Mastering the Principles of Influence with Dr. Robert Cialdini
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That's a fool's game to think that the same approach is going to work on every individual and every population and every set. What you do is you look to what principle is in, do you have true scarcity here? You truly uniqueness is truly dwindling available. You bring that, you have true social proof. You've got, you know, popularity and market share. You bring that to the surface.

Is it authority? You've got all these experts who can testify into the worth of what you're doing. Bring that to the surface. Those are the way I would do it. You're a detective of influence that way. And then nobody is deceived. You're just pointing to things that are truly in the situation that steer them correctly. And that's persuasion. You're not changing the merits. You're just changing the delivery system you're using for them.

Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields, like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership, to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the Home Service Millionaire, Tommy Mello.

Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you. First, I want you to implement what you learned today. To do that, you'll have to take a lot of notes, but I also want you to fully concentrate on the interview. So I asked the team to take notes for you. Just text NOTES to 888-526-1299. That's 888-526-1299. And you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode.

Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, Elevate, please go check it out. I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million company in 22 states. Just go to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast to get your copy. Now let's go back into the interview.

All right, guys, welcome back to the Home Service Expert. Today is a really, really special day. Robert Cialdini's in the house here at A1 Garage Door Service. And the way that I first heard about Robert was...

ironically in my master's program at U of a, uh, and as those that don't know, Mr. Robert here is a ASU professor. So U of a university of Arizona was teaching us about influence from Robert Chardini, an ASU professor, which is not common, but, uh, we watched all kinds of videos and learned all about influence. And that's when I got introduced to the book influence. And now there's persuasion. There's, um,

Yes, 50 Scientific Ways to Get to Yes. What other books do you have? We have one called The Small Big. What are the smallest changes you can make in your persuasive approach that will produce the biggest impact on your persuasive success? Need to read that one. Very, very, I've been looking forward to this podcast for years. Robertson expert on marketing,

management, development, leadership, world-renowned speaker, one of the best authors of all time. And what I love about what you do is you actually do case study. You prove everything down to the science of why it works. You're based right here in Tempe. Right. I bumped into you once at LA Fitness. I've known about you for a long time, since 2010. And then Joe Polish introduced us. Right. We had dinner. Right, Joe. And...

Founder of the Ciaudini Institute, 2022 to present, president of Influence at Work, and book author since 84. So let's just jump in. I mean, you've had a pretty crazy life. I mean, you've done a lot. Do you want to tell everybody why did you choose to go down psychology and influence? What are you up to today? Just give us a little background.

I got into the study of influence because all my life I've been a sucker. I've always been a pushover for the appeals of salespeople, fundraisers who come to my door. And I always thought to myself, well, isn't that interesting? I would say yes to things that on their merit, I probably wouldn't have bought. But the way they presented those merits, the way they delivered the case for their offer was amazing.

full of psychological techniques and practices that strummed a string inside me that just resonated with yes, yes. So I thought, this is worth studying, not just out of self-defense, but people would be interested in knowing what are the things that you can say in the way you present yourself

your offer, right? That make it more likely to be accepted compared to presenting the same offer in a different way. So that's what I've been studying all my life as a researcher and a writer.

Tell me the story from your words the day you were walking and you had, I think it was a Boy Scout asked you for candy bars.

That's Saturday night, right? $5 a piece. This is back in those days. And I didn't want to go to the Boy Scouts on Saturday night. And so I said, no, no thanks. And then he said, well, if you can't do that, would you buy a couple of our chocolate bars here? They're only a dollar a piece. And I bought a couple of his chocolate bars there.

and realized something important had happened there because I don't like chocolate bars. - Yes. - But I was standing there with two of his bars and he was walking away with two of my dollars, which I do like. That, I thought to myself, okay, this is worth studying in a systematic scientific way to see what he did there and what other really proficient sales professionals do to move us toward ascent.

I love that. And tell me a little bit about if you're a server, the mints. Yeah. So one of the rules that we talk about is reciprocation. People feel like you have to give back to those who have given to you. So we did a study in which researchers had this server at the end of the meal.

give the bill, right? That was for one group of one sample of subjects. Another sample, there was a mint on the tray and he got 3% higher tips for that mint. Now you might say 3%, that's not a lot. For the price of a mint? If you could increase your bottom line profit by 3% for the price of a mint? Well,

That would be worth it. Well, what I liked about this study is that this researcher didn't stop there. He had another condition where he came back and there were two mints on the tray for each of the diners. And tips went up 14% because the rule says we have to give back what we have received. The more we have received, the more obligated we feel to give back, right? Now, here was the kicker.

There was a third condition, comes to the table with one mint on the tray. Thank you for your kind patronage. Turns to walk away and stops himself and turns around, reaches into his apron and puts the second mint down in front of each customer and said, for you nice people, here's the second mint. 21% increase in tip. Oh, wow.

I love this. Because the gift was not only larger than one, now it's two. It was unexpected. He had turned away and then returned and he customized it to those clients. He personalized it. If you have a meaningful tip, you double a meaningful gift, you double from one to two.

If it's unexpected and it's personalized, nobody can beat you. Let me ask you a question because one of the things we started doing here as a service company, the customer calls up, books an appointment, broke and garage door, tune up, whatever it is. And one of the things that kind of mandated was you've got to offer something on the way. Starbucks, if you're stopping off at Circle K, whatever.

