How to convince anyone of anything

In a series of posts, called readers choice, I write on whatever topics people submit and vote for. If you dig this idea, let me know if the comments, and submit your ideas and votes.

This topic was requested with a slightly different title: How to make a convincing argument.

Right away it’s good to know most people do not like confrontation. The word argument itself tends to make people think of lawyers or divorce proceedings, unpleasant stressful things. It’s worth going for a more positive and less loaded word: convince. The goal is to persuade, to make them want to agree with you and feel happy, or smart, or right, when they do. This has higher odds of success than bludgeoning them with logic, or trying to pin them into a mental submission hold. If you use your brain power to wrap people’s mind into a pretzel, it’s likely once you turn your back they’ll squirm their way right back out to the shape they had before you got involved. And they’ll likely resent you for twisting them up too.

It’s good to know our species sucks at convincing others and being convinced, or acting on those new ideas. Check out the stories of Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, Socrates… some of our greatest minds, perhaps our greatest people, tried to convince their followers of some pretty fucking simple ideas (e.g. do not kill, the golden rule), ideas which were often ignored or perverted by their followers in less than a generation. If this crowd couldn’t pull it off with the name of god, the threat of damnation, or the gift enlightenment behind them, the odds for the rest of us can’t be all that great. If you have ideas or a mission, no matter how persuasive you are, most people will not hear you. Most people will not change. The bet is that some will, and that’s enough reward for the effort. Or that your own thinking will sharpen through the process, and that’s valuable too.

The secret behind all the skills of pitching, persuading, selling or inspiring is the individual person you are talking to. There is no magic recipe for convincing large numbers of people of something all at the same time. That’s really hard to do. But if you are only trying to convince one person of something you can learn about them, study their interest and beliefs, and use that knowledge as a foothold for the ideas you want them to support or follow.

If you are in a meeting with 5 other people, identify the most influential people in that room. Those are the people your pitch needs to be aimed at.

The classic mistake people make is focusing on their own pitch. Their points. Their slides. Entirely forgetting who the audience is. This is shooting blind.

Work the opposite way. Understand their goals, their core beliefs, their preferred kind of thinking (data driven, story driven, principle driven, goal driven) – how do they argue for things? How do they convince others to do things? That’s the toolkit to work from. But most people find this boring. They can’t get their egos excited about studying other people, so they don’t. And then they fail. But if you can be generous of mind, and like a method actor put yourself inside their view of the world, you will understand them. And once you understand them you’ll see their perspective on you and your ideas.

I know if I can find a way to connect my idea to something they themselves argue and fight for, my chances improve dramatically. And if I can’t convince them, my studies of how they think, combined with their refutation for my ideas, will teach me something new about their view of things. At a minimum, their counterargument will give me new knowledge that will help me the next time I have to convince them, or someone else, of something. Or it might convince me they are unconvincable, and my time is best spent elsewhere.

I also know that i have to believe in the idea myself and for the right reasons. If I’m not entirely convinced, it’s very hard to naturally convey conviction. But if I can go into a conversation and state, honestly, “I believe so much in this idea I’d bet half this years salary on it” or “If I’m wrong I’ll do all your chores this month”, there is an undeniable power and sincerity whoever is listening will feel. Sometimes this can work as a bluff, but that’s a bad habit to get into.

I think the entire philosophy of user experience design works well for convincing people (Which is ironic as many user experience folks are not very good at convincing people of their ideas). If you deeply understand who you are trying to convince, how their mind works, and why they are in the room listening to you, your ability to position an idea so they understand it, consider it and support it goes way up.

Also see: How to pitch an idea

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Posted Wednesday, March 10th, 2010 at 12:39 pm

in philosophy, public speaking | 21 Comments »

Drew @ Cook Like Your Grandmother - March 10, 2010 at 1:03 pm #

I’m pretty sure you agree with what I’m about to say, you just didn’t spell out the last step: After figuring out how the other person thinks, you’re not just trying to find the best style of argument. You’re actually trying to show them what’s in it for them.

If you want someone to change an opinion, you have to show them why it’s better — for them — to believe your idea than to continue believing their idea. How does your idea make them happier, richer, safer, more popular? If you can’t come up with an answer, then your idea isn’t better for them.

And of course, “My idea is true and theirs isn’t,” is not a good answer.

abby, the hacker chick blog - March 10, 2010 at 1:09 pm #

Great points, thank you!

Now for the really tricky part – figuring out a person’s true goals, core beliefs and ways of thinking ;-)

Any tips on that? :)

JohnO - March 10, 2010 at 1:14 pm #

How quickly do you, or ought I to, move from knowing just how much I disagree with their core underlying beliefs to this: “Or it might convince me they are unconvincable, and my time is best spent elsewhere.”

That is what I cannot grasp yet, or I’m rationalizing not doing what I ought to.

Scott Berkun - March 10, 2010 at 1:18 pm #

Drew: Absolutely.

You also made me think of the counter situation. You do need to realize sometimes they will convince you. If you are listening to what they are saying, some of the time they’ll be right in not agreeing with you.

No one wants to be convinced by The Terminator. There has to be some room for the conversation to progress and evolve. There are times when, despite how much time you’ve spent preparing and believing in an idea, the wise thing is to recognize it’s no longer the best idea on the table and it’s time to move on.

