A minute later, after the cashiers rang up the order, they asked again, but slightly differently. The cashiers said something along the lines of “Would you like to round up your purchase to the nearest dollar and donate the extra change to the Boys and Girls Club?” Many people who had said “no” now said “yes.”

What created the power of persuasion? Why were so many customers saying “no” to a $1 donation and then donating when asked again a couple minutes later? It wasn’t the ease of tossing their change into a bucket, because most people were paying with credit cards.   And the store was in a very wealthy suburb, so although the difference between $1 and 20 cents was a large percentage, it probably wasn’t meaningful to the donors.

Robert Cialdini, a professor of marketing and psychology, has a section in his fantastic book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, that explains why the H&M customers’ behavior my wife witnessed isn’t a fluke. It’s actually predictable.

In one research experiment, Cialdini’s team approached college students and claimed to be from the County Youth Counseling Program. The team members asked the students to chaperone troubled kids on a trip to the zoo; 83% refused. In the next phase of the experiment, Cialdini was able to dramatically shift results with one change. Prior to asking students to volunteer as chaperones, his team asked them to mentor a troubled kid for two hours a week for at least two years. After the students declined, the researchers asked if they would chaperone the single trip. Three times as many students agreed to chaperone when asked as a follow-up than did similar students who were asked only about chaperoning.

More backup is a study conducted by social psychologists at UCLA and related to negotiation. (This study, also mentioned in Cialdini’s book, was performed by Benton, Kelley and Liebling.) They found that the negotiators who got the most from another party started with an offer that was a bit extreme and then conceded to something more reasonable. They were able to close more deals than negotiators who started with the exact same reasonable deal but wouldn’t concede anything. When the offer was exactly the same, a significantly higher percentage of people accepted when it was a concession rather than the first offer.

According to the researchers, here’s what’s happening:

1. Psychologists say that the rule of reciprocity makes most of us want to do something for people who do something for us first. When people make a second request that’s smaller than the first, we consider their concession (asking for less) as doing something for us. That’s why, like H&M customers, student volunteers, and negotiators, we would say “yes” to the second request when we wouldn’t agree to it if it had been the only request.
2. If the first ask is a big commitment, the second request made right afterwards seems small in comparison.

Many people, after asking for something and getting a “no,” simply try to redirect. They ask why not, try to overcome hurdles, and then if that fails, vow to find a new approach. If your pitch doesn’t work, you should definitely try those tactics. But if they fail, ask for something smaller and different. Have a backup pitch. If you’re asking someone to donate $100 to your charity and he says no, follow up by asking if he’d buy a $10 raffle ticket. If you’re trying to get someone to join your Board of Directors and she says no, ask if you can call her for advice once in a while.

Before reading Cialdini’s book, I understood that it’s easier to close a deal when you make a concession. I hadn’t realized that making a concession would get people to say “yes” to things they would normally refuse.

If you’re interested in learning more about the power of persuasion, check out Robert Cialdini’s book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.

Although the type of job Mia wanted was low- (or no-) paying, it would’ve been extremely difficult to find a restaurant willing to take her on with no experience. Yet, shortly after beginning her search, she landed an apprenticeship at Le Bec Fin, which was considered one of the best restaurants in the country.

How did this happen? Mia shared her goals with everyone she met. It turns out that her grandfather’s neighbor had a cousin who was the White House pastry sous chef. A conversation with her grandfather led to a conversation with his neighbor, which led to a conversation with his cousin.  Turns out, the White House chef knew someone at a restaurant in Philadelphia, and that led to Mia’s apprenticeship.

There is one essential way to get people to help you achieve your goals. Whether your goal is huge, like starting a nonprofit to help change people’s lives, or something smaller, like getting more traffic to your blog, most people want to help. What you have to do is share your goal. If you’re not comfortable asking for help, you can mention what you’re trying to do and wait for people to raise their hands. They will.