But a lot of the people, the clients say, no, you know, I'm fine. So I kind of taught them the phrase that like, listen, I'm stopping at Starbucks. Don't make me guess. Are you an espresso or frappuccino or do you want a green tea? Like give them options. And I know that people, cause they also get a bio of the tech on the way, but never when they do ask for something, have we not asked.

earn their business. Exactly. That's brilliant. And I'm just curious if there's a better way of doing it. So if I'm calling you up, hey, Mr. Ciaudini, just to let you know, my name is Tommy. You probably got my synopsis to your telephone. I'm on the way. Is there a way, because we, by the way, we pay for that for them. Right. It comes right under their paycheck. So I've got a less expensive way to do it. Okay. You come in with a

piece of a card with the top five tips for home maintenance or the five top five tips for home safety or the top five mistakes that people make with their homes. You're giving them value. You're giving them something that's and it's related to you. Now, it's not selling garage doors, right? Yeah.

And it shouldn't. Otherwise, it's not seen as a gift. It's seen as a sales device. But if you have the five top things you need to do to maintain your house for resale or whatever the issue is, or for safety, you've given them value with regard to their home. You've focused them on home improvement, home quality. Yeah.

And the book, Pre-Suasion, that you told me about, you put them in a state of mind before you ever try to sell them something. You put them in a state of mind that's conducive to their home. Yeah, I love that. You had mentioned at dinner that you worked with some young fellows and you just worked with them. You just said, listen, give me equity if you guys make it big.

Help me out. And then you donate. You donate so much, you and your whole family. I love that you could tell us that story. But when you sat down and kind of just worked with those guys, how did those meetings look? How often did you meet? And what kind of advice were you giving them for business? So they came to me and said, we want to help the environment. We've just sold our

our companies, we've got a lot of money and we want to put it into a startup that reduces energy consumption in the home, reduces pollution and energy use and so on. So would you be our chief science officer? It'll take three years. You get us the techniques, the practices, the approaches that will cause people to want to, and the people are,

major utilities in 100 cities around the country they wanted, right? That we would go in and we would offer them

a report to each one of their customers that told them how they could reduce their energy usage. They sent it, and the report didn't say, here's how much you used last month, here's how much you used this month. We all see that. Or this is how much you used last year at this month. Here's how much you used this year. Please, you know, conserve energy. It said, here's how much you used last month. Here's how much your neighbors used.

your comparable neighbors, the people around you who have the same size house and the same heating and cooling system, same number of rooms, same, right? And their energy consumption dropped to what their neighbors were doing. Anybody who was over their neighbors now dropped down to their neighbor's consumption. And I'll tell you something I'm proud of. After 10 years of

we save 36 billion pounds of carbon dioxide from entering the environment. - Wow. - Billion pounds of a gas. - That's crazy. - With one psychological principle, it's called social proof. - Social proof. Yeah, so let's go over all the different factors. There's liking.

There's reciprocation, there's social proof, which is, in my opinion, it's another way of saying, not keeping up with the Jones, but like, hey, they have this. You should have this too. Using what the people around you like you are doing as a guide to what you should be doing. Right. So let's go through all of those, just a little synopsis. So we've already talked about reciprocation. People in every culture, if you're dealing with somebody who wasn't born or raised in this culture, don't worry.

Reciprocation is taught in every human society. You must not take without giving in return. We have very nasty names in every language for people who take without giving. So if we give first, people are standing on the balls of their feet, ready to give back when we need something or we ask for something. And so here's a great study, a study done in McDonald's, right?

In Brazil and Colombia, so it's not just in the United States these things work. So one week, every family that comes in, the kids get a balloon. Half of them get a balloon as they leave, as a nice thank you. The way we often do, we give people something as a thank you for their business, right? Half of them get a balloon as they leave. The other half get a balloon as they enter.

And their parents buy 25% more food. I love this. And in that 20%, there's a 20% increase in coffee purchases. The kids aren't drinking the coffee. You do a favor for my child. You've done a favor for me. This is the principle of unity that we'll get to later. Okay. Right? And so I feel obligated to give back to you for what you've done for my family.

I love that. You got to go first, though. You got to go. The first. So going first. And tell me, how does this? It's been years, and I got to reread Influence. But I believe in Vietnam, they basically, the prisoners, war prisoners, Americans, they give a cigarette to and tell them to admit that they shouldn't have been there. Every time they give them a cigarette, so they say it out loud. Is that right?

Is that reciprocity? Yeah, it is. It's a gift. Yeah. I mean, if you want to really get something in Afghanistan, right, the CIA was always trying to get information from tribal leaders about Taliban movements and shipping routes and so on. And they didn't want to give this to the Americans. They didn't like the Americans. And there was this one guy who was the leader of his clan and he

One CIA agent who was liaison with him noticed he was really tired and he had all the issues associated with leading his family, leading his clan, and he had four wives. So he came on his next visit with four Viagra pills, one for wife. And the next time he came back, he got the greatest treatment.

amount of information, a cornucopia of information about the Taliban. That's reciprocity. You go first and you give what's meaningful, what's unexpected, and what's personalized for tablas, for four wives, nobody's going to beat you now.

That's crazy. So let's go through all of them. I want to hear what you think is the most, so liking or scarcity. People say yes to people they like. And how do you get people to like you? Honestly, compliment them on the genuine positive features that they exhibit. Their house, their decor, their family. If in your team,

If you're in a team meeting, this is what used to happen to me. If I'm in a team meeting and I hear one of my graduate students make a comment, I say to myself, geez, that was smart what Janet just said. Or wow, what Paul just said takes us to the next level. And I used to say it to myself. And now I take that compliment and I move it from my mind to my tongue.

And I can't tell you the goodwill that has produced and the vitality and the health and the productivity of my groups when I give them honest praise because they like me more and they know I like them. And it's true. Yeah, that's something that's really powerful. Like one of the things we've always said, number one, they got to like and trust you.

Number two, they got to like and trust the company. And a lot of people miss out on that. That means that if I'm the technician in your home or the installer, I'm going to say, you know, Mr. Chittiti, I want to tell you a little bit about why I chose this company. And they've been there for me and my family. And even during COVID, they've been here. And good or bad times, I trust them with everything I own and my family. And I believe you should trust them too. Wow. And so that's showing trust in the company. And then the third one that I added after, you know, really...

