Practical Eloquence Blog

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What if you could get the other person to make a decision that would not only be good for you but make them feel good about themselves? You can, by appealing to the decision maker in their mind that I call Norma. Who is Norma and how does she affect decisions?

Before I answer that, In The Art of Woo, there’s a story of how Bono approached Senator Jesse Helms to enlist his support for African debt relief so that those nations could devote more resources towards combatting AIDS. He began his pitch with a data-filled explanation of the problem, (this approach had worked very well with Bill Gates), but quickly saw that Helms was losing interest. Bono, a born-again Christian who knew Helms was also, switched to the language of the Bible and quoted Scripture to make his case. By the end of the meeting, Helms rose to his feet to embrace him, and went on to help raise $435 million for the cause. The point of the story is that no amount of data would have changed Helms’ mind—rational Randy was definitely not in charge. Norma was.

I call her Norma, but she also could be called Ida, or Val, because of three closely related ways we make decisions. We have an identity, which is  sense of who we are. That identity is usually how we see ourselves as individuals and as part of a group. Individually, we pay attention to our values, and we also go  along with group norms.

Why is Norma so important? Two reasons. First, it can contradict two powerful tendencies in human judgment, motivation and decision making. Second, it’s kind of like the perpetual motion machine of decision making. Let me explain what I mean. 

One of the oldest ideas in selling is WIFM, or “What’s in it for me?”[1] It’s a great reminder that you should frame your persuasive message in terms of the other person’s self-interest. WIFM is enormously useful in persuasive communication, because it puts you into the outside-in thinking frame of mind, and forces you to consider your product or idea from the perspective of the person whose agreement you want. I love the idea of WIFM, and have used it for over two decades in my training classes. But WIFM has limits. People do care about more than just their personal self-interest.

Striving for the ideal self is so powerful that it can actually stand Maslow’s hierarchy on its head. History is full of examples of people who have risked even survival itself for the self-actualization of living up to their ideal identity. The Economist ran an obituary of Private Bill Millin, who hit the beaches of Normandy as a bagpiper in the British army. “He led the company down the main street of Bénouville playing “Blue Bonnets over the Border”, refusing to run when the commander of 6 Commando urged him to; pipers walked as they played.” 

Second, appealing to Norma makes for sustainable decisions. Its like a perpetual motion machine because it doesn’t wear off and it feeds on itself. If you want to drive lasting behavior change, you’ve got to find ways to get people to do things for their own reasons, and the best way to do this is to use their sense of who they are to provide internal, long-lasting motivation.

In his book, A Primer on Decision Making: How Decisions Happen, James March tells us that when confronted with a decision, people make a rapid unconscious calculation that answers these questions: What kind of situation is this? Who am I? What does a person such as I do in this type of situation? Our identities—who we are and how we see ourselves—are extremely important to us.

So, how do you use this in persuasive communication? 

First, realize that you probably under-use it. The problem is that we are often wrong about others’ motivations. Research has shown that we overestimate to what extent others rely on self-interest. We tend to see ourselves as more noble than others, so we overestimate their reliance on “selfish” extrinsic rewards.

Second, know your audience and their values. You have to really understand your customer to know what they truly value. It’s not enough to go to their website and copy down their vision and values statements—too often these are the stuff of plaques and platitudes that no one takes seriously; I used to refer to them in my sales training classes until I quickly realized that most of the participants couldn’t even pick out their own corporate values statements in a multiple choice question.

Third, get them to speak about their values. It’s best if it comes from them, not from you.  Fortunately, the process you go through in discovering their values has the added benefit of bringing those values to the top of their minds as you’re talking to them.

Fourth, appeal to WIFU. It’s not time to get rid of WIFM, but it’s a good idea to add other tools. The first is WIFU, or “what’s in it for us?” Many people will do things for the good of the group they belong to, even when it carries a personal cost to themselves. Asking this question in addition to WIFM, will enable you tap into higher motivations.

Finally, be very careful with it. Bono’s approach worked with Jesse Helms because he shared his values. If he didn’t, it would have come across as cynical and would probably have backfired on him. In addition, trying to combine values with value can backfire on you.

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As we saw in the last episode, “Rational Randy” holds the title of decision maker, but he usually defers at least in part to “Aileen”, who leans in ways that may seem irrational but are at least predictable.

Here are three important tendencies that can skew the decisions we make:

First, we hate losing more than we like winning. In other words, losses outweigh gains in our minds. For example, the majority of people won’t take a one-time bet in which they have an even chance of losing $100 or winning $150. This tendency toward “loss aversion” means that we prefer sure things when it comes to gains but we’re willing to gamble to avoid losses, as illustrated by the following choice:

A: 50% chance to win $1,000

B: Sure $500

84% chose B

C: 50% chance to lose $1,000

D: Sure loss of $500

70% chose C

Second, where we end up depends on where we begin. It’s called anchoring: the first information we hear has an inordinate effect on subsequent information. As related by Dan Ariely in his book, Predictably Irrational, an audience is first asked to write the last 2 digits of their social security number, and, second, to submit bids on items such as wine and chocolate. The half of the audience with higher two-digit numbers would submit bids that were between 60 percent and 120 percent more. The simple act of thinking of the first number strongly influences the second, even though there is no logical connection between them.

