Grapho-Persuasion:
Mastering the Pyramid of Persuasion
(Confessions of a Marketing Man)
By Victor Semo
SMASHWORDS EDITION
PUBLISHED BY: Jamin Press at Smashwords
Copyright 2010 by Victor Semo
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Praise for Grapho-Persuasion
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“I like to know who I am dealing with, and this book helps me to reveal what they are hiding from me. Fascinating!”– Geoff Burch, Best-selling author of Irresistible Persuasion, BBC Television Presenter, and voted Business Communicator of 2011 by the Speechwriters Guild
“Savvy persuaders have a new powerful technique in their hands!”– Rintu Basu, Best-selling author of The Persuasion Skills Black Book
“Grapho-Persuaded? I was. You will be!”– Alun Thorne, Birmingham Post
“Victor Semo challenges you to consider that a person’s handwriting tells you about their personality, the key to how best persuade them. Dozens of samples and examples are given as well as the use of handwriting analysis in the scope of a simple but elegant model of persuasion. Grapho-Persuasion is well worth your reading and utilizing!”– Kevin Hogan, Psy.D, author of The Science of Influence
About the Author
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Being an academic and business professional, Victor Semo is a ‘pracademic’. As well as being a graphologist, he is also a professional marketer and a Doctoral Researcher in the art of political persuasion (lobbying) and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) at Wolverhampton University, UK. When he was 21 years old, Victor took a break to setup a fashion-engineering design business, then licensed all his ideas, before going back to the normal professional-student life that he loves so much.
This Parisian-born has lived in different countries and now, occasionally, writes thought-provoking posts on his blog at the Birmingham Post, the most influential business newspaper in the West Midlands, http://www.birminghampost.net/victor.
To contact him, or find out more about Grapho-Persuasion, visit www.grapho-persuasion.com , or Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/victorsemo
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Disclaimer
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This handbook was originally a personal, handwritten letter and manual to my sister Ghislaine.
I wrote the handbook for her in order to help her be more in control of her environment, and stop being a victim of stress and anxiety.
Although now publicly available, it remains, for me, a personal letter. Throughout the text, you will still find mention of “Ghislaine”, “sister”, “brother”, and some personal stories and notes for Ghislaine displayed in this grey rounded box:
When you read the contents of a rounded box, I am addressing myself to you. Replace the name “Ghislaine” with your name, and replace the words “sister” and “brother” with‘[my] friend.’ As someone who is taking the time to read this book, I consider you a friend. Follow this persuasion trick throughout the book and you will feel that I have written it for you.
Please be advised that:
-All the techniques and theories presented within the book have been used by men and women throughout history. In academic circles, many are considered unreliable because results of empirical studies conducted to date are inconclusive. Since scientists cannot prove or disprove these theories 100%, it is safer to consider them unproven ‘junk science’. My sole contribution as a ‘pracademic’ is to bring the school of persuasion and the school of graphology together.
-All the businesses, places and names mentioned are real unless mentioned.
-If you are an expert in persuasion, you might say that more persuasion techniques could have been included, and I would agree with you. With your experience, whatever your profession, you also know that more does not necessarily mean better and this handbook does not attempt to be an encyclopaedia. Some techniques are just too complex to put into practice, therefore it is better to present here those that are easy to ‘carry and deploy’.
-There may be mistakes, both typographical and in content. You are therefore advised to use the text as a general guide. The purpose of this handbook is to educate and entertain only.
-You may not like what you read, especially if you are sceptical by nature and prefer to see before believing. If that is the case, I ask you to be fair; try putting it in to practice first, then feel free to criticise. Criticism and debates are good, I welcome them; they keep you intellectually healthy.
CONTENTS
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A Persuader’s Prayer
Introduction -Objections from the Audience
How to Use this Handbook
Why Write this Handbook?
Handwritten Letter to Ghislaine
The Creation of Grapho-Persuasion
Influence ≠ Persuasion
PART ONE | WHAT IS GRAPHO-PERSUASION?
PART TWO | THE PYRAMID OF PERSUASION
1. The Cornerstone
1.1 Fundamental 1
1.2 Fundamental 2
1.3 Fundamental 3
2. The Rules
2.1 Create Trust and Comfort
2.2 Be a Good Talker. Create Consultative Conversations
2.3 Create Dependence
3. The Laws
3.1 Law of Reciprocity
3.2 Law of Commitment and Consistency
3.3 Law of Liking
3.4 Law of Authority
3.5 Law of Social Proof
3.6 Law of Scarcity
4. The Techniques
4.1 Blur Perception
4.2 Make Spending Abstractive
4.3 Make Them Focus on Loss
4.4 Provide Guarantees
4.5 Introduce a Decoy
4.6 Colour the Choice
4.7 Get the Door Closed in Your Face
4.8 Put Your Foot in the Door
4.9 Lower Resistance with Flattery
4.10 Speak and Capture Attention
4.11 Reframe
4.12 Anchor
4.13 Act Like a Debater: Present the Negatives and Positives
4.14 Use Hypnotic Words
4.15 Use Statistics
5. The Secret Recipe
5.1 The Secret Recipe of Subliminal Persuasion
5.2 How to Make a Hypnotic Speech
PART THREE | GRAPHOLOGY
6. Emotional Aspects
6.1 Emotional Responsiveness and Expressiveness
6.2 Emotional Depth (Pressure in Writing)
7. Social Aspects
7.1 Talkativeness, Secretiveness and Lies
7.2 Pride, Vanity, Independence
7.3 Letter Connections
7.4 Spacing
7.5 Letter Sizes
7.6 Generosity, Thriftiness
7.7 Jealousy
7.8 Ego
7.9 Willpower
7.10 Goals (Ambitions)
7.11 Determination
7.12 Argumentativeness
7.13 Doodles
8. Sexual Aspects
PART FOUR | CAN YOU GRAPHO-PERSUADE?