And tell everyone. Keep in mind that most of your friends know the same people you know. So it’s important to share your goal with strangers you meet (at parties, events, etc.) and with acquaintances who aren’t in the same social circles. Who would’ve predicted that the path to Mia’s apprenticeship in Philadelphia would be through her grandfather’s neighborhood in Washington, DC?

This approach has been helpful to me numerous times. Most recently, I was at a conference and shared over lunch that I was trying to find a publisher for my book. A woman immediately offered to introduce me to her book agent and later emailed me an introduction to a publishing company as well.

When you’re having conversations, and someone asks what’s going on, let them know what you’re trying to accomplish. Most people will want to help, and you never know who can help you achieve your goals.

For a great post about grandfathers, check out: 7 Easy Ways You Can be a Better Person — Advice from Grandpa. This was one of the two most popular posts on this blog.

I was especially anxious the week The Discovery Channel and Roche Pharmaceuticals were coming. Our office was in a distressed part of Philadelphia. Our space was rough by anyone’s standards and looked like a war torn country compared to these clients’ office complexes.

When the client from Roche came, he looked around, paused and then said, “This is fantastic. I know I’m not paying for any unnecessary overhead.” The Discovery Channel client had the same reaction. I was frantic about how we’d be perceived, and our clients actually saw this as an advantage. They liked the fact that we weren’t wasting money.

Space wasn’t our only perceived problem. When we were small we were concerned about winning pitches and selling against larger competitors with more resources. We won when we embraced our small size:

1. The senior people you see at the pitch will work on your business.
2. You’ll get great service.
3. We don’t try to do everything. We focus on being great at what we do.
4. We can innovate, because we’re nimble and have no bureaucracy.

Of course, when we became large our strategy for selling more changed:

1. We’ve done hundreds of similar projects.
2. We make it easy; we can do all of your work and not just a portion.
3. We have paid staff who focus only on client innovation.

I’ve seen small software startups that don’t try to pretend they’re established; they sell the fact that they can customize the offering to their first few clients. Large MD offices that don’t pretend they can build a relationship with patients like their smaller competitors but stress that since they’re big, they have a 24-hour help line and there is always an MD available. If you try to pretend to be something you’re not, you won’t win.

You may want to improve your perceived weaknesses when you can afford to do that, but in the meantime, figure out how your weaknesses are also strengths and position them that way. If you look at them as strengths often your clients will too.

What do you think?

“I need to organize my closet,” my wife replied.

Then the salesperson proceeded to show my wife the top of the line closet organizing system that she thought we would love and told us why it was a great deal.

Compare this to the Container Store. The sales person at the Container Store asked a lot of questions: “What do you want to organize in your closet?”, “What do you keep in there now?”, “What do you think is out of place?”, and a personal favorite that I also ask my wife, “How many pairs of shoes do you have?”

After hearing the answers, the salesperson showed my wife a system that would organize our closet, and explained how. The sales person wasn’t selling a product. She was solving our problem.

Focus on uncovering and solving problems. You’ll sell more products.

How can you sell solutions instead of products? What do you think helps sell more?

At the end of the meeting, I asked the Mayor’s team if they could help me out. Everyone paused to see what I would say, given no one else was asking for anything. I talked about the neighborhood where our business was located. We were a startup growing from cash flow, so our offices weren’t fancy. In fact, we were one block from high-rise housing projects. Occasionally we’d find abandoned cars completely stripped down outside our office – the cars were on cement blocks; not even the tires were left. Sometimes there were also strange people wandering around. It didn’t bother most of the 60+ employees we had at the time or me, but our clients and partners were often horrified. We had big companies like Microsoft, Yahoo and Google who were afraid to visit. Microsoft even had a policy that a sales visit to our office required two people.

I asked the Mayor’s team if they could help, and they said “yes.” They offered that anytime we were having important meetings, we could call and they’d send in tow trucks and the police to clean up the neighborhood. How awesome and surprising that a big city’s government would do this. And, it was a huge help for us.

Don’t be afraid to ask for something. You’ll never get what you want if you don’t ask for it.

What do you think? Any examples, you’d like to share?