Persuasion

How to get your worst customers or clients foaming with rage at you and impotent to do anything about it

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I was walking home down a dark street just now. It was empty and quiet and I was lost in thought when — screaming and scratching — a cat scrambled out of a dumpster right next to me and bolted away.

I won’t lie. The bitch startled me. I might have missed a step and my heart definitely missed two beats.

I cursed out the cat and collected myself. I turned around to make sure nobody saw me in my unmanly state. And I picked up my path home, still a little alarmed.

“But what about the cat?” I thought. “I bet I gave her a good scare, too. Must be why she bolted like that! But she deserved it.” And a sly smile spread across my face.

You might think I’m a miserable person to gloat over possibly scaring a cat. Perhaps you’re right. But I’m reporting the more shameful parts of my life to bring you an idea. A copywriting idea. A copywriting idea which I think might be powerful.

It goes like this:

1. Think of your prospect

2. Think of other people who are around your prospect, and who are causing your prospect fear, harm, humiliation, despair, etc.

3. Write your headline: Here’s how to cause fear, harm, humiliation, despair, etc. to those other people

You may this is deranged. Again, perhaps you’re right. But aren’t you at least curious to see this idea in action? If so, here are three successful examples:

1. Gary Halbert. Selling his own newsletter. His prospect? Anybody who’s trying to sell something… and is finding it frustrating or even humiliating. Gary’s headline:

How to make people line up and beg you to take their money!

2. A top Clickbank offer right now, called His Secret Obsession. It’s targeted at women. Who want to win a man’s “love, attention, and total devotion for LIFE.” But not just any man! There’s a very specific guy these women have in mind, because (my guess)… they are OBSESSED.

3. John Carlton. Like Gary, John also poked into dark places of the soul. It might be horrible… but it works. Even to sell golf instructional videos:

How Does An Out-Of-Shape 55-Year-Old Golfer, Crippled By Arthritis And 71 Lbs. Overweight, Still Consistently Humiliate PGA Pros In Head-To-Head Matches By Hitting Every Tee Shot Further And Straighter Down The Fairway?

“The answer will shock and delight you!” writes John.

​​I bet. After all, just imagine. You’re not as disadvantaged as this overweight, crippled golfer… and Tom, Dick, and Horace down at the country club definitely aren’t PGA pros… so the humiliation will be immense! But they deserve it.

By the way, if you’re curious about the “How to” promise in my headline today… you can find these special client management strategies inside my daily email newsletter. Here’s where to sign up.

Anatomy of a laugh that didn’t happen

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“I can handle this. Handle is my middle name. Actually, handle is the middle of my first name. [Insert canned laughter]”
– Chandler Bing, Friends

You probably know from Cialdini’s Influence about the power of social proof. That’s why shows like Friends insert canned laughter. We laugh more when we hear other people laughing, even if we know it’s fake.

But:

It turns out to be more tricky than that.

Some scientists in Australia tested this out. They wanted to see if WHO is laughing matters. And the answer is yes.

I won’t burden you with the details of the experiment. In a nutshell, the study subjects (university students) had to listen to audio recordings of a standup comic, with canned laughter and without. But there was a twist:

One group of students was told that the canned laughter was other students from the same university.

A second group of students was told that the canned laughter was sympathizers of Australia’s far-right One Nation party, which apparently would like to build a wall with Mexico, and have Mexico pay for it.

And the results?

When the canned laughter was present, group one laughed four times more than without the canned laughter. Makes sense. Other people like them found the material funny. So Cialdini was right, and so was Friends.

But no such thing happened in group two. The students didn’t laugh any more with the canned laughter than they did without it. How could they? Obviously the comic isn’t very good if those horrible xenophobes find him so funny.

I’m telling you about this because it applies to direct marketing as well.

Just like the producers of corny sitcoms, marketers know about the power of social proof. That’s why we stick tons of testimonials into our sales letters.