Conclusion
A Request: Help this Book if you Like it
Appendix A - Playing with Statistics in Advertising
Appendix B - Deliberate Practice
Appendix C - Influencing in a Digital Age (bonus chapter)
Notes
References
Index
A Persuader’s Prayer
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Peitho, goddess of the arts of persuasion,
Give me strength to appeal to the public.
I shall not be a product of my environment,
My environment shall be a product of me.
Because morality is personal and not societal,
Indistinguishable are persuasion and manipulation.
Of my successful and failed attempts,
You and I shall be the sole silent witnesses, victims and judges.
Who don’t try won’t ever know.
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Introduction-
Objections from the Audience
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Whenever I do a seminar or talk about Grapho-Persuasion, I usually get these two comments:
1.“Handwriting analysis does not work. It is a quackery”.
2.“People don’t write anymore with a pen and paper, but with a keyboard and a computer screen. They handwrite occasionally only to take notes or send greeting cards”.
And I always have to answer these two questions:
1.“Does it really work?”
2.“If it works, is it really relevant today? People are more and more online”.
My answers to critics, sceptics and other Jeremiahs of this world are always the same.
Answer to Comment / Question 1:
“Like any student, do your homework. Try first, then we’ll talk. Here is my number and email address to send me your feedback”. This is my usual answer when I don’t have time to expand further. When I can, I explain:
Graphology (i.e. handwriting analysis) has been around for almost four hundred years and the question remains, is it a science, a pseudo-science or an art? The science has demonstrated that an individual’s handwriting is unique, like their DNA1. Scientific studies remain unclear as to whether it is possible to establish a correlation between someone’s personality and his or her handwriting. Handwriting analysis is a combination of scientific principles and the subjective interpretation of the graphologist, who can be victim of bias. As with any doctor that reads a patient’s X-ray, a handwriting analysis’s report is only as good as the impartial graphologist who does it.
As a pracademic and due to the high risk of bias, I see graphology like advertising and marketing: not entirely scientific. During the application of scientific principles for a marketing campaign or the handwriting analysis of someone, at a certain point these principles will be subject to the personal interpretations of the marketing director, or graphologist. Their interpretations and implementations will determine the success of the campaign, or analysis.
Body language is not a science. If you believe that someone’s attitude and facial expressions gives you more information about what that person is really thinking, than what he or she is saying, why don’t you believe in graphology?
Businessmen and politicians say that you can learn about a person’s personality and the way they do business by the way they play golf. Science cannot prove this myth, but if you are one of those who believes it, why don’t you believe in graphology?
Fingerprint analysis includes a degree of subjectivity, exactly like handwriting analysis. If you believe in fingerprint analysis, if you acknowledge that fingerprint analysis confirms your unique identity and does not attempt to predict your future actions, why don’t you believe in graphology?
Graphology confirms your unique personality today, not yesterday or tomorrow. It does not predict the future. If you believe that you can influence and persuade someone that you’ve known for years because you know their personality (e.g. family members or spouse), why don’t you believe that you can do the same with a stranger, as long as you know his or her personality?
Do you believe in behavioural economics? Many persuasion techniques used by salespeople and marketers are derived from behavioural economic theories. Do you believe in behavioural psychology? Graphology is a form of behavioural psychology theory:
Behavioural Economics + Behavioural Psychology = Grapho-Persuasion
Think about it for five minutes (and during that time let me get a glass of water). Still sceptical? All right, I continue....
Here are few phenomena that science still cannot explain why they work, we just accept them2:
1.Placebo effect: the placebo effect is a persuasion technique usually used by doctors and propagandists (it is not covered in this book). Why does it work?
2.Yawning: Why do we yawn? Why is it contagious? (i.e. when you see someone yawn, you tend to yawn too).
3.Female orgasm: in contrast to the male orgasm, there is no evidence that the female orgasm plays a reproductive role, so why does it exist?
Scientists are still debating these questions. If you ask, some will give you an honest silence as a response. Some will say your question is a floccinaucinihilipilification, why get a headache in trying to understand all the Whys and Hows of the universe. It works, just accept it. Others, the obdurate Jeremiahs and pompous scientists, will give you a verbose answer full of scientific jargon that makes their explanation appear very intelligent and therefore plausible. But if you scratch beneath the surface, you soon realise that it is nonsense.
Illusion is the best weapon of marketers, you should never make up your mind on what you read, hear and see only. As a pracademic, the best advice I can give you is to be critically open minded. Listen to both sides of the argument, analyse, make your own tests, and finally decide which side you will join. But if you are like most first year students who believe they know everything and anything in life, well, you already know what to do: close this book and keep following the herd.
(Two minutes please, let me grab my glass of water and during that time the Jeremiahs can leave the room...). I conclude:
On a daily basis, advertisers and marketers influence and persuade you to buy products and services. They know some aspects of your personality, behaviour and preferences, but only as part of a segmented customer group. You are just a number in a herd of a certain size (the size of the segmented target market) and marketers, working with their communication agencies, try to move the herd in a certain direction. Grapho-Persuasion allows you to do the same, but on a one-to-one basis.