Your last seminar is they need to feel liked. You need to laugh at their jokes. Oh, man. You need to make them feel wanted. That is such a good insight. There's a saying, people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. Yeah. The way to get them to like you is to come to like them and show it.

So, I love the scarcity. Let's go to the scarcity. People want more of those things they can have less of, right? Now. Like Rolex. Rolex watches the way they do that in Ferraris. It's crazy to me. So how does this apply to your business? You show them what is unique or uncommon or dwindling in availability in what you have and they'll want it more. Now,

You have rivals who also have similar kind of offers. If you don't have a single thing that sets you apart, you might have a suite of things, a combination of factors that nobody else has. You bring that combination to the surface in your presentation.

And they're going to want you because they can't get that combination anywhere else. And people want what, you know, FOMO, fear of missing out. They want what they can't get. So you tell them what they can't get from their experience.

You know, because, and here's a, here's an example. The reason has to do with the fear of loss. People hate to lose, right? So there's a study. This has to do with home service, right? Researchers went door to door offering a changing the weather stripping and insulation in the house so that it would be more energy efficient. Uh-huh.

Half of them were told after they did an audit of the house, if you insulate fully, you'll be able to save a dollar a day every day. Right? The other half were told, if you don't, you'll lose a dollar a day every day. And 150% more people bought the package under loss language. They are losing. It's still a dollar.

You haven't changed the merits of the thing. You've changed the psychological context in which it is perceived as a loss instead of a gain, and you win. So there was something I wanted to ask you, too, along the lines of this total off basis. If you were to give a $200 off coupon versus a $200 gift card,

There's a company I know of, one of the best search engine optimization guys on the planet. And all he switched was the offer on the homepage to $200 gift cards towards a purchase instead of $200 off. And it did like explosive, like 900%. With the gift card? With the gift card. It's a gift. It's a gift. It's a gift. And I owe you now.

Oh my gosh, I love this stuff. So I got so many questions. So reciprocation, scarcity, liking. Social proof. Social proof. Okay. People, when they're...

They don't look inside themselves for answers, right? All they see is the confusion. They look out. And one place they look is to peers, is to people around them. Like that research I was telling you about. We just send people information about what their neighbors are saving. Well, let's go back to McDonald's.

Different McDonald's. They are known for, you go to McDonald's, you buy a burger, you buy a drink and some fries, right? Almost nobody buys desserts, although they have desserts. They've got cookies, they've got a hot pie, a peach pie, but mostly they have a McFlurry. Yeah. Right? Okay. So study, my colleague in the UK, we have an office in the UK, does a study with McDonald's.

And would you like a dessert half of the time? Would you like a dessert? Okay, that's the control group. Would you like a dessert? The McFlurry is our most favorite, is our customer's favorite dessert. 55% more purchases of desserts, and they're almost all McFlurries.

All you have to do is tell people what's the most popular and it shows them what the social proof is, what the evidence is of what the other people are onto. So if you've got an upgrade, right, here's our basic package, but here's our most popular upgrade. You're not deceiving them. It's not a lie. It's not an exaggeration. You're telling them the truth. Bang.

So when I use, this is genius. When I used to work at a restaurant, I won every single prize. There was a contest. And for weeks we had a dessert. We'd have different desserts. It used to be wine, certain types of steak. Whenever it was dessert, there was one dessert that took 20 minutes. It was like a pizza cookie.

And before you get full and you don't want dessert, I'd say, listen, this is the best dessert. This is the die for. This is like world renowned, but it takes 20 minutes. Before we get your entree in this, I promise you guys, you won't regret it. And every single person would buy it. But because when they got full, even if I told them the same exact sentence, they would never buy it. And that was one thing I noticed. You know the saying,

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink because it doesn't want to drink. It's not hungry. It's not thirsty. Yeah. So I don't believe you, you can lead a horse to water, but not making it. Here's what you do. You exercise them first or you feed them first. And now they're, now they're thirsty. Yeah. You can lead a horse to water, but just what you do first is what's exactly what you did before, before they were full and didn't want the dessert.

You they always say, can we get that in a to go box? I mean, there was something else. So real quick, because you said it's not deceitful. I want to make sure because a lot of this stuff goes into the wrong hands. There's like a moral and ethical obligation to not use this stuff. Can you just I want to make a disclaimer here for some of the people that maybe I don't think the listeners are disingenuous, but just kind of a little precursor.

it's a mistake it's a big mistake to be dishonest or or deceptive because

If you do it regularly, you get a reputation for it. I mean, the word of mouth is, oh, this is an honest broker of information or services. This, right? And have you ever been cheated by somebody? Oh, yeah. Would you ever go back? No. Never? Never. And would you tell your neighbor, don't go there? I'd tell the world on Yelp and Google and everything else. It's just, it's wrongheaded in the long run. You just have to...

And it makes you feel so much better. Listen, I give talks, platform talks, presentations, and I talk about ethical influence. It's invariable. People come up afterwards and say, thank you for talking about how to be successful and ethical at the same time. I don't want to have to be a worm to be successful. I want to think of myself as somebody who can be successful without cheating. Right. Well, you know, and I want to add to that that some people –

that i've met they barely make ends meet and they don't charge the right prices and they see my prices we drive new vans are people allowed to make six figures they don't grow their kids up in the projects they get two months of training and tools and continue training forever they get insurance they get pto we keep the air conditioning cool in the summers here

We've got to charge more than the price to stay afloat for our clients as well. So when something goes wrong, we show up there the same day. We do background checks, drug tests, DMV records. And I tell people, I'm in business. This is not a 5013C. This is for profit. We're growing. We're hiring. And there is a price. I guess there's gouging, but that's why we give options.