And testimonials are good. But:

Testimonials are much better if they come from people like the prospect. (At least that’s what Dan Kennedy says, but he should know.) You want to find testimonials that have the same gender… same race… same age… same ideas about building the wall… as your prospect does.

And what if you don’t have any testimonials like that?

Well, then you can just sweep your arm over your offer and say something like,

“I write a daily email newsletter. Many successful marketers and copywriters find it very valuable. Click here to subscribe.”

Do as top copywriters and marketers do… not as they say

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A lot of people wrote to me over the past 24 hours. Many guessed the right answer to the riddle I posed yesterday.

I won’t reveal what that right answer was. After all, I have to withhold something as a reward for people who are signed up to my email newsletter.

But I will tell you this:

Among the people who did NOT guess right, there were lots of good ideas.

Curiosity… emotions… a big idea… a starving crowd… believability.

And you know what?

Makes sense. Because the copywriters I mentioned yesterday talked about the critical importance of each of those things.

Maybe you’re wondering what my point is. So let me set it up with something that may or may not surprise you.

In the interview where I got the Gary Halbert quote I cited yesterday, I heard Gary talk about the bullets he wrote for his Killer Orgasms book. Like a proud father, Gary said there are two really, really important things about those bullets:

1. None of them are hypey

2. They are based on truth

Well, I’ve looked at those bullets. They are most certainly full of hype.

I’ve also looked at the book Gary was selling. And it sure looks like it was slapped together after the bullets were already written. The payoff seems to be an afterthought. And sometimes there is none.

My point is that you can’t always go by what people say.

I got this bug into my head via marketer and copywriter Glenn Osborn. Glenn’s MO is to look at what successful promoters do, and learn from that.

So that’s what I’ll do tomorrow.

I’ll tell you about the #1 wealth-creation secret for marketers and copywriters — as I’ve heard it discussed, AND as I’ve seen it done. In fact, as I’ve seen it done by one of the famous A-listers I talked about yesterday.

And I’ll tell you this: This #1 secret is not the answer to my riddle yesterday… or any of those other things that people guessed.

If you’d like to sign up to my newsletter, so you can read tomorrow’s email, and so you can join in any future riddles I send out, click here and follow the rabbit hole to the end.

Influence 2.0 (your choice)

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“The washing machine cannot be fixed,” my landlady texted me today. “So I don’t know what’s better. To replace it and bother you with the workers coming and going. Or to just have you wash your stuff at my place.”

I considered my options.

It would be nice to have a working washing machine. But I’ll only be in the apartment until the end of the month. The landlady lives downstairs. And she does have a point. Workers coming and going to take out the old machine and set up the new one… it would be a hassle and a distraction.

“No problem,” I texted back, “I’ll do the laundry at your place.”

Only then did it occur to me how this was a clever strategy on her part. Had she said, “The washing machine cannot be fixed. But it’s no problem! Just use mine! It will be easiest for you!” Had she said that, I would have raised all kinds of objections. At least in my mind.

As you might know, what the landlady did is a classic persuasion technique. It’s called giving people a menu. From Jonah Berger’s  book The Catalyst:

Try to convince people to do something, and they spend a lot of time counterarguing. Thinking about all the various reasons why it’s a bad idea or why something else would be better. Why they don’t want to do what was suggested.

But give people multiple options, and suddenly things shift.

Rather than thinking about what is wrong with whatever was suggested, they think about which one is better. Rather than poking holes in whatever was raised, they think about which of the options is best for them. And because they’ve been participating, they’re much more likely to go along with one of them in the end.

Berger gives examples of using menus to persuade your kids to brush their teeth and your clients to accept your plan of action. But here’s a warning:

If you abuse this, it can turn into a standard pushy salesman’s grift. “So Mr. Bejako… do you want that new Miata in red… or in black?”

“Hold on buddy. I never said I want a Miata. Why are you trying to trick me?”

So keeping this in mind, I want to leave you with a couple of choices. Of course, you are perfectly free to ignore both and to take no action.

