Laws influence

Going to write a little bit on the 6 laws of influence and show some recent examples I have seen. Plus hope I can show the linkage into NLP as well.

A very famous book written by Robert Cialdini called "Influence: Science and Practice".
In this book he discusses study of various influence techniques used in sales and expands on them to the wider world.




He managed to break this down into 6 laws and influence.

1. Reciprocation
2. Commitment and Consistency
3. Social proof
4. Liking
5. Authority
6. Scarcity

Lets look at reciprocation. Very simply if someone does something for you you tend to feel obliged to return the favor. For example I buy you a drink you may feel you need to buy me a drink to restore the balance. Sales men try this one regularly

"You sign up today and I will give you £30 worth of gift vouchers". This is the power of reciprocation, the first law. They are trying to make you view the world as I give you £30 and in return as a favor you just need to sign the deal etc. The truth is always you are doing them the favor, don't let them forget that when they are trying to sell you something.

You could always try reverse reciprocation next time you have a door to door salesman.

"Let me do you a favor, I am 100% not interested and I would only be wasting your time. Now would you do me the favor in return by not giving me the hard sell and moving on".

They will probably still want to carry on, but according to the rules of reciprocation and consistency they must allow you to sell them something back. This will obviously disrupt their sales patter, which will most like be based on the 6 laws and some NLP. However, it will be scripted and any deviation off the script will throw their plans into chaos as it is unlikely they actually understand their sales scripts true workings and won't be able to improvise. If you haven't anything to sell then just start asking about their personal life or finances. Why not they are probably asking about yours in order to sell their product?

I will cover off each of the laws in following blogs.