Look at the handwriting of strangers (suppliers, clients, job interview candidates, etc.) on a note or cover letter, or at their signatures on a document and you will get a snapshot of their personality. Once you know the personality of that stranger, even a small portion of it, you are now like a marketer with a snapshot of the psychographic profile of the ideal customer. If you are a good marketer, you will know instantly which marketing/persuasion techniques to apply on that target. If you are a bad marketer, or just a young graduate without work experience, you might know the techniques in theory, but you will fail in their implementation. Then you will need to find a reason to explain to your boss why you did not succeed, e.g. you were not well that day, the target market was not right for the product, the wrong location, the weather, the sales team, etc. You may blame the marketing techniques used, saying they were not good enough and you knew they were just quackeries. Next time, you will try something different.
Grapho-Persuasion is a methodology of persuasion based on handwriting analysis. As long as people write and need to meet face-to-face, the methodology will remain valid. Because it implies a degree of subjectivity, like the interpretation of an X-ray, the analysis of someone’s body language or how they play golf, the accuracy will remain debatable but not the validity.
You still don’t believe that Grapho-Persuasion works? All right, my time is up and I have to go. Try it first, then let’s talk again. Those who don’t try won’t ever know. Here is my email to send me your feedback or constructive criticism after you’ve tried grapho-persuading someone: mailto:victors@glocalpen.com. Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/victorsemo
P.S: Don’t forget: intent is not synonymous with outcome. It takes time and practice to get a black belt in Judo. As with psychiatry and the martial arts, the principles of Grapho-Persuasion are easy to understand and easy to implement, but as a whole, they are complex to master. You won’t succeed without training and practice.
For further thoughts on this general comment/question, please read my article: “Deliberate Practice” in Appendix B.
Answer to Comment / Question 2:
I agree that social media is not a fad and people use a keyboard and computer screen to communicate more and more. Hardcore fans of the Internet might even suggest that, in the future, people won’t be handwriting letters and greeting cards, they will have digital personal diaries and notebooks, instead of the paper version. Maybe... However, I am certain that people will still handwrite short notes and sign documents with a pen on a sheet of paper.
Handwriting will never die. Offline meetings will never die. Technology cannot satisfy those two intrinsic needs that we have to express ourselves individually, like singular artists, and meet and touch other artists. The need for physical contact is part of human nature. The online world cannot replace the sensation of touching a piece of paper or someone emotionally close to us, or the sensation we have when we receive in a postcard or birthday card in the mail with the handwritten notes of a friend or family member. To paraphrase Robin Dunbar, the renowned academic at the origin of the Dunbar’s Number theory: “Like an image, at anytime a touch is worth a thousand words”. A touch is priceless.
Visual and physical contacts convey more emotional meaning than words. That’s why teachers remain reluctant to the idea of online courses to educate students. You are reading my words right now and understanding them, but if you could hear me reading them to you while we look into each other’s eyes, those same words would have more emotional impact and meaning to you. Many book authors during a book tour read a chapter of their book to the audience, personalising its delivery, and helping the audience to fully understand the meaning of their words, implicitly and explicitly.
It was said over the last ten years that webinars (web conferences) would replace face-to-face meetings and revolutionise the travel and event industries. The revolution has still not taken place and the ‘journaling’ industry remains healthy. The greeting cards market has not shown any decline in the last ten years and the notebook market, led by brands such as Moleskine, remains steady. Tony Blair handwrote his memoirs, J.K Rowling handwrites her manuscripts, and this book you are reading was initially written by hand too.
People continue to go to exhibitions and take airplanes, cars or trains to meet their clients face-to-face. Good networking and business deals are still made on the golf course, during a lunch, while having a drink at the bar of a hotel, or in a gentleman’s club.
The telegram, the telephone, the fax and emails did not kill offline meetings, these technologies just made them easier to co-ordinate, as does online social media, such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, and as will any future communication tools in a hundred years to come. I am confident that handwriting will never die. Savvy marketers and persuaders never believe the hype and follow the herd for fear of standing out in the crowd. Like academics, they research and analyse the other side of the coin themselves and only then, agree or not agree to follow the herd.
P.S: Don’t forget: the quality of a relationship with someone is proportional to the amount of time you invest in that relationship. Technologies, like the phone and social networking websites, are communication tools that prevent a relationship from breaking down, especially when distance is an issue. Yet, if you don’t meet that person offline from time to time to do things together, for example going for a drink, sooner or later the quality of your relationship will degrade. You and your friend could become more acquaintances than friends3.
For further thoughts on this comment/question, and the strategies to consider for influencing people online, please read the free bonus chapter: “Influencing in a Digital Age” in Appendix C.
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How to Use this Handbook
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Although this book will probably be more beneficial to people in a sales or marketing role, the intended audience is for everyone interested in improving their persuasion and negotiation skills in their social and business circles.
It is designed so that you can open the book at any page and find valuable tactics to use immediately. The aim is that you master the Pyramid of Persuasion and the basics of Graphology, then put all this knowledge together to be able to grapho-persuade anyone you meet subconsciously, because the more you do something, the less you consciously think about how you’re doing it.
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Why Write this Handbook?
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A good question. It is not why, but how did it come about. The answer is overwork. Between 2007 and 2010, I was (and still am) very active, physically and intellectually. With something always on my mind, I constantly wrote down my ideas on any piece of paper I could find. One night I could not sleep, too many thoughts running through my head. The steam had to be evacuated, so I grabbed my fountain pen and started writing.