Choice one is to go and check out Berger’s The Catalyst, which I mentioned above. I really like this book, and I think of it as a kind of 2.0 version of Cialdini’s Influence. If you want to see why, check out this page for more info about The Catalyst:

https://bejakovic.com/catalyst

Choice two is to not bother reading the nearly 300 pages of The Catalyst. Instead you can simply sign up for my email newsletter. That’s where I share the best marketing and persuasion ideas I come across.

In fact, that’s where I already shared some great ideas from The Catalyst, and where I’m sure to share more. Here’s where to click if you’d like to sign up.

Man, or mouse?

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Marketer Andre Chaperon once wrote an intriguing email/article titled, Chefs vs. Cooks. Here’s the gist in Andre’s words:

When you go to a restaurant: there are two types of people who cook the food that diners order.

One type typically works in Michelin star establishments, like the Aviary in Chicago, or Gordon Ramsay in London, or the Mirazur in Menton, France.

These people are called chefs.

The other type are cooks.

You’ll find them in places like McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Chili’s Grill & Bar. Even your local “pretty good” restaurant.

The difference between the two is vast, of course.

Andre’s point is that there are chefs and cooks among marketers too. “Nothing wrong with that,” Andre suggests. “The world needs both!”

Thanks, Andre. But who the hell wants to be the marketing equivalent of a pimply 16-year-old, wearing a Wendy’s paper hat, shoveling out 15 lbs. of french fries from a cauldron of bubbling canola oil?

Nobody, of course. Not if they have a choice. Which is why Andre offers you the choice to join his course for creators at the end of his Chefs vs. Cooks pitch.

Dan Kennedy calls this man-or-mouse copy. And he explains how this isn’t just about men, or mice, or chefs, or cooks:

Great direct response copy makes people identify themselves as one or the other. Great direct response copy is all about divide and conquer. It is all about, you tell us who you are — smart/dumb, winner/loser, etc. — and then we’ll tell you the behavior that matches who you just said you are.

Dan says this is one of the four governing principles at the heart of each of his hundreds of successful campaigns.

Which brings up a man-or-mouse moment for you:

A lot of marketers have a certain contempt for their market. “Make them pay,” these marketers whisper. “Because when they pay, they pay attention.”

In other words, these marketers think most people are too stupid to value a thing properly if it’s given away for free.

And you know what? There’s probably truth to this.

But I hope you’re smarter than that.

Because that Dan Kennedy quote above, about making people identify themselves, is from Dan’s speech that I linked to yesterday.

This was the keynote speech at the Titans of Direct Response. The Titans event cost something like $5k to attend… and it still costs several thousand if you want to get the tapes.

But for some reason, at some point, Brian Kurtz, who put on the Titans event, made Dan’s keynote presentation available for free online. In my opinion, Dan’s is the most valuable presentation of the lot. And if that’s something you can appreciate, you can find it at this link. But before you go —

I also have an email newsletter. If you got value out of this post, and if you’re about to go watch Dan Kennedy’s presentation, there’s a good chance you will like the emails I send. If you want to try it out, you can sign up quickly here. And then go and watch that Dan Kennedy presentation.

Hollywood tear-jerker: Billion-dollar psychology lesson for cheap

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“Look at what they’ve done to you. I’m so sorry. You must be dead… because I don’t know how to feel. I can’t feel anything any more. You’ve gone someplace else now.”

You recognize that? It’s from E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. One of the biggest movies of all time.

When I was a kid, the main movie theater in my town for some reason kept the marquee for E.T. long after the movie had stopped playing.

I was too young to see it when it came out. And I suffered for years, seeing that marquee. I wanted to watch the movie so badly — a real life alien, and cute too! On Earth! Makes friends with a little boy and gets the boy’s bike airborne!

It’s everything my 5-year-old self wanted in life. But the movie was no longer in theaters, and there was no VHS either.

So a few weeks ago, I downloaded E.T. to finally heal this childhood wound and to see why this Spielberg fantasy is called the #24 greatest film of all time.