We've got the most economical option all the way up to the Taj Mahal top of the line. You choose. You're our client. Right. And so I could compete on the most affordable. So, yeah. So I'm going to give you a tip. Don't start at the bottom and go up. Oh, I start at the top. Start at the top and come down because by the time they come to the middle, it seems inexpensive. You start at the bottom. By the time they come to the middle, it seems pricey.

We call it price anchoring is what we usually do. It's one of our five green lights as we say, I know Mr. Chittini, I've got some clients that spend 50, 60,000 on their garage door, you know, with all the bells and whistles, but that in their mind, they're going 50, 60 grand. But then our signature package is like 7,000. And that's like a fresh breath air. They're like, wait a minute, I can get all that. But yeah, but if you wanted like

Real wood and the carriage style with like the big bolts. So we've got reciprocation, lots of great things for home service, scarcity, amazing. And actually what we did is we trademarked all of our parts.

And so you can't even compare the prices of our parts. Let's take commitment and consistency, which I think is remaining, which is, okay, people want to be consistent with what they have already said or done is particularly in your presence, right? They don't want to be seen as wishy-washy. They want to be seen as inconsistent, as flopping back and forth, right?

So if you can get them to make a stand on something, to take a position on something that is related to where you want them to go next, they're going to go next in that consistent direction. Here's a study from, you grew up in Chicago, did you say you grew up in Chicago? Detroit. Okay. So the restaurant in Chicago, Gordon Sinclair's restaurant, and they were having problems with no-shows. People who would

book a table and then they wouldn't show and they wouldn't call ahead to cancel. So this guy read my book and he, he went around to his receptionist and he heard what she said when she would take a reservation. She said, thank you for calling Gordon's. Please call if you have to change or cancel your reservation. Probably heard that a hundred times, right? He said, here's what I want you to do. Add two words, say, will you please call if you have to change or cancel?

And then pause and let them fill that silence with a commitment. Because if I said that to you, what would you say? Yeah, of course. Yeah, glad to. And that's your commitment. And unannounced no-shows at Gordon's restaurant dropped by 64% that day and never went up for two words.

They're not any two words. There are two words that hook into the principle of commitment and consistency. The thing that drives people to say yes, if what you're offering is consistent with something they value or something they have said or something they have taken a position on. So what's another example of commitment when you're for a home service company? I don't know. Would this be, I don't know if this even makes sense, but

you maybe talk about safety. You know, you absolutely agree that this, you want this door safe for you and your family. - Is this for the long term? Or is this something-- - Are you trying to kick the can down the road? Band-Aids this? - No, I, you know, how much value do you value your house and so on and for your family? - So that's like commitment and consistency. - Well, of course, you know,

I want this, yeah. - So you know Tom, okay, go ahead. - And then you say, well, here's something that's gonna last. This is the durable offer, the durable service that we're gonna give you. - I think we're on track with that. So here's a question that I don't know the answer to. There's two frames of thought. When I read Tom Hopkins back in the day,

He'd always get the client to say, well, you want your daughter to be safe, don't you? And the nod. And you want to make sure that every time your kid comes in or not, it's working right. Well, Chris Voss' style says, would you be opposed? So he's getting people to say no to get it off. Would you be opposed if I went ahead and went through a safety inspection just to check everything? You'd say no. No. That's a commitment. Is no or yes, is getting the client to say yes,

before the offer better or? You know, that's a really good question. I don't know of any research on it. If I had to guess, I would say go for the positive. Get them thinking about what they want. Okay. Yeah. And by the way, will you doesn't just apply to like your team. Let's say you're meeting with your team and you're giving them each a task to do by the next meeting. They have to complete some tasks, right? Don't let them out of that room.

until you say to each one, will you be able to complete this properly by our next meeting? And pause. So is that a one-on-one or is that during like a meeting? So you go through each and every one. Or it could be one-on-one too. And did you ever do that with students? I would do it with students. And they come, their papers show up on time now because they say, yes, I can do it.

I mean, that's commitment. That's commitment. Get them to say something that is in their best interest. None of this is bad for them to do their tasks on time, right? Who loses? Yeah. You know, I've been on this really big health kick. And until I went and got the DEXA scan, it's a scan that actually goes and tells you your body fat. It tells you not only your fat, but in each muscle group. And it tells you your visceral fat.

And understanding that was enough motivation to me because I was officially obese, anything over 20%. And it was like, to know where you stand, I'm a KPI driven guy. I was like, and I find that when most people do that, they make really significant change because they didn't, a lot of people don't want to know. They'd rather not know. I got a lot of questions about hiring because this is my biggest, you know, I think a lot about marketing to get clients. And now most of my brain goes, how do I recruit clients?

motivated, competitive, wanna win. You know, this little bracelet says aspire to be number one. I'm competitive. Anybody that I've got that played a sport that really wanted to win, that wants to see their family grow, getting down to the why, and it's always different. 'Cause some people say it's all about my family. I'm like, let me see your credit cards and your calendar.

But in all your research and time, like I go to who, not how, getting the right people on the bus, you could get as many clients as you want. But if I want somebody to pick up shifts, get five-star reviews, leave raving fans, go above and beyond, but also have great KPIs, like high conversion rate, good opportunity job average. The biggest dilemma for me is like identifying those people before they're six months in.

There's different personality. There's Myers-Briggs, there's a million things. There's colors. We've done predictive index, you name it. We do ride alongs to make sure they're not on social media. They show up on time. They're not hung over. We do as many things as we can.

I feel, but I'm sure there's some other things I'm not thinking about to identify. There might be. I'm not in that domain. I have a colleague, Dr. Gregory Neidert, who does that sort of thing. He tests people and gets their, I can give you his name, but for me, it would be, suppose you got somebody and this individual is not showing up the way you want it, right? Right.

