• Make sure the other side FEELs that they won
  • To trigger other people’s bragging and make them feel good: time + scenario + slightly irritating/negative experience + positively peak as the end.
  • Provide three options instead of yes/no questions, so that people is more likely to give valid info, espeically when under stress

Decoy effect

  • When target and competitor has trade-offs not that obvious to make a decision, insert a decoy which is closer to the target, but clearly inferior to the . Research shows that people will be more likely to pick the target - as much as 40% difference
    • However, the decoy can not to too undesireable
  • More applicable to intuitative thinkers than analytical person
  • Somewhat similar to “door in the face” and “selling top of the line”, where the proposal is meant to be rejected. The difference is that those two in general aims for the more expensive proposals, whereas decoy could work in both directions

pre-giving

  • Give a small favor, ideally something physical, before persuation
  • Don’t wait too long between favor and persuation

foot-in-the-door

  • The smaller request in the similar domain followed by the larger (and larger) requests
  • The inital request should not have too much external incentives, to avoid the overjustification symptom
  • Note that this technique is most useful when the person’s self-image aligns with your persuation,i.e., from yes to bigger yes, instead of no to yes
  • Another scenario is waiting for a person’s acknowledgement before

Low-ball

  • Paint a pleasant mental picture as if the customer can get it with reduced price, even if we intend to sell it at higher price
  • The key is that pleasant mental picture should buy initial agreement, and the second one should not be too outrageous
  • Similar to bait-and-switch, but low-ball is more on money and single interaction, bait and switch has separate bait and actual sales activity