Unfortunately, the moment has passed.

I couldn’t really get into E.T. But I did get some use out of it. That scene above.

That’s when E.T. dies, about nine-tenths of the way through the movie. And the boy, Elliott, who had a psychic link with E.T. and who has felt everything E.T. has felt, suddenly cannot feel anything any more.

I can imagine that when E.T. played in movie theaters, both the kids and the parents choked up at this point. The kids, because the cute little extraterrestrial is dead. The parents, because they felt on some level how this scene might be about their childhood dreams, hopes, and capacity for joy and wonder… which have been drained out of them as they grew up and became adults.

And then of course, E.T. comes back to life and everything works out just fine. Which is the insight I want to leave you with today.

I recently re-watched Dan Kennedy’s Titans of Direct Response keynote speech. In one part of this amazing presentation, Dan tells an Earl Nightingale story. Two farmers each thought the other guy’s farm had the greener pasture. And when they get their wish and swap farms, it turns out the other pasture is no greener.

Dan: “Earl didn’t tell that story to be a marketing lesson… but I got the marketing lesson out of it.”

And you can too.

If a story reaches mass popularity — greener pastures, E.T., Bad Santa — it’s because it makes people vibrate. The thing is, social order must be maintained. That’s why each mass-market story either has a happy ending (if the characters were deep-down deserving) or a moral to be learned (if they were not).

Don’t let that fool you.

Market-proven tear-jerkers like E.T. can really show you true human nature — if you don’t wait until the end. The end is just tacked on to muddy the waters. But the psychology lesson is all the emotional buildup that happens before the turnaround.

That buildup shows you how people really are. Those are the real problems and desires people respond to, and that’s what you should speak to. Everything else is just Hollywood.

By the way, Brian Kurtz generously made Dan Kennedy’s keynote speech freely available online. If you haven’t watched it yet (or in the past month), it’s time to fix that.

But in case you need more convincing about the value hidden inside this speech, you might like to sign up for my email newsletter. In the coming days, there’s where I’ll be sharing some more Dan-inspired marketing ideas, like the one you just read.

Coming soon — The Destiny & Power Newsletter

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I meant to publish this post yesterday, but you know what? It’s not a joke. So here goes:

Some time in the long-lost 1970s, a guy named Uri Geller became a worldwide star by going on different TV shows and doing the impossible.

Under bright studio lights, with millions watching, Geller bent solid metal spoons, made stopped watches run again, and saw through walls and closed doors — using only the power of his mind.

(Yes, this is from the video I shared a few days ago, if you managed to watch it till the end.)

Then there was this second guy, a former stage magician named The Great Randi.

Randi started following Geller around from TV show to TV show. He’d appear a week later, and expose every one of Geller’s mysterious and transcendent acts for what they really were.

“It’s just parlor tricks,” said Randi. “Don’t believe this guy or his lies. He’s trying to con you, prey on your weaknesses, and probably steal your money.” And he showed exactly how Geller did did his illusions.

So what do you think happened?

Maybe you’ll say it was predictable. But it was eye-opening to me:

Uri’s popularity was unharmed.

Meanwhile, people starting booing poor Randi and chasing him off TV. “We’re going to commercial break,” shouted one TV host at Randi, “and you can piss off!”

Now that you know this interesting story, you can do with it what you will.

I know what I will do.

My conclusion is that hitting the road with an “Enlightened Rationalist” act is a sucker’s game.

I’d much rather win the love and loyalty of people who have the urge to believe — and fight for what they believe.

And that’s why I’ll be changing my own skeptical and cynical ways. I don’t expect the change to be immediate, but it will come, and soon.

You’ll be able to find it in my new newsletter, which I’ll call Destiny & Power. If you want to read this new newsletter, joining it is free and easy. You can do it right here, in just a few seconds.

And if you don’t want to read it, well, I hope you’ll change your mind. Because Destiny & Power welcomes and embraces everyone.