During this ‘Jerry Maguire’ moment, one of the chapters was my knowledge on Grapho-Persuasion that I had been developing for the last three years. This knowledge stemmed from my academic studies, personal experiences and those of the practitioners that I came into contact with in the fields of public relations, marketing, sales, business management, lobbying, psychology, human resources and graphology.
I had not realised that I had accumulated so much knowledge on persuasion until that night, when I evacuated the steam by laying everything down on sheets of paper. I kept writing for days until I was no longer in a rush to buy more ink for fountain pens, and I left those notes on the side.
A few months later, my sister had some issues and we had a long telephone conversation. Her problems were not so bad, if she had re-framed the situation she was facing, but she did not know how to: she was stressed. The next day, I thought I should give her the best gift that I had: my knowledge of Grapho-Persuasion. I polished the notes that I had drafted during my ‘Jerry Maguire’ moment, typed them up, printed and binded them and, for the first time, noticed that I had written a manual. I mailed it to her. Ghislaine appreciated the gesture and liked the manual. One day, while at the library, I found in a book an adapted story of the Star Thrower by Loren Eiseley:
The Star Thrower
Once upon a time, there was a wise man walking along a beach where thousands of starfish had been washed up on the shore. He noticed a boy picking up the starfish one by one and throwing them back into the ocean. The man observed the boy for a few minutes and then asked him what he was doing. The boy replied that he was returning the starfish to the sea otherwise they would die when the sun is up and the tide is out.
The man scoffed, asking how saving a few, when so many were doomed, would make any difference whatsoever? The boy smiled, picked up another starfish and threw it back into the ocean, and then said politely, “it made a difference to that one”. The puzzled wise man returned home, deep in thought. A few hours later, he returned to the beach and spent the rest of the day helping the boy throw starfish into the sea.
I had never heard of that story before. As someone doing academic research on Corporate Social Responsibility and ‘green capitalism’, I found the moral of this beautifully written story to be profound; each one of us can make a difference and every little bit helps. I thought about the handbook I’d given to my sister which she had found helpful, and the idea that other people could benefit from it appealed to me...And there we go!
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Handwritten Letter to Ghislaine
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My Dear Ghislaine,
I hope this letter will find you well.
I guess you are surprised by the document contained in the Christmas gift box. My present is earlier this year.
It took me many, many, many days to produce this manual. It is unique and only for you. Why? Because I understand that you are under constant pressure and must perform at 200%. As sang by James Brown, ‘this is a man’s world’, but it would be nothing without superwomen like you.
There is no better gift than education. With it, there is nothing in life you desire that you cannot obtain. This manual is my invaluable gift to the professional woman, wife, mother and sister you are. I’d like you to stop stressing for anything and everything and be more in control of your environment. To help you, I’ve put together all my knowledge that I have gained on ‘Grapho-Persuasion’. It is one of the outcomes of my PhD thesis. I say one of the outcomes, because Grapho-Persuasion is not really what my PhD thesis is about (it is about CSR and Lobbying). My supervisors won’t be happy to learn that I wrote a manual on persuasion instead of CSR!
But as a doctor yourself, you know that in research, your initial research questions can take you somewhere you had not expected. Grapho-Persuasion is one of the mountains that I’ve been climbing for the last three years and I am sharing this view with you.
In the manual, I gave you some tips, techniques and my secrets (not all, of course!). Like a lobbyist ‘working’ on a politician, once you understand the psychology of human behaviour and know your strengths, you won’t worry anymore about not being able to turn the tables, whoever the person you’re dealing with. Your boss shouts at you? A client bothers you? My nephew is not happy because you’ve bought the wrong cereal box? Let them get excited and stress. Keep the smile, lose the battle, win the war, which is ultimately the control of your environment.
My dear sister, I know how busy you are, so you can be certain I will not offer you something that does not work and waste your time. Superwoman, just try. What do you have to lose to ‘grapho-persuade’ your friend or your boss while having lunch with them? They won’t even notice!
This ‘vade mecum’ - Latin for ‘go with me’- manual is easy to carry in your handbag and organised in easy-to-read sections. You have no excuse. From time to time, open a section, read it and practice.
Your brother,
Victor
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The Creation of Grapho-Persuasion
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Persuasion, influence, power, political manoeuvres, political philosophy, lobbying, hypnosis, the art of rhetoric, psychology, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and ethics: these are some of the fields I’ve been analysing as a Marketing Manager and a part-time PhD research student since 2007. The more I researched how corporations influenced governments, and the tactics and strategies used by lobbyists to persuade policymakers to agree with their clients’ opinions on public issues, the more interested I became in finding an answer to the question: How to effectively influence people?
In the 1970s, Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) who lobbied for the environment and more CSR in boardrooms were considered as demagogues and anarchists by business leaders and policymakers. Yet, by the 1990s, they had turned this around, earning the respect of those same people. They had persuaded corporations and governments that the concept, People, Planet and Profit, was better than Profit only. How did Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and Christian Aid, to name just a few, spread their “green” ideology and make it mainstream? It took a few decades, but they succeeded in the end. In 1975, if a chief executive stated publicly that the environment was none of his concern, he was applauded by his peers and the comment would have been largely ignored by the public. Today, if one dares make this sort of statement in public, they know they will be reviled and condemned by both the public and their peers. What a change in just thirty years!