Give them a reputation to live up to by the commitment and consistency. So they show up, they do something that's really conscientious, they do something that's really good. You praise them for it. You give them, you know, I really like the way you approach that job. You were so conscientious. You know, this is the thing that I really liked about the way you handled this, your conscientiousness, Tommy. Yeah. Tommy is going to be conscientious.

You've given them a reputation to live up to. There is this study where people were told, they were just called on the phone, and they were told, oh, we called you because we're doing a survey of your neighbors, and we asked who's the most generous, altruistic people, the most charitable people in your neighborhood, and they named you. Two weeks later, the United Way comes to their door. Those people who got a random phone call

and were told that they were charitable, gave significantly more money than their neighbors. They were living up to the reputation you gave them. - I love that. I had two young girls, they were probably nine or 10, come to my door, door knocking, and they were raising money for their, I don't know, gymnastics. And they were selling these souvenir cups, and they were selling them in a four-pack plastic. I said, "Sure, I'll buy Detroit Lions, "and I think I got the Red Wings."

and it was like 25 bucks. And I said, "I want you to go to my neighbors." And there's three people, this was about seven years ago, eight years ago, and this was, I live in a cul-de-sac at the time. And I said, "My neighbor's name is Tim. "My other neighbor's name is Ron. "The other one is Gordon. "And I want you to go to them and say Tommy bought two." And he said, "You guys were probably gonna beat him."

They came back to my door after they sold every single one of the neighbors. And they said, oh my gosh, the first guy bought five sets. The next guy bought seven sets. It was so good. And they came back and they're like, thank you so much. It was like a little lesson for them. It was great. Joe gave me some questions to ask and these are pretty good. So from your perspective,

What is behavior, influence, persuasion, and negotiation? And how do they all tie together? So behavior, influence, persuasion, and negotiation. So behavior is what we're looking for. When I started doing research in this, you know, I'm an academic. A lot of my colleagues were doing research on changing people's attitudes, changing their opinions, changing their beliefs, changing their perception of the situation and so on. That's all in the service of

of getting them to change their behavior, right? Why don't we just go right to behavior? So that's the thing that we should be focused on. How do we change action, right? That's what we're interested in. So the work we do is all on changing attitudes, not on changing actions, not attitudes, right? So that's taking a step in your direction, right? Making a choice in your direction. That's the behavior.

Influence is moving people in your direction as a result of some kind of psychological or offer that you make to them, some kind of a pitch that you make. But there are a lot of ways to influence people, and some of them are not good, like coercion or intimidation or deception. Those are going to come back and bite you. It's persuasion that we want. We're you.

You don't push people. You inform them into assent. You give them evidence of what will be in their best interests that you have to offer, right?

And especially if they can't get it elsewhere. Persuasion is the process of moving people in your direction without changing the features of what you have to offer, but just changing the way you present those features so that they are connected to psychological drives that move people toward ascent. So...

When I was younger, I've had a lot of sales coaching, lots of it. And we used to talk a lot about FUD, fear, uncertainty, and doubt. People fear is a bigger driver than the word safety. These different words

And I don't think it's unethical if it's true. Right. But how much more is fear than just talking about, hey, these are quiet. It's going to make the door silent. Yeah, you can tell. It's like that study we were talking about. Here's what you're going to lose.

Right. If you don't move in our direction, you're going to lose a dollar a day. So you can say, look, if it has to do with safety, you don't want to forego this for your family. This isn't something you would want to miss out on. You know, instead of this is something that you want to you you need to get. Right. So so but that's true. You just point out to them that loss is.

more damaging than gain is beneficial in human psychology. What are some of the tools that helped you in your early life? Like, you know, I know you have kids and grandchildren. I think all these things work, not just selling clients, but also is there anything that really pops out that helped you? Like you guys explain to us the charity that you guys are involved in with the whole thing. I love this, by the way.

How your grandkids get to pick out what they want to give to and how great that is just raising them in that kind of idea of to be a go-giver and always giving. Every year we have a philanthropy weekend with all my kids and their spouses and the grandkids. And the grandkids, we started this, some of them were like four or five years old.

Everybody gets an allotment of money. And then we have people who come in from local charities here in Phoenix, Arizona, and so on. Some of them are national, like the Girl Scouts, but they come in and they make a pitch to us for two days. And then everybody gets to allot a certain amount of their money, which we give them ahead of time.

So they get to think through which is the most valuable for our community, which is the one that most resonates with my feeling of doing the right thing, which is the one that has the most efficiency, where the amount of money you give them will have the biggest bang in terms of helping people.

I mean, I can't tell you how proud I am of my kids, what they are able to do. They ask questions now that are on the level of my college students, you know, and they're either uneducated.

under teenager teenagers and they're asking those kind of questions because they're now responsible for this money and it's a significant amount of money each one gets. And they're saying, "Well, what am I going to do with this?" So this is a thing where I'm essentially saying to them, I'm giving them a reputation to live up to. You know what's best. You can figure out what are the best choices for doing good for people.

And they live up to it, man. They surface. They live up to it. So you've had a lot of events where you've made a lot of money and you've given a lot of it away. I think you still live in a fairly modest condo. What is your belief system around giving? And how do more people... I'm just curious because in the United States, it's capitalism...

and i do believe in capitalism i mean i think this is the best country in the world but

How did you come up with these beliefs? And how do you, how does, how do you, what goes through your brain? I mean, do you want to die with nothing? I mean, I'm just curious. I'm a capitalist too, because I think it's the best system, you know, compared to all the others. But you know, this guy, Charlie Munger, who was Warren Buffett. He just passed away. Yeah, just passed away at 99 years and 11 months. He passed away. But it wouldn't have mattered to Charlie because I happen to have a relationship with him. And he once told me,

The reason for acquiring wealth, in his view, was to have enough so that you could help people in times of trouble. So it wasn't to establish his ego or to, he's a billionaire. Yeah. Many times over, right? Chet Holmes used to work for him too. Yeah.