The awesome selling power of a good almanac

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Here’s a thrilling and true historical anecdote:

When Christopher Columbus made his fourth and final voyage to the New World, his boats were eaten away by an attack of boat-eating shipworms. Columbus had to make an emergency landing, and he did, in what is today Jamaica.

The locals initially welcomed Columbus and his men, and supplied them with food for a while. But how long would this go on? After many months of warm hospitality, the locals said enough’s enough, get your own fish.

Columbus and his men grew hungry and desperate. Fortunately, Columbus had his almanac. Specifically, he had the Regiomontanus almanac, which had all kinds of useful info about the stars and planets.

By studying this almanac, Columbus spotted an upcoming lunar eclipse. Maybe he could use to his advantage.

“Our Christian god is very angry with you,” Columbus said to the local chief. “He’s angry you’re keeping us hungry. Where’s the fish? If the fish doesn’t start flowing again soon, our god will punish you heavily. To show his might and his ill will, he will make the moon appear inflamed with wrath, three days hence.”

Three days passed. The moon rose. And sure enough, just as Columbus had threatened, it soon turned to an eerie blood-red color.

The locals realized the Christian god wasn’t fooling. They hurried to Columbus with new supplies of fish, and begged him to intercede on their behalf.

Columbus checked his almanac again, and said he would mull over the locals’ request. And he mulled, for about 48 minutes. That’s how long his almanac said the eclipse would last.

“I’ve spoken to my god,” Columbus finally said, right before the moon turned white again. “He has decided to withdraw his punishment from you. But don’t make him angry again.”

You can bet the locals listened. They kept Columbus and his men full of fish until six months later, when relief came, in the form of a Spanish ship from Hispaniola.

So that’s my message for you for today. Make a big prediction, and if you guess right, you get a lot of influence.

Perhaps you find that a little underwhelming. So let me sketch out just how scary powerful this can really be:

First of all, prediction is a very loose word. You don’t have to predict the outcome of the next election of where the Dow will be in two months time. Prediction can include very manageable things, like we talked about yesterday and the day before.

For example, find out what symptoms your prospect has, but hasn’t articulated yet. Call that out, and give it a name.

Or:

T​ell your prospect something new about himself that also sounds true and unique. It doesn’t matter if it’s not so true, or if it can apply to every other living creature in the world. All you have to do is make it sound true and unique.

Second, you can focus that influence and awe on an object, a process, or God forbid, a product.

Example: Bertram Forer’s case from yesterday. Students rated Forer’s personality questionnaire as highly valuable. Even though it had nothing to do with the actual personality sketches they were given.

And while Columbus wasn’t in the direct response business, can you imagine? I mean, imagine if Columbus had held up his almanac — “available for $49.99, call now” — and said it was the path to communicating with his powerful god?

When you put those two things together… well, perhaps you see where I’m going. In any case, I won’t spell it out further, because I feel like I’m on thin ice here in terms of ethics. But use this responsibly, and nobody gets hurt.

Finally, here’s a prediction:

You pride yourself on being an independent thinker. That’s why you don’t accept others’ statements without satisfactory proof.

Was I right? If yes, and you want to know the system I used to figure that out about you, then sign up for my email newsletter. It’s where all my secrets are revealed.

At times, you find yourself susceptible to hot reading

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Roughly 72 years ago, a young man we will call J.R. sat down for his “Intro to Psych” class. J.R. was smiling. Today, he would finally get his promised personality evaluation. What would it say?

The professor who taught the class was a certain Bertram Forer. Forer was an expert in personality analysis. A few weeks earlier, he had given each of his students a simple questionnaire to fill out — hobbies, reading interests, that kind of thing. Based on this, and using his expertise, Forer promised to come up with a brief personality sketch for each student.

The end of the school year was nearing, and J.R. had been having trouble deciding what to do over the summer. “Maybe this will help me clear things up,” he thought.

Professor Forer walked around the classroom. He placed each student’s personality evaluation face down on the student’s desk.