To understand how corporations, NGOs and governments influence each other, as a pracademic, I needed something more scientific than the techniques advanced by Dale Carnegie in his classic book How to Win Friends and Influence People. I read all the academic papers and books on power and influence that I could get my hands on. I studied psychology, Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), body language techniques and the methods used by experts in the art of seduction and dating, nicknamed ‘Pick-Up Artists’, and how they seduced women. I studied the sciences of behavioural economics, irrational behaviours and communication techniques used by lobbyists to persuade government officials. I studied the methods used by the best sales and marketing people. I read countless stories of successful businessmen, entrepreneurs, historical political figures and strategies of warfare.
I attended seminars on these topics but by 2009, having read so many books and talked to so many experts, these events did not teach me anything new. Many times, when listening to the speakers, I felt that I could walk on to the stage and finish the presentation myself.
One day, at a workshop on Assertiveness and Presentation Skills, I was stunned to see the speaker take out a book and recite the contents. He then told us that, for more information, we should go out and buy the books on a list he was passing around! When you pay to attend a workshop, you expect to hear something new, to garner something of value to take with you at the end. You don’t want to see a speaker, who’s been paid £1,000 for a half day workshop, only to watch him stand up in front of you and read a book, especially if he’s not even the author!
What surprised me most that day was how many other delegates found his presentation new and refreshing. For me, what he was saying was obvious and could be found in books at the library by anyone interested enough in the subject. As a doctoral student conducting research, I’d done little else for the past two years.
After that disappointing workshop, I came to the conclusion that there is nothing new being shared by all these professional speakers and consultants. It is the same old meal, recycled and put in the microwave. It is presented to people as a different dish but the food (knowledge) is still the same. These consultants have mastered the art of selling yesterday’s food every day, and many dare call themselves ‘gurus’. Peter Drucker used to joke that people call them ‘gurus’ because the word ‘charlatan’ is too long!
I analysed all the number one bestselling books on my shelves and at the library, gauging the content and how it was presented, i.e. layout, template, the number of pages, references and the bibliography. My instinct was right: in the last twenty years, no new, innovative theory and no new thinking in business management sciences, public relations, marketing and personal development sciences has contributed to a discovery on consumer behaviour or business strategy to the extent that companies systematically implement it, or that it is taught in all major universities. Business strategies and tactics used online are not new, they are adapted from the offline world. A report from sourceforconsulting.com reaffirmed this opinion. According to the report, having something new and distinctive to say remains the biggest challenge of consultants to date and, as a result, the primary difference lies merely in the planning and execution of the consulting services they provide4.
There is, it appears, four categories into which authors can be divided. Within the first two lie the true gurus who are making significant contributions to knowledge; the remaining two categories contain the media titled or self-designated gurus who present old, established theories and practices in a different light. Many times, these are the consultants who write books just to establish their reputation as experts in their fields, since writing a book reinforces your credibility.
Category 1: Academic researchers building on the work of their peers, developing new theories and principles, then successfully diffusing their work to the general public (e.g. Robert Cialdini and Michael Porter).
Category 2: Professionals drawing upon their years of work experience, developing principles they have observed working in all business situations (e.g. Jack Trout).
Category 3: The Re-framers. Authors who re-package and present the work of the first two categories as if it was their own. Their packaging looks more attractive, their writing style and presentations are entertaining, and the book publisher creates promotional hype to make the content appear new and refreshing.
Category 4: The ‘Referenceurs’ (re-framing combined with référencement (listing)). Authors who re-package and present the work of those in the first two categories, focalising on making it more entertaining and interesting for the reader. It is often historical research and contains numerous references. For example, Robert Greene, co-author of the best-seller, The 48 Laws of Power, is one successful writer in this category. He presents well-established concepts, difficult to prove scientifically they all work in any given situation, in an easily readable fashion. (This book you are reading now falls into this category, with a zest of category 2).
Beyond that, no other books or academic papers on the science of persuasion shed any new light, and I saw no sign of upcoming, new and real gurus. The problem was that, like most academics, I had become an expert by having read and studied all the books on the subject that were out there. I was now an expert-scientist and I have reached a plateau in the learning curve. I was a Master in the Science of Persuasion. The only way to grow my knowledge and move on to the next phase, that is, become an expert-artist, a Master in the Art of Persuasion, was to stop reading and start acting. I’d need to practice every day and, by trials and error, keep sharpening my persuasive skills.
So I sailed off on a journey to become my own Master, armed with a notepad and a pen in my pocket where I could jot down my thoughts and observations from my experiences.
I would approach women in the street and flirt with them; I would go to coffee bars and observe how people interacted with each other, noting how they communicated. I would analyse all the newspaper articles, marketing brochures and product labels that I came across, trying to understand why they were written and presented in a certain way, trying to understand the subliminal impact, if any, created by the combination of the words used.
In face-to-face or telephone conversations, I would listen to and observe carefully the other person: their walk, their vocal intonation, their smile, how they shake hands, the look in their eyes, the attitude and gestures, the grooming, what kind of watch was worn including whether it was on the left or right hand, what kind of shoes and had they been polished, which jewellery was visible and hidden, the choice of briefcase or handbag. I even noted the fabric of the clothes and whether they’d been pressed or not, how long the other person could hold my eye during the conversation, their posture on a chair, the accent and richness of the vocabulary, etc. All these little details had escaped me previously but now I sought them, like a detective, especially little details. They are clues to the personality and state of mind of your interlocutor, which opens a little bit more the path to successful persuasion.
I started developing a system based on my personal experiences and called it The Pyramid of Persuasion.