Third, nothing makes sense except in comparison to something else. If you put your left hand in a bucket of cold water and your right into a bucket of hot water, and then plunge them both into a bucket of room-temperature water, your left will suddenly feel warm and your right will feel cold. It’s the same with numbers or ideas, and good persuaders know how to choose the comparison to improve the appeal of their proposal.

So What?

To influence “Aileen”, persuaders need to learn to go with the grain of her tendencies. Here are five suggested ways:

1. Sell the problem, not the solution. At least early in the process, it’s important to ask questions and direct the conversation to the costs and consequences of not acting.
2. Choose the reference point. No one likes to pay a penalty for using a credit card, but they will gladly take a discount for cash. How you describe the choice matters.
3. Make the most extreme initial offer you can reasonably support. Although people will adjust from this anchor, they usually under-correct.
4. Choose the comparison. This will put your idea in the best possible light.
5. Narrow the choices. More choices lead to fewer decisions. One effective tactic is to place your proposal in the middle of three alternatives.

If you want to learn more about this fascinating topic, here are three books I strongly recommend:

Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman

Predictably Irrational, by Dan Ariely

Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value, by William Poundstone

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This is the first of three podcasts about the psychology of decision making, which is a fascinating and difficult topic, mostly because the way in which people say they decide is often much different from how they actually do. Business communication is ideally completely rational and evidence-based, but we all know it’s more complicated than that. There are at least four approaches to decision-making, which I call Randy, Aileen, Norma, and Gus.

Rational Randy has a mind like a spreadsheet and relies for his decisions completely on a precise calculation of expected benefits, weighted both by priority and probability. Randy wallows in weighing, gauging, estimating, calculating, weighted decision matrices, sensitivity analysis, expected value, and return on investment. He has tons of questions, and likes footnotes, sources and large random samples. When things get complicated, he asks for more data. Randy is officially considered the decision maker, but for all his rationality, he seriously overestimates his influence within the committee. This is because the other members have a quiet conspiracy to let Randy claim credit for their work.

Aileen tends to support Randy. She likes to think of herself as completely rational, but—usually without realizing it—leans one way or the other in reasonably predictable ways depending on how the information is presented. Although she respects facts and numbers, she does not treat them all equally. She’ll pay special attention to some and completely overlook others, sometimes give greater weight to those that are presented as losses rather than gains, or she might let the first ones she hears affect how she sees the next. When things get too complicated for her, she will take shortcuts, although she denies this.

Norma has a strong sense of who she is and what’s important to her, and makes decisions based on norms or rules that are integral to her identity and values. She sometimes aspires to being a better person, and will decide based on the question: What does a person like myself do in these situations? Norma does not get involved in all the different decisions, but when she does decide to get involved, she can carry a tremendous amount of weight—sometimes even veto power. Things don’t often get complicated for her, because she tends to see the world in black and white.

Gus is the laziest but can be the most powerful member of the committee. He decides totally on his gut, what feels right. Gus usually makes snap decisions, and can sometimes change his mind just as quickly. He’s in the driver’s seat when Randy is not paying close attention, and even when Randy gets deeply involved he’s working behind the scenes in cahoots with Aileen and Norma. He’s very jealous of his status and is extremely concerned with fairness. Gus doesn’t like to work hard, so he usually tells the others to just accept his decision, and if they want to use their language to make it more palatable to others, that’s fine with him.

It’s difficult to influence decisions when you don’t know which of the four is in charge, and it’s different for every decision. And what makes it really tough is that all four reside in every individual mind!

We’ll start with what it takes to influence Rational Randy’s decisions, because companies have invested a lot into systems that take the subjective human element out of their choices, which is why we have RFPs that weigh several pounds that feed into weighted decision matrices and algorithms which spit out clear winners and losers. If you’re selling to them, you must absolutely be in their ball park to have any chance of winning.

One model is the weighted decision matrix, which is what Amazon is using to decide where to establish their second headquarters. They’ve narrowed down the choice to 20 cities. It’s a huge decision, and it will be based on eight major criteria.

The other principal model is the investment decision, which includes calculations of differential cash flows, their expected timing, run through a model that adjusts for risk using the expected cost of capital. It’s all very neat and precise; all you have to do is plug in the appropriate numbers and the best logical answer spits out the other end.

Although we know that there’s a lot of room for subjectivity even in these objective models, we have to be able to speak the language and provide the information needed to succeed in Rational Randy’s world for major business decisions. There are three key points:

• Speak the language: business and financial acumen is a key competency to make you a persuasive communicator.
• Answer the mail: you have to have the answers to these questions, or you won’t even get a chance to go any further.
• Start early: it’s your best chance to influence what will be chosen to feed into the rational decision model.