It was, okay, I'm a capitalist, so I earn enough money to really be in a position to help people. And my early research was on altruism. And the thing that was really remarkable to me was how much giving lifted the mood of the giver.

sometimes more than the mood of the recipient, because it was such a great feeling to have that kind of impact on the world for the people that we care about. It's like Christmas given to your kids. Like, I don't think parents, when you're a kid, you're up all night waiting for the presents. And when you're an adult, you just can't wait to see their face. Right. And your nieces, nephews, grandchildren. It's like, yeah.

How do you stay so sharp? I mean, I won't go into detail, but I think you're right on the border of 80. Yeah, I'm 79. Yeah. And you're one of the sharpest guys I know. And you're still like...

- Yeah, this is probably a bad time for this, but I don't believe in age. I mean, Biden kind of shit the bed when it came to the thing, but you've got a lot of people that are in their 90s. Dick Van Dyke is 97, I mean 98, and he's still killing it. But what have you done in your life? - Well, a couple of things are not surprising. I take care of myself, I exercise, I eat well, properly. But the other thing is I stay intellectually engaged.

I'm a reader. I love to watch programs where there are puzzles or mysteries to be solved. Yeah, and the thing is that I'm a shark in the water when it comes to influence. You know, I told you about this concept of the small, big. What are the smallest things we can do that produce the biggest impact on our success?

I read every journal, every academic outlet. I read every book on influence or persuasion or negotiation. And I look for those little small bigs because their return on investment levers, right? Everybody wants a big return on investments.

You know, I started this new company called the Cialdini Institute. And one of our pillars, everything is science-based, everything is ethical, everything has to be applied, and everything has to be efficient. What are the most efficient ways to persuade people, right? So I'm looking for those small bigs all the time, and I'm constantly keeping my mind active, active.

in the search. - I just keep moving. I think one of the biggest things is, I think there's this study that says when you lose mobility, you're basically out four years. It's crazy. And to keep your brain working, it's crazy to think 20 years ago, this whole food table, the pyramid that they came up with, carbs are great.

Protein's bad. We didn't used to be this fat country. You look at pictures in the 60s and 70s, and it's crazy what's happened, and the diabetes and all the things that have come out of this.

But I love what you're doing. You know, I'll tell you about just moving. I was sitting at a table. There was a colleague of mine who got a big award at ASU. And his cousin is a doctor, a physician. I sit next to him at the table where we're at this event honoring him. And he's very happy, this guy. And he says, I just sold a package of my health supplement.

recommendations and strategies to stay vital and alive to a big insurance company, a big healthcare company. And I said, so give me one thing. What's one thing? He said, when you're walking, pick up your pace by a step and a half. Just keep moving. Just move a little faster. It's

It doesn't have to be a big deal where you're in the gym for three hours a day. You just walk a little faster, and that's good. One thing. Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy. I'm trying to get 20,000 steps a day right now. Ooh. Ooh. It's a lot of work, but I'm doing it. And one of the biggest things, I talked to my doctor, who's really smart about this stuff. He said, what I want you to do in the mornings is,

is start going very, very high intensity for 30 seconds. Take a minute off. Do that eight times. And you should be, that starts everything. And then at the end of the night, do your long walks after you eat. My biggest problem is chewing 20 times per bite and eating slow. It's so hard for me. Yeah, that is tough. That is tough. I don't, I can't do it. It's a lot.

You know, the reason I jumped on my phone was because the three guys that came to your event was John, Seth, and Justin. And I just wanted to ask a few questions because they had a lot of great questions. When you hire a person, I wasn't trying to be disrespectful. I just really wanted to pull this up. Um,

What do you look for when you hire? What are some of the things you've had TAs and different things in your profession? And you've also got this institute. What do you look for when you meet somebody? I ask them, what are your weaknesses? And I listen to how honest they are about it. Oh, I work too hard. People say I... That's pulling the wool over my eyes. Yep. Tell me.

Tell me where, and so, and how are you dealing with that? What are you doing? And if they're saying, I'm making some constructive steps and could give me some examples, then I got the kind of person I'm interested in. Of course, you have to first get their intellectual abilities and their moral standing and so on. You don't want cheaters in your organization. You know, you introduced me, forgive me for forgetting his name, but we were sitting at the table at your convention and you said this,

There was a dentist that wrote a book. The book's on my desk. I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but very smart guy. And I think he was a presenter. Chris Phelps, Christopher Phelps. What are some of the things that you love about? Absolutely ethical. But, and he understands the principles of influence and the thing that sets him apart is not just his comprehension of these principles. It's his ability to execute things.

on the basis of them, to implement them. Very few people can implement. And that's his key. We've now made him the CEO of the U.S. location of Cialdini Institute. He's that good. Yeah, I'm going to spend some time with him. There's nothing better I like to be in the right room.

And it seems like the better rooms I get into, I could almost skip first, second, and third base and run straight to home plate. And in business, unlike, you know, an RBI where you do a basis load to get four runs batted in, business sometimes you can get a thousand runs. And I love that. I just love being in the right rooms.