Note: Except the Cornerstone, there is no need to master one layer before moving to the next
But in my quest to become a successful expert-artist, something was still missing. One day it dawned on me. To truly and successfully persuade someone, the greatest advantage lies in knowing the person. That’s why a queen wields greater influence over her husband, the king, than all the senators put together.
When you’re pitching a new idea, your pitch is more likely to be successful if you know the person to whom you are presenting. You will have some instinctive knowledge as to how best approach him or her. You will know what to say and how to say it. Therefore, it was necessary to swiftly get to know the stranger inside and out. I needed to get into the head and heart of that person as fast as I could. NLP would help, but it would not be sufficient on its own.
One day, while perusing psychology books at the library, I stumbled upon a book on graphology (i.e. handwriting analysis). As an academic, I was naturally sceptical since handwriting analysis had been criticised for the lack of empirical studies that would validate it as an exact science. Yet, the book noted graphology had existed for several hundred years, since the first book published on the subject, and it was still popular in France, Germany and Israel. Companies used it for recruitment purposes, alongside psychometric testing. Anglo-Saxon countries despised handwriting analysis. Puzzled, I decided to give it a go.
From my own tests conducted on a small sample of people I knew, graphology had an average accuracy of 80%. Assuming that no scientific study can predict the behaviour of animals, including human beings, with 100% certainty because we are all creatures of emotions and those emotions drive us, I started trusting graphology. It gave me enough information on someone’s personality, I realised, to better influence that person.
To improve my knowledge of graphology, I knew I had to learn from an expert. Oddly enough, call it luck or destiny, I met a man one evening at an event. His name was Owen Williams, a sixty year career expert called upon regularly by individuals, companies and the police. A former president of the UK International Graphoanalysis Society, Owen was a true expert-artist in handwriting analysis! He gave me his business card and few months later, when I felt that it was time for me to become a certified graphologist, I called him. The problem was, at eighty-three years old, he was retiring. Since my motivation was not to make money but a personal interest in graphology, he accepted to teach me. I was going to be his last student.
I loved the private lessons with Owen; a fascinating man who always had captivating real life stories to illustrate a lesson. He constantly said: “I have been doing this for sixty years! Sixty years!! If it did not work, it’s been a long time I would have given up! Bring me anyone and I’ll tell them who they truly are! People in this country [UK] don’t believe it, but they don’t know that the police call upon us [graphologists and forensic graphologists] regularly!”
I blended together the sciences of persuasion and graphology and called this new theory Grapho-Persuasion.
Grapho-Persuasion is the use of graphology to understand someone’s personality and the incorporation of this information in to the techniques you use to persuade that person.
In academic circles, there is an old joke: “Copy from one source and it is considered plagiarism; copy from many sources and it is considered research”. Well, my dear Ghislaine, I do not pretend to have created something really new here, Grapho-Persuasion is what came out of my research. Critics, no doubt, will have plenty to say about it, but the Grapho-Persuasion theory – and I’m still improving it – is not a science, it is an art. Like psychotherapy, no empirical research will establish that Grapho-Persuasion works with complete accuracy because, as I pointed out earlier, we are all emotional beings. Grapho-Persuasion was the missing piece of information that I needed in order to progress along the learning curve and find the answer to this query: How to successfully persuade?
I don’t think of myself as an expert-artist in persuasion yet. Human beings are complex emotional creatures, difficult to understand. I am still sailing.
Victor Semo, August 2010
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Influence ≠ Persuasion
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You could say:
(1)“I have influenced her view of this issue and succeeded in persuading her to act (on this occasion)”.
(2)I have influenced her view of this issue but failed to persuade her to act (on this occasion)”.
(3)“I want to persuade people willy-nilly now, and influence people for generations”.
This does not sound right:
(1)“I have persuaded her view of this issue and succeeded in influencing her to act (on this occasion)”.
(2)“I have persuaded her view of this issue but failed to influence her to act (on this occasion)”.
(3)“I want to influence people willy-nilly now, and persuade people for generations”.
Put simply, the difference between persuasion and influence is that influence is latent, omnipresent and implies positivism only. Persuasion is a subset of influence and implies a short-lived act that can be positive or negative.
You could say: “I have persuaded her to act but failed to influence her view”. But, if we analyse this sentence, the understanding here is that you have persuaded her against her will. This is not ideal.
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PART ONE
WHAT IS GRAPHO-PERSUASION?
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The art of persuasion resides in your ability to operate on someone’s psychology to make him or her behave in the way you desire. Research5 has shown that the behaviour of an individual at a specific time is determined by the sum of three stimuli:
Behaviour = personality traits + person’s mood (state of mind) + the role played
For example, how Maria reacts to the news that she has won the lottery prize depends not only on whether she is introverted or extroverted, shy or egocentric, but also if she is sad or in a good mood, and if she is home alone or in a meeting with her boss.
If you follow this behavioural science formula, you will agree that persuasion works best when you know the personality traits of the person. A mother and a wife are arguably the two people most persuasive and influential in a man’s life, because they know him inside and out. They know the personality of their son or husband and therefore, they know what to say, how to say it, and how to act when they are attempting to persuade him.
As stated by Sun Tzu in his classic, The Art of War, if you want to win a war without bloodshed, “know your enemy and know yourself”. The science of graphology teaches us how to discover personality traits; the science of persuasion teaches us how to influence the person’s state of mind. Put them together and you obtain the theory of Grapho-Persuasion.
Grapho-Persuasion is the use of graphology to understand someone’s personality and the incorporation of this information in to the techniques you use to persuade that person.
