Quotes About Persuasion

So, rather than guess about whether people will understand our ideas, we should ask, "Is it concrete?" Rather than speculate about whether people will care, we should ask, "Is it emotional? Does it get out of Maslow's basement? Does it force people to put on an Analytical Hat or allow them to feel empathy?

Ethically challenged people with lots of analytical smarts can, with enough contortions, make almost any case from a given set of statistics.

If you want your ideas to be stickier, you've got to break someone's guessing machine and then fix it.

For individuals' behavior to change, you've got to influence not only their environment but their hearts and minds.

if appropriate, add an element of surprise.

It can sometimes be challenging, though, to distinguish why people don't support your change. Is it because they don't understand or because they're not enthused? Do you need an Elephant appeal or a Rider appeal?

An old advertising maxim says you've got to spell out the benefit of the benefit. In other words, people don't buy quarter-inch drill bits. They buy quarter-inch holes so they can hang their children's pictures.

To get the Elephant off its duff, you need to reassure it that the task won't be so bad.

When it comes to statistics, our best advice is to use them as input, not output. Use them to make up your mind on an issue. Don't make up your mind and then go looking for the numbers to support yourself—that's asking for temptation and trouble. But if we use statistics to help us make up our minds, we'll be in a great position to share the pivotal numbers with others

Influencer, by Kerry Patterson

Concreteness is an indispensable component of sticky ideas.

Let's face it: Most PowerPoints aren't creating a lot of emotion.

Don Berwick, with his 75-person team at IHI, had convinced thousands of hospitals to change

Sometimes we think we're gathering information when we're actually fishing for support.

That's what sticky ideas do – they make people feel something. Change comes from feeling, not facts. Not

It will come as no surprise that one reliable way of making people care is by invoking self-interest.

companies often emphasize features when they should be emphasizing benefits. "The most frequent reason for unsuccessful advertising is advertisers who are so full of their own accomplishments (the world's best seed!) that they forget to tell us why we should buy

That's what sticky ideas do—they make people feel something. Change comes from feeling, not facts.

When you want someone to behave in a new way, explain the "new way" clearly. Don't assume the new moves are obvious.

If Palmer wants to persuade the professors, he needs them to trip over the truth. And that starts with a focus on the problem, not the solution.

Common sense is the enemy of sticky messages, if I already "get" what you're trying to tell me, why should I be obsessed about remembering it.

The company wants to sell you more shampoo, your friend doesn't, so she gets more trust points.

Commercial Art tries to make you buy things. Graphic Design gives you ideas.

Isn't that what truth is? The force of a person's believing seeps into those around him—into the very earth and air and water—until there's nothing else.