Persuasion Tool #7 – Psychological Reactance
When you look at the world of influence, there’s always going to be resistance. Why do people say “no”? Why don’t they understand what you’re saying? Why isn’t everybody buying from you? Why doesn’t everybody see your point of view? This is because of what I call the four R’s of resistance. I guarantee you every time somebody says “no” or they don’t want to do what you want them to do – it’s one of these 4 R’s.
The 1st R is that you didn’t give them a reason to purchase, to buy or do what you want them to do. You didn’t give them a reason to change. That is where this resistance is coming from. You didn’t create any interest. There was no reason for them to listen to you. There was no reason for them to purchase. There was no interest. They didn’t care. They didn’t see a need and there was no want. It made perfect sense to you, but you didn’t transfer that need to them. Here’s an important point. Did they call you or did you call them. If you called them or approached them, you need to create a compelling reason. If they approached you or called you, they already have a reason, you need to find it.
That’s why in the world of influence you always see the WIIFM or the WSIC. What does that mean? Hopefully you know. The first acronym is what’s in it for me? The second one is why should I care? How is this going to benefit me? How is this going to solve my problem? Why should I listen to you? They didn’t see how it was going to benefit them. Maybe you listed a bunch of features, but what were the benefits? So grab their attention. Their brain is locked; you’ve got to open it up.
Here are some important questions to help you find out what their reasons could be.
If I could show you how to completely solve…
If I could show you how to make $10,000 in two weeks…
How would you like to save or make?
Wouldn’t it be great if you could ________________
Let me ask you a question…
Dig deeper to find out what’s important to them. You don’t have to data dump and hope that something sticks. Find out what’s important to them.
Another aspect is maybe you didn’t create any urgency. You didn’t give them a reason to do it today and if there’s time to think about it, if they could put it off, if they could do it tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, they will. You have to give a deadline. You need to have limited space or maybe there’s a potential loss. You see, this mental trigger of potential loss causes such great anxiety in people that they act to prevent the loss. They might not even be interested, but now they will. If you tell them they can’t have it or if you tell them why they need to make a decision today they will. I know this technique has been abused, but the fact is, if you don’t have any urgency they won’t take action. If they can do it later they think they will.
There are some interesting studies about scarcity. Researchers gave these subjects this cookie jar with ten cookies. Who doesn’t like cookies? But when they took the jar back, it only contained two cookies; it went from ten to two. One group of students were told their cookies had been given away to other participants because of the demand for the study. Everybody wanted the tasty cookies. There weren’t enough cookies. Another group was told the cookies were taken away because they made a mistake. When they were asked to rate the cookies later on the quality and taste, the ones that had the scarcity (demand) rated the cookies much higher.
Application
Psychological Reactance is a fancy term for urgency or scarcity. Think about it, what can you do to create urgency? Make it legitimate. Give them a reason why you’re doing it. Don’t just invent it and make sure you make it believable. Make sure there’s a deadline. Or there’s not enough space on your team. Limited supply – we’re going to run out. You’re going to miss out. Think it through. Give them a legitimate, believable reason to act to do it today, they will do it today.