Sigmund Freud argued that human behaviour is irrationally driven by emotions. Thus, you stand a greater chance of persuading people when you have identified their dominant personality traits. Because your personality, your grooming and vocabulary are unique, like your handwriting and your signature, graphology gives us a better understanding of the individual without requiring the relationship of wife, mother or friend.
Normal Persuasion: A Two-Step Process
Grapho-Persuasion: A Three-Step Process
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PART TWO
THE PYRAMID OF PERSUASION
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1. The Cornerstone
There are three fundamentals of persuasion that you must never forget when interacting with anyone. Forget one of them and you will open the door to anxiety and stress.
1.1 Fundamental 1: Your emotional expressions are contagious, affecting everyone around you and many others.
We are social creatures and creatures of emotion, the people around us are affected by our moods. The emotions we display tend to be caught by others, resulting in a convergence of emotions between us and our interlocutors.
When you are happy, people see and feel it by the sound of your voice, your gestures and facial expressions, and they pick up your happy mood. Even someone in a bad mood finds it difficult to remain grumpy when talking to someone with a smiling face. It is emotional contagion that turns all citizens hysterical when the local football team win the European championship.
The next time you are in a bad mood, observe how those around you react. Some people will “catch” your anger and respond to you in the same angry, cold voice you displayed. Observe how, when you lower your voice, they will imitate you subconsciously.
The contagion effect of social networks
Obesity, smoking, ideas and emotions, like happiness and sadness, are contagious and spread through our social ties, note Dr. Christakis and Prof. Fowler, authors of several research papers on social networks and their influences on people6. According to Christakis and Fowler’s findings, how happy you are depends not just on your choices or actions, but also on how happy your spouse and next door neighbours are. It also depends on how happy your friends’ friends are, even if you don’t know them. It is the same with your weight or your smoking and drinking behaviours, they are influenced by people directly connected to you, and those separate from you by two and three degrees, i.e. your friends, your friends’ friends, and your friends of friends’ friends.
The spread of influence and emotional contagion follows a ‘Three Degrees of Influence Rule’ which states that everything we do has a noticeable impact up to our friends’ friends’ friends, and our attitudes, beliefs, emotions and behaviours tend to be influenced by people within three degrees of our social network.
In the 1960s, Stanley Milgram observed that we are all connected to one another by an average of six degrees of separation. While this observation relates to how connected we are, the Three Degrees of Influence Rule relates to how contagious we are. For example, when you are in a bad mood, you affect your spouse, your parents’ spouse and the best friend of your parents’ spouse.
Let’s say you are directly connected to ten people — friends, work colleagues and family members (one degree), who themselves are connected to ten distinct people (two degrees), and each of them are also connected to ten distinct people (three degrees). You are therefore connected to one thousand people. Now, how influential you are to make these one thousand people smile depends on how emotionally contagious and persuasive people in the network are. But it all starts with a smile on your face to affect the ten people you are directly connected to.
1.2 Fundamental 2: First impressions do and always will count.
Have you ever heard yourself say, “I don’t like him”, minutes after you’ve met someone for the first time? You don’t know why and you cannot necessarily explain why you feel the way you do. What happens so that you cannot explain it rationally with words? Well, instinctively, your subconscious has gone through a ‘question and answer’ process and did not like the sum of all the answers. When you meet someone for the first time, you instinctively behave like any animal. Your mind subconsciously tries answering, as fast as possible, five universal questions that will determine your attitude when facing a stranger:
1.Dominance: is this person active and dominant or passive and submissive? (i.e. which of you is the alpha male/female?).
2.Danger/Protection of Self: is this person crazy/unpredictable or sane/stable? (i.e. you size up the other person to determine who is the stronger of the two of you in the event of being attacked).
3.Intelligence/Control: who is the more intelligent of the two of us? (i.e. is this person easy or difficult to manoeuvre?).
4.Friend: is this person agreeable (warm and friendly) or disagreeable (cold and distant)?
5.Support: can I rely on this person if necessary?
Your first objective in persuasion is to always lower the resistance of the target by influencing the five answers reached by the subconscious mind. It is important to get it right at the first encounter as it will then be easier to be trusted and subsequently liked in the future. If a person does not like you at the time of your first encounter, you will have a hard time convincing him or her later on that you are a nice person. That’s why first impressions count. Always.
TIP: When you meet someone for the first time, ask at least two easy questions that will force them to respond positively. Subconsciously, they will lower their guard and, to a certain extent, like you, especially if the response forces them to laugh. Don’t talk about the weather, be original!
The £10,000 Glass of Water
Real names have been changed to maintain privacy
Peter Walker, Communication & Marketing Director at Lang Contractor, shared with me a story that happened to him some time ago.
“We were reviewing our budget for the year and were doing some media planning. My assistant [Alex] contacted the advertising department of the Birmingham Post, Construction News, Express & Star, Architect News, etc. to get their prices.
“The salesperson [Julie] at one particular newspaper was tenacious. Once she knew we were shopping around to buy advertising, she kept calling Alex every single day. We could have put her photo in the dictionary next to the word ‘persistence’!
“We finally agreed to meet Julie at her office to negotiate an advertising package for the whole year. The meeting was at 8.30am. I’ve been there before to meet the editor and knew the place. When we arrived, Julie took us in to a small ‘meeting room’ on the ground floor. Alex and I were very uncomfortable to be in what looked like a broom cupboard. Behind our chairs was a large bin. I whispered to Alex, half-joking: “Please don’t say anything. It is 8.30am; maybe they have no more meeting rooms available”. I was surprised because each time I had met the editor in this office, it was not in a closet.