It takes a lot of integrity to admit you’re wrong, or more precisely, that the time isn’t right for your good idea. But when you do give in for the right reasons, you earn credibility that will help you the next time you pitch an idea.

Paula Thrasher - March 10, 2010 at 1:27 pm #

I like the idea of trying to understand kinds of thinking in four dimensions (data driven, story driven, principle driven, goal driven). I’ve always tried to read people as either logical or emotional thinkers (very myers-briggs). That’s over-simplified though, I think as you say there is more to how people come to conclusions.

Even the same person can make some decisions rationally and logically and others emotionally. Still, all to easy to assume that everyone thinks about the world the way we do.

Scott Berkun - March 10, 2010 at 1:29 pm #

Paula: You’re right, all this stuff is oversimplified. Don’t get me started on Myers-Briggs :)

But the spirit is right. Best thing I can do if I want to pitch someone is to watch someone else pitch them first. Or ask people who have pitched to them what they’d do differently and why. If we’re talking about ideas in the workplace, there are always ways to study who you’re pitching to before you do it.

Drew @ Cook Like Your Grandmother - March 10, 2010 at 2:00 pm #

If the direct marketing crowd is right, everyone is sold emotionally first. Logic is just how they justify their decision to themselves.

So it’s first, make them want what you’re selling. (Your idea.) Then give them the excuse they need to tell themselves they’re being rational.

Daniel Simmons - March 11, 2010 at 8:21 am #

An essential read for the people that requested this topic is the Dale Carnegie classic:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0671723650/scottberkunco-20/

Zuly Gonzalez - March 11, 2010 at 9:29 am #

Good post, very insightful! Your main idea revolves around understanding the person enough to know what he or she cares about, but unfortunately we don

Rubio - March 11, 2010 at 1:05 pm #

What if the person you’re trying to convince has opposite goals compared to yours? Consider this hypothetical (honest, it’s hypothetical) scenario. Your goal is to create good quality products. Your boss, the person you have to convince to let you hire more people as quality is suffering, cares about the bottom line. He is satisfied with mediocrity at a low price. He says, “I don’t care what you ship as long as you get it out there”. (Sadly, that’s actually been said to me, word for word.) If he can show a good bottom line, even if it’s created through low costs and passable sales, his boss is happy which makes him happy.

Drew makes a very good point, what’s in it for them. I should be able to argue that investing on quality, even though more costly, will ultimately produce a better bottom line. However, this comes, in his eyes, with a considerable risk, and I have to make the risk go away. This is one of the main reasons people defend stupid ideas, because they’re safe. How do you convince someone that taking a risk is a safer choice?

Scott Berkun - March 11, 2010 at 2:06 pm #

Rubio: Persuasion becomes finding a way to argue for what you want in language and terms that makes sense to them.

If low costs is the only goal, then I’d try to find a way to explain how higher quality products do lower costs over the long term (support costs, return costs, etc.).

I might even abandon my own preferred vocabulary in favor of theirs. Instead of trying to sell high quality as a goal, I’d run with the goal of lower costs, and enumerate several ways to do that, including higher quality products.

The other way to go is to consider how important the reputation of the person making the pitch is. Perhaps your boss only listens to his right hand man, Fred. Well, don’t pitch to the boss then. Pitch to Fred. And if he agrees ask him to help you pitch the idea to the boss. Sometimes no pitch from you can ever work – it has to be a pitch from someone else.

Steve - March 11, 2010 at 8:33 pm #

I think I probably fall into your “unconvinceable” category. I can’t stand salespeople. I hate feeling as though I’m being manipulated into buying something or thinking a certain way. As soon as I detect attempted manipulation, I mentally dig my heels in and resist whatever it is the manipulator is pushing, even if it is something I want to have or believe. If you try to pull information out of my head about my goals and beliefs, I’ll resist even harder, because that information belongs to me, not to you.

Scott Berkun - March 12, 2010 at 1:17 am #

Steve: There is a meta approach of pitching without doing it in the form of a sales pitch.

Sales pitches are often about the salesman, or the sale.

If instead I ask you what your biggest problems or goals are, ask some questions to understand them, and then go off and do some research, coming back later with good ideas for solving your problems, the vibe is not that of a pitch anymore. It’s about honestly trying to give you what you you’re trying to get. Even though there is an idea I’d like you to support, the context and the quality of the ideas are such that it doesn’t feel like I’m forcing you into something. It feels instead like I’m working on your behalf, which in fact, I am.

Frankly it’s really hard to flat out pitch someone who has no interest in being pitched to. The way to convince them or something is to take the long road of actually understanding them well enough that your idea is born out of solving their problems/goals, rather than trying to cram your idea down their throat.

Mike Nitabach - March 14, 2010 at 6:45 pm #

The most important thing I try to instill in my trainees when mentoring them in how to give a good seminar presentation is that their number one goal is to make their audience feel smart.

Convincing People | Thought Clusters - July 14, 2010 at 4:32 pm

[...] do you make someone change their opinions? Scott Berkun has an article with some thoughts on how to convince people, primarily that you have to understand the viewpoint of the other person and try to put your [...]