Liking

Another of the 6 laws of influence. This one is the obvious one, if you like someone you are more likely to be influence by that person. NLP really comes to work here by using NLP to quickly build rapport with a person and thus getting them to like you.

Whenever you get door to door slaes med they often refer to you as mate or buddy even although you have just met as they are trying to make out you are some how friend already.

Tupperware parties and the like are great examples of how Liking law is used to sell products. You have a party and invite all your friends around and sell them stuff. As they are your friends and like you they are more easily influenced into purchasing the product from you. Or may be buying as to feel they are helping you out. Works especially well if a couple of people in the party buy items earlier on, as it will use the effect of social proof in combination with the liking law of influence.

This should be an easily one for all you NLP 'ers to use an also seen before can be combined with the other laws of influence in the right circumstances.

Social Proof

You will see examples of the use of social proof every day. Before we start with the discussion I will name some examples to wet your appetite.

A busker places in some money into their hat to give the impression others have already tipped him.

The advertisers tell us it that it is the fast selling and most popular product in the market.

The door to door sales man who tell you that your neighbors have all bought the product.

Some night clubs purposefully create long queues outside their night club in order to make it look popular and give the social proof to potential customers. Even when there may be plenty of space inside.

There are also some negative responses to social proof as well. There have been case where victims of violent crime have been ignored in the street. Why? because no one else is stopping so I won't either. Experiments have shown if one person stops then more people we also stop, as they have the proof of others it is the right thing to do.

So why does this law work. Basically we have learnt through experience we are less likely to make mistakes if we follow other people. In fact kids learn to do things by mimicry. So social proof is essentially mimicry on a more adult level. We have learnt the right thing to do by following the crowd and have seen that not following the crowd can be dangerous.

In the case of the injured victim, if no one else is helping him then may be the know something I don't about this situation. Surely if they did need help some one else would have stopped by now. Not if we all thought the same thing!! There is an assumption with social proof that other people know best so the right thing to do is follow them.

Commitment and Consistency

This is the second law of influence and another one you see every day but just don't realise it.
The idea behind this law is that every one tries to be consistent and keeps to their commitments.

The best example is the one from the book about Christmas presents. Nearly every year there is a must have child's Christmas present and nearly every year they run out of stock before Christmas. So you promise you buy them this X present, but it turns out you can't get in time and thus have to buy them something with the promise you will get them the other X present after Christmas when there is more stock. And there always seems to be loads more stock after Christmas! To keep your commitment to your child you you buy them a SECOND present after Christmas. It is well believed that this type of event is done on purpose by the toy manufacturers. You probably find where the X present is suppose to be, but sold out, are toys sold by the said manufacturer. They basically get to sell two presents to you at this time of year in order for you to appear to keep your commitment and appear consistent to your child.

There are also other laws of influence being used here on your child, social proof as every one wants one and scarcity, they are limited amounts available, thus having one for Christmas will make them special.

Same thing is done with surveys. You sign a survey or petition to say you are against 'Animal Cruelty' then when they later contact you to ask for money in order to prevent cruelty how can you say no without appearing inconsistent, and without backing out of the commitment you made on the survey. There is proof that if you get someone to write down their commitment they are more likely to keep to that commitment!! Powerful stuff!!

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.