Today I’m going to give you a 4-step formula you can use to become instantly more
persuasive.
You can use this to write persuasive emails and messages and I’m going to give you a structure to use to help you become more persuasive with just two or three sentences.
Table of Contents:
What Is This Kind Of Persuasion Used For?
This works well if you’re in direct personal contact with somebody.
And it works especially well if it’s someone that you’ve had previous communication with.
The formula that I’m going to give you can be applied to any form of communication, with anyone.
So you can use this with your email list, on blog posts, videos, it doesn’t really matter.
But the ideal usage is for when you want some help, or you need something from somebody.
We’ve all been in that situation where we need a favour – so what do we do?
We write an email, or a Facebook message, and then hope they’ll get back to us.
A Lousy Attempt at Persuasion
The typical approach to asking for a favour is all wrong.
First I’m going to show you a standard message that we’re all guilty of sending.
We might say something like:
Hey Bob, how are you doing? It’s been a while and I’d love to catch up with you.
By the way, I have a new Facebook page – could you like it please?
See you soon,
Joe
We’ve all sent messages like that and we’ve all received messages like that.
But can you see what’s wrong with this?
Because we all receive these kind of messages, and we all send them, we know the score.
They rarely work, right?
And when you’re on the receiving end of a message like this, you instinctively feel like Joe doesn’t really want to catch up, he’s using that as a way to butter you up before he reveals his real purpose.
But there’s no harm in asking, it’s in no-way a negative and if you contact people to ask them to take action then good for you, you’re doing the right thing.
The trick is to know how you do it properly.
The structure of your message has to change.
Here we can see that Joe is trying to be friendly and he’s trying to deliver significance, and show that he cares about you.
That in itself, is a really positive thing and I’m not knocking that at all – but the way that he’s going about it is wrong.
Now, he might genuinely care about you and your friendship, and he might genuinely want to catch up.
But it seems like the message has a thinly veiled agenda.
So let’s change the structure.
A More Persuasive Message
Even if keep all the same words and keep all the same sentences and just change the structure a little bit, we can make the message a lot more persuasive:
Hey Bob, I have a new Facebook page – could you like it please?
By the way, how are you doing? It’s been a while and I’d love to catch up with you.
See you soon,
Joe
See the difference?
Just a little alteration in the structure can change the entire perception of the message.
And we haven’t changed any words, we haven’t changed any sentences, all we’ve done is rearrange the order of the message.
So now instead of appearing a little bit underhanded or a bit veiled we are now directly leading with what we want.
We are asking in a very direct and upfront way that we want something from them or we need their help.
There’s no hidden agenda here.
And people like, respect, and respond to people who have the balls and the honesty to come up front and ask for the help that they need.
People value this kind of transparency.
And once we’ve asked them for a favour then, we can follow up with the personal touch.
This is where you deliver significance, so you make them feel valued.
Listen even just that act of asking them to do something for you will instantly make someone feel valued – if they don’t feel like they’re being manipulated in the process.
So when you ask someone for a favour, you’re really telling them that you see them as reliable and you see them as dependable.
In fact, people really do enjoy being given small amounts of responsibility – it makes them feel good about themselves.
When you apply this little change to your communications, you will notice that you absolutely get better results – this will without doubt make you more persuasive.
And we didn’t use any kind of gimmicks, stupid ‘mind control’ stuff and we didn’t use any seedy tricks or manipulation.
We just asked for what we wanted and then we made them feel good. It’s that simple.
But we can actually take this a step further too.
Give A Reason
By including a reason for the favour to exist you can increase your success rate.
A simple way to do that is to use the word ‘because’.
Let me show you an example:
Hey Bob, I have a new Facebook page – could you like it please? I’m trying to reach 100 likes.
By the way, how are you doing? It’s been a while and I’d love to catch up with you.
See you soon,
Joe
Now we have a logical reason for asking for the favour.
We’ve given them a valid reason to agree to help.
But again, we can still take this another step further.
Injecting Urgency
By injecting urgency we can gently increase the pressure just a little bit.
Have a look at this example:
Hey Bob, I have a new Facebook page – could you like it please? I’m trying to reach 100 likes by the end of the week.
By the way, how are you doing? It’s been a while and I’d love to catch up with you.
See you soon,
Joe
So we’ve raised the stakes just a little bit.
We’ve imposed a time limit and we’ve set a deadline.
This will make people more inclined to take the challenge and deliver the help you need.
What we’ve really done here is we have layered the emotional triggers throughout the communication, but in a very positive way.
A Simple Persuasion Formula
The formula is;
- First we directly ask for a favour
- Then we give a logical reason for them to comply
- Next we inject some urgency so they take action quickly
- And then finally we end by delivering significance
This simple four part formula will increase your success rate, without question.
But let me give you a little bit of a warning okay.
A Word Of Caution
The very first time that you do this it’s gonna feel really strange.
It will feel counterintuitive and you will be tempted to return to the old way of doing things.
And because it feels safe – and that’s what we’ve always been told to do.
But if you look again at first example that I gave you, you can see that is the most insincere way to ask someone to help you.
It’s not authentic and there’s clearly a hidden agenda at work.
And it makes the person you’re communicating with feel like you’re only interested in what you can get from them, which isn’t cool.
So when you change the structure to become more transparent, people will respect and respond to it easier.
Now there’s nothing to stop you from using this try it out the next time you need help, and you will be amazed with results that you get.