And I'm not, I wouldn't consider myself, you know, I talk a lot about EQ versus IQ. I meet some very smart people, but they can't implement. They don't know how to talk to people. They don't understand how they make people feel. And I think EQ is so much more important than IQ. So when people ask me what makes us a good salesperson, I say empathy. You have to put yourself in the position of that person and understand his or her position.

circumstances, needs, values, preferences, and then you can serve that person with the version of what you have to offer that's best for them. But if you don't have that, then you're selling stuff that doesn't, that bounces off that person. If you don't, if you haven't really empathized with who that person is and where they are in that particular situation, you might as well put a

- Yeah, I think I read this in your book and this is over a decade ago. When somebody wants to borrow money, which has happened a lot with me, you say somewhere along the lines of instead of sure, no problem,

I know you would do the same thing for me. Can you explain that, kind of the process of that? - So that's the rule of reciprocity where if you do something, it doesn't have to be money, but if you do something, a really nice favor for somebody, something above and beyond what's required, and they say thank you, I really appreciate that. So often I used to see myself say, oh, don't think anything of it, no big deal, just part of the job, would've done it for anybody.

stupid to do that because you have done that favor. You're entitled by the rule of reciprocity to get something in return. Otherwise, you stop doing people favors. No, that's not a good society. That's not a good culture. So what you do is you put it on the map. You don't say, yeah, and you owe me one now, buster. No, no, no. What you say is, yeah, well, I know you'd do the same for me if the situation were ever reversed.

And you've put that thing on the map and you've given them a reputation to live up to. And don't, by the way, here's a little nuance of it. Don't say, if the situation had been reversed, I know you would have done the same for me. That's in the past. That will never happen. You say, if the situation were ever reversed and I needed some help, I know you'd do the same for me. And now they're ready. They're primed.

When you need some new man. I love this stuff. I could literally do this for hours. You know what I like about this? This is a conversation. It's not an interview. I'm learning as much as I think you are in this process. I got so many good notes. I'm going to make every single... This one's going to be... This is amazing. You know, I was also reading that when kids...

when trick-or-treating, and they said, just take one candy. And you had a spy peeking to watch it. When they put out a mirror and they see themselves, uh,

It was 33%, I believe, would take an extra piece of candy, but the mirror completely lowered that where they had to see themselves take more. Right. How does that work? Well, that has to do with commitment and consistency. What are your values? How do you think you are? And you don't want to be inconsistent with that. And the mirror gives you that image of you. It makes you focus on you rather than the candy. Right.

And so now you're consistent not with how much candy you want, but you're consistent with you and your standards and your self-image. I love that. Just thinking about kids. When did you start teaching kids?

at ASU. What happened before ASU? What led you to ASU? When did you start at ASU? So I got my, you know, I grew up in Wisconsin, went to the University of Wisconsin, went to the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill for graduate work, went to Columbia University in New York City for postdoctoral training. Then I came to ASU. And that was what year? It was in 1971.

Oh, so the nutty professor was shot there after that. Yeah. You remember that? I do remember that. I do remember that. Jerry Lewis. Jerry Lewis. But yeah, and ASU was a third-rate school in 1971. But I went because I could see the growth. I mean, people were flooding into the Sunbelt. Arizona Phoenix was growing, burgeoning. I wanted to be part of that energy.

Ten years later, it's a second-rate school. Now it's a first-rate university. I mean, it's genuinely a first-rate university. I've been visiting professors at other universities, and I know this is a first-rate university. And you...

You still go to campus? You still got your office? Every day. You still go into the, do you ever, do you still lecture and do all that? Only guest lectures on campus. I give platform talks at conferences and conventions. Yeah. And so you go into the, is it the original office?

No, no. They gave me an office off to the side, which I like because nobody knows I'm there. Nobody's knocking on my door. That's so great. So why is it that you still decided to just go in every day? I love this stuff. I love the, I love human behavior. I love the influence process. That's why I'm reading journals all the time, the newest research. And then that implementation is

Yes. Building it into our training through what we do, how we teach and train the influence process in the Childini Institute. You know, you've given a lot of tips on stage, and I don't recall what they were about getting good reviews because the reviews are important. We talked about website and social proof of the reviews. What were some of the tips with getting solid, you know, whether it's Google, Nextdoor, Yelp? Yeah. So what would you...

Here's three things on your website that I would say you should do at the beginning of any messaging to a customer or a prospect. Number one, have a welcoming statement on your landing page. Because remember what we were saying about people want to be approved. They want to be liked. They want to be welcomed like you would to somebody who comes to your door.

Research shows if you have a welcoming statement on your landing page, you get significantly more conversions before they read a single word because you've put them in a state of liking for you because you like them. Yeah. It's two lines. Welcome to our site. We're so glad that you decided to join us. That's what's on our site. Next thing, testimonials should come next.

from customers and experts who can testify to your products or services. And you do it again before they see anything, a single word of what you have to say, because you want to put in, you want to have an aura of authority in the minds of the visitor to your site before they read anything. You earned it. Put it first.

and have multiple testimonials. Research shows if you get multiple testimonials, you get significantly more conversions because it's not, you haven't cherry picked one. It's a consensus of experts or satisfied customers. That's the second thing. And here's the one that I really like because it comes from an evidence base that's different from sales. Put a picture of yourself

on the site before. Again, a picture of yourself smiling. There was a study done in hospitals. Radiologists who were reading CT scans of patients, half of them got the scan the way they always do. And then they wrote their report and made various kinds of suggestions and so on. The other half got

The report got the scan with the patient's picture, and they spent three times as much time working on that patient's scan because it's a person. Yeah. There's a person in there. So how does having your picture, you're talking about the owner of the CO's picture? It could be the owner or it could be the service professional or the team. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

and uh I love this I got one more question that I'm gonna ask people how they can fight and by the way at your convenience one hour is not enough I need to have a part two uh and I could come to ASU I could come to your house I could come wherever because this is so fascinating I mean this is like I live for this stuff yeah like I read a lot of books but yours are the most interesting because it's all evidence-backed um

You know, one of the things that Justin did is, and I do this now at every seminar I speak at, and I speak at 40 events a year. Whoa. As I say, raise your hands a little higher. Yeah. A little higher. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the whole notion behind this, the people that are watching this, is the hand keeps going up. Yeah. And to where you're stretched out and you're almost on your heels and your butt's in the air. But why do you have to tell people to try to raise your hand? You know, do the job.