J.R. flipped his over as soon as he got it. He saw his name printed at the top. And then, heart beating, he started to read down the page:

1. You have a great need for other people to like and admire you.

2. You have a tendency to be critical of yourself.

3. You have a great deal of unused capacity which you have not turned to your advantage.

…

There were 13 items in total. When he read them all, J.R. sat there, feeling a bit dazed.

There was deep insight there on the page. Stuff that J.R.’s close friends did not know about. Even things he had never articulated himself, but that was undeniably true. (How the hell did Forer guess the sexual stuff?)

Sure, the evaluation wasn’t 100% perfect. For example, J.R. really didn’t agree with no. 12, “Some of your aspirations tend to be pretty unrealistic.”

But still, the personality sketch was powerful and accurate overall. “And all from a few innocent questions,” thought J.R. “This Professor Forer really is a personality magician.”

Perhaps you see where this is going. Because J.R.’s personality evaluation has become famous since. Today, it’s known as the standard “cold reading” script.

It turns out Profesor Forer didn’t do much analyzing. Instead, he pulled J.R.’s personality sketch out of a newsstand horoscope book. Not only that, but each student in the class got the same evaluation.

And yet, the vast majority of the students did just like J.R. did. They thought the evaluation described them very well. And they gave high marks to Forer’s little questionnaire for evaluating personality.

There is (I believe) a powerful persuasion technique that comes out of this. I will share that in my email newsletter tomorrow. For now, let me just admit that I’ve known about this cold reading script for years. But I never bothered to find out the history behind it.

I only discovered that today. It was thanks to a very entertaining but insightful video about how psychics, mediums, and faith healers do their work.

That’s also where I found out that, as powerful as cold reading is, there’s something even more powerful. It’s a technique known as “hot reading.” And if you’re reading this, then I suspect that, at times, you’ve found yourself susceptible to it.

Watch the video if you want to find out more about hot reading. And if you want to know about the persuasion technique I will share tomorrow, you might want to sign up for my email newsletter.

D. Trump’s first pillar of persuasive power

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Twigger warning:

This post is about billionaire businessman, master persuader, and father of five D. Trump. Because while working on some secret stuff today, I had the feeling that Trump uses repetition as a persuasive tool.

But it was just a hunch. And then I found a transcript of the third presidential debate between Trump and H. Clinton. In the first few seconds, Trump said the following:

Something happened recently where Justice Ginsburg made some very, very inappropriate statements toward me and toward a tremendous number of people, many, many millions of people that I represent. And she was forced to apologize and apologize she did.

But these were statements that should never, ever have been made. We need a Supreme Court that in my opinion, is going to uphold the Second Amendment and all amendments, but the Second Amendment, which is under absolute siege.

I believe if my opponent should win this race, which I truly don’t think will happen, we will have a Second Amendment, which will be a very, very small replica of what it is right now. But I feel that it’s absolutely important that we uphold because of the fact that it is under such trauma.

By my count, this short snippet features:

– 6 instances of words repeated for effect

– 2 instances of phrases repeated for effect

– 4 instances of ideas repeated for effect

So I think my hunch about Trump and repetition was spot on.

(I only found out later that I was not the first to spot Trump’s use of repetition. Far from it. It turns out Scott Adams wrote about it in his book Win Bigly, all the way back in 2017. According to Adams, repetition is the key pillar of Trump’s persuasive power, along with simplicity and images.)

Now maybe you don’t like Trump. Even so, you might still be able to learn something from the man. Because you too can use repetition at different levels of your persuasive message. Words. Phrases. Ideas. Across space and time.

It’s worth trying. Because repetition creates belief… it increases desire… and it makes sure your message actually reaches your prospect.

If that sounds familiar, it’s because I wrote about it in another post a few months ago. But it’s a very valuable lesson… and worth repeating.

And here’s something I repeat at the end of each of my posts:

I have an email newsletter. It’s the best. Really. If you’d like to try it out, you can sign up here.