Persuasion Techniques No Person Can Resist

Whereas compliance manipulation is directed towards behavioral change alone, persuasion techniques are largely centered on getting the individual or group to think and feel good in advance about the new behaviors you want them to adopt.

As a contrasting example, consider a popular campaign to get people to wear seat belts more often in the U.S. This is the “Click it or ticket” campaign. This government initiative utilizes a not-so-covert threat (the ticket) to get people to change a specific behavior (putting on your seat belt).

This is not an example of persuasion techniques, but rather a great demonstration of compliance manipulation. The motorist does not need to change their beliefs or feelings about seat belt safety in order to be moved to action; they simply have to recognize and fear the threat of a traffic ticket!

Of course, one of the primary limitations of conventional compliance manipulation is the fact that once threats, or other external pressures are removed or sufficiently weakened, the manipulation itself fails.

In addition, people obviously do not like to be manipulated, and in fact tend to highly resent such manipulation once it is discovered. Unfortunately, compliance manipulation is still the primary approach to behavioral shifting used by most people (e.g., “If you don’t clean your room, you’ll be grounded for a week!”) Although compliance manipulation has its place, it’s a rather blunt tool in the kit of a sophisticated persuader.

So, when you go back now and see failure after failure and that feeling of frustration builds to the point where suddenly you begin to hear a little voice inside your mind and it’s saying, “How can I really move people to do what I want AND keep on doing it?”, you begin looking for persuasion techniques that work. You want results. You want ongoing buy-in from those you persuade. You want success. You want persuasion techniques no person can resist!

So what’s the secret? If I were to capture it in a single word, the word I would choose is, “agreement”. You must create agreement, and you must do it on many levels— physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. Think of a person being swept up by a powerful river. You must create such an incredibly powerful stream of agreement that it sweeps your prospect off their feet. Overwhelm their defenses with so much agreement that their defenses simply collapse.

How do we accomplish this? After years of studying, practicing and being involved with NLP and hypnosis, the technique that to this day still amazes me is that of physically matching or mirroring another person in order to establish rapport. (This technique is simple to describe, a little more difficult to master in practice; it involves adopting a physiology and physical expression that is reflective of that of the person you want to create a connection with. Utilizing this technique, you simply mirror or ‘pace’ any outward physical expression of the other person, but in a way that is complimentary to the other person, rather than mocking or imitating.)

With a great deal of practice and a deeper understanding of the principles behind rapport building, you can use matching and mirroring to create rapport with others almost ‘at will’. What’s more, you can do it in a way that is so subtle that the other person never even suspects that someone is using a ‘persuasion technique’ on them. It’s truly subliminal.

To the layman, the effect is quite nice— an easy-going, harmonious, warm sense of relating. However, true professionals who understand the inner dynamics of what people mistakenly call ‘resistance’, recognize matching and mirroring as an incredibly powerful type of trance induction made all the more powerful because it need not utilize words at all.

Few people truly realize how ‘paralanguage’ (all the communication that happens between people outside of spoken words) carries the vast majority of the message perceived by others. When we match and/or mirror another person’s physiology and general manner, we send a message to their subconscious mind. That message is, “It’s okay to relax and let your defenses down. You are with someone who is like you and supports you. Someone you can trust.”

Beyond matching and mirroring, there are other powerful subliminal persuasion techniques. One of my favorites is the proper utilization of questions to break a pattern, or re-direct a person’s focus. Questions are difficult to resist because the human mind automatically sets about answering them once they have been asked. For instance, if I ask you the question, “What’s one thing you can really feel good about in your life right now?”, your state is very likely to change. This happens simply because your mind begins to search for that answer.

Another great approach is the use of metaphor or storytelling. Persuasion specialists often over-complicate this one when, in fact, you can begin to use it very effectively almost immediately. How? Tell a story about how you reached the conclusion you want them to reach and do it through purely positive description.

Here’s an example: “I was sitting at home the other day and I began thinking to myself, ‘Boy, learning how to persuade people is really such an important skill. When you learn persuasion skills that work, you can use them in every area of your life. Imagine that! You can make a decision to learn and grow, and then bring others with you. Isn’t that great?!’"

Really, when it comes down to it, becoming a master of persuasion is first about understanding some key principles and then applying a core of techniques that work, like those I’ve listed above. The rest- things like embedded commands, shifting tense, utilizing metaprograms, and so on— those things are icing on the cake. Focus first on the ‘magical basics’ and you can accomplish amazing things.

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