No, no, no, do it better. You know, what's the science behind that? There's a thousand things in our head besides achievement and accomplishment and success. And we're looking all around. So by doing that, by reminding them of their achievement goals, that becomes focal now. That becomes the thing that they're paying attention to, and that's what drives their behavior.

I used to think that the thing that would get us to say yes the most to some offer and so on was what was the wisest thing in the message? What was the thing that was most efficient? What was the thing that was most logical? What was the thing that was most pleasant? It's what's the thing that's the top of consciousness?

Because what is top of consciousness drives the next step of behavior. But how do you get to the top of consciousness? Because I don't feel like it's peeling that onion. And I find that most people, they don't really know.

So this is what persuasion is. It's what you do before you make your, I'll give you an example. And I know we're out of time. No, no, no. I love it. So study done with an online furniture store and they specialize in sofas. Half of the visitors one week got on the landing page with fluffy, soft clouds in the background.

The other half went to a landing page with small coins, pennies, right? Money in the background. The people who landed on the page with clouds bought significantly more comfortable furniture. They were put in mind of comfort and softness and quality. The people who got pennies bought inexpensive furniture because they were put in mind of expense and money.

So where do you put people first before they enter? And if you have, if quality is your number one thing, right? You put an image or you ask a question associated with quality before you make your pitch. If it's durability, you show an image of strength. If it's

research-based evidence. You have a scientific picture of a scientist with beakers and test tubes, right? So you put people in a state of mind that's congruent with the strength, the thing that will make it wisest for people to decide for you. So, you know, you've written these books. Which book

Someone just, obviously, I think a lot of people are going to be reading your books. What's the best one to start with? What's your favorite? Absolutely. The best one to start with is influence the psychology of persuasion. And then if you like that stuff, if this, because it's what happens inside the messaging process, what do you put inside your offer, inside your communication? And we just talked about seven principles, right? If you like that,

Read persuasion, which is what do you put in the moment before you send your message that makes people more sympathetic to it before they've ever encountered it, right? Yeah. And then if you like that, go to the small, big, because that's, this is now economy. Now you've got these processes. Now, how do you make, what's the smallest thing to produce something?

persuasion, what's the smallest thing to produce social proof and so on. And, uh, yeah. And so if people want to know more about getting involved with you, where do they go? They go to cialdini.com. Yeah. We've got this new company called Cialdini Institute, and we offer online on-demand training in ethical influence in business.

And outside of your books, you've done a lot of research. You've read a lot of books. You're very educated. Is there any other book that you really highly recommend that someone wants to know more about just influence or any of your psychology? Yeah, there's a book by a guy named Daniel Pink. They had to sell his human. To sell his human. Man, it gets to the core of it. That this is, I mean, it's about exchange. This is central to us.

It used to be that sales was seen as, oh, man, I'd rather be in marketing than in sales. No, no, sales is the core. It's about exchange of information and goods and services. That's what allowed us to flourish as a species. I agree. Last thing, I'm going to let you close us out. We talked a lot. We understand the fundamentals of influence, some really good use cases.

I know there's a million things we haven't talked about. Maybe something you want to end with that the listeners need to hear. The biggest mistake that people make with the influence process is to have a favorite approach, a favorite technique or a practice that they use to persuade people. I had a colleague in marketing department at University of Florida who said he was going to find the single most effective persuasive strategy, persuasive approach, right?

And I caught him at a convention and he said, Bob, I found it. The single most effective persuasive strategy is not to have a single persuasive strategy. That's a fool's game.

to think that the same approach is going to work on every individual and every population and every set. What you do is you look to what principle is in, do you have true scarcity here? You truly uniqueness is truly dwindling available. You bring that, you have true social proof. You've got, you know, popularity and market share. You bring that to the surface.

Is it authority? You've got all these experts who can testify into the worth of what you're doing. Bring that to the surface. Those are the way I would do it. You're a detective of influence.

that way. And then nobody is deceived. You're just pointing to things that are truly in the situation that steer them correctly. And that's persuasion. You're not changing the merits. You're just changing the delivery system you're using for them. Oh, I got one more question. I hate to do this. That was supposed to be the last one. But you and Bob have been together a long time.

Any helpful hints on how to build a truly lasting, loving relationship to close us out? I'm sorry, I keep going, but this is it. So, you know, I think the reason we've stayed together is that we're aligned on values. We're very different people personality-wise, but our values are the same. So that's one thing. And the other thing is every week we have relationship hour.

It does not necessarily last for an hour. It's just, okay, this is a time when we're going to talk about our relationship, what happened that week, the things that were stressful, the things that we enjoyed together, the things that were related to our relationship. And we just spend time on it.

And that, I think, keeps that at top of mind, the importance of the relationship. We keep reminding ourselves of that when we constantly invite one another to talk about our relationship. And it's usually optimistic or sometimes does it go? It can go. It can go in ways that we needed to work out and we didn't even know we needed to until we started broaching the subject. And that's been this long time going. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And it usually is on a weekend when we, you know, we're not at work. Yeah. Oh man, I love this. This was so good. I know you're a busy man and I know you get asked to do a lot of things. So I really appreciate you doing this. This was good. This was great. Have you asked good questions? I really enjoyed this. So thank you for coming on. All right. Appreciate you.

Hey there. Thanks for tuning into the podcast today. Before I let you go, I want to let everybody know that Elevate is out and ready to buy. I can share with you how I attracted a winning team of over 700 employees in over 20 states. The insights in this book are powerful and can be applied to any business or organization. It's a real game changer for anyone looking to build and develop a high-performing team like over here at A1 Garage Door Service. So if you want to learn the secrets that helped me transfer my team from stealing the toilet paper...

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