source to them to take you a long way.
- Scarcity principle: This is principle that makes others feel the urgency. You have seen salesmen urging to make a purchase saying that the discount offer in it is only for that very day!
Last but not least, reciprocation is a principle followed as people typically feel obliged to return favors if they are made to feel indebted.
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