“Julie pitched us her products. It was the first time I had met her. She was an aggressive sales person and I have to admit, she was good. We agreed on an advertising package and left. I was walking back to the car in silence with Alex when I lost my temper: “She did not even offer us some water! No tea!!! She just took our money!”
“How come, when I visit you in your house at 8.30 in the morning, I have £15,000 in my pocket to spend and you do not even offer me a glass of tap water??!!! I was upset by how we had been treated. There was a clear difference of culture between the editorial and sales departments at that newspaper.”
“In the end, I paid for only two adverts, and I put this saleswoman on my blacklist. I never returned her phone calls or responded to her emails again.”
“Victor, being received in a broom cupboard was fine, we could have lived with that. But, come on, at 8.30 in the morning, we took the time to travel there, I left my bed earlier for her, we arrived and our host had no hospitality whatsoever. No glass of water?!! That was the last straw.”
Julie lost £10,000 in revenue from Lang Contractor that year, and certainly more the following years, because of a glass of water. What are the morals of this story? Many. The most important, I believe, is that first impressions count. Always.
1.3 Fundamental 3: Persuasion is seduction. Seduction is selling. Persuading is selling (yourself first).
Whatever you sell, you sell yourself first. Unless you have a monopoly on the marketplace, if I don’t like you, I won’t buy your product but the one from your competitor. So you need to seduce me first.
Persuasion is a form of seduction. Seducing is selling and selling is seducing. Most people don’t realise that the steps followed by salespeople to sell a product are similar to the ones they follow to win someone’s heart.
IBM repositioning in the healthcare sector
In 2005, IBM’s sales to hospitals and health insurance providers were mainly IT servers and other data storage products. Healthcare professionals did not have much consideration for the brand IBM. To enhance its image and differentiate from the competition, the company designed and implemented a three-step strategy:
1. Define who you are and why you’re different (positioning in the mind of customers): The company produced a report entitled “Healthcare 2015: Win-Win or Lose-Lose”. The report presented the challenges facing the healthcare industry and IBM’s vision of how it could achieve a better position within 10 years.
2. Build credibility with though leadership: The IBM executives presented the report at all the major industry conferences. Their plan was to not sell IBM’s services, but simply discuss the industry’s issues and suggest solutions. By doing this, they demonstrated that IBM understood, better than any other IT services provider, the issues faced by the healthcare industry. Slowly but surely, IBM became a thought-leader and a brand that healthcare professionals felt they could trust. The healthcare industry increasingly invested in IBM’s consulting services and products.
3. Consult and close the sale: IBM’s sales team reviewed and improved their sales pitches, selling better-tailored solutions after defining a client’s true current and future needs. They ensured that they remained informed about what was happening in the healthcare sector, and willingly shared that knowledge with all their stakeholders.
By 2009, the result of this patiently executed strategy exceeded IBM’s expectations. IBM had become a trusted brand and major player in the healthcare industry, with revenues in the IT healthcare sector above the industry average.
Now, see how the steps followed by IBM are similar to the steps followed by the so-called ‘Pick-Up Artists’, men who specialise in the seduction of women and pick them up, mainly in public venues.
The results for any company or man that follows these steps are quite similar:
-The company enhances its brand and increases sales, with the feeling that it is better than its competitors.
-The man adds a new name to his conquest list (one more ‘sale’) and an ego boost, as he feels that he can seduce any woman, anywhere and at anytime.
Yes, selling is seducing and seducing is nothing more than selling yourself, like any other product.
Tips to increase your success in the sales-seduction game
A man or woman can have money and be as attractive as Jennifer Aniston or Brad Pitt, but unless they have some of the attributes listed below, anyone they meet will only be impressed by their wallet and pretty face. Neither are sufficient to build a strong and lengthy relationship.
Four personal attributes that seduce women
1 Confidence: by displaying ease and comfort in his body language
and behaviour, women will feel secure in his presence.
2. Humour: Laughter is the shortest distance between two people, said Victor Borge. It lowers resistance and helps the two people sharing a good moment together like each other more.
3. Ambition: showing that he has some goals and knows where he is going in life reassures her that he is not just someone spending his days in front of the TV.
4 Authority: he should be an expert in something, listened to and followed by others, or be the boss of an organisation. Being the boss creates halo effects, one of them is being perceived as an intelligent person (you can’t be an idiot if you are the boss and people do what you advise or ask them to do). Women are attracted to men with authority and a following because in the (urban) jungle, the strong male is more likely to provide security if danger arises.
Three personal attributes that seduce men
A Man falls in love through his eyes.
A Woman falls in love through her ears. (Woodrow Wyatt).
1. Physically attractive.
2. Independence: a woman that shows she can take care of herself is attractive, but if she displays too much independence, men get scared. A man likes to play the role of protector. If he feels a woman does not need his help, he feels useless and his ego gets bruised.
3. Confidence: like independence, a little dose of confidence is good. Too much and it scares men.
Five desirable social skills in both men and women
1. Good conversationalist.
2. Good listener who doesn’t try to fix every problem (listen quietly,
with lots of eye contact).
3. Sober (don’t drink, or occasionally in moderation).
4. Good dresser.
5. Good dancer.
If you watch the TV series, Mad Men, you will notice that men and women used to dress with style and elegance in the 1960s. What was considered formal business attire at the time is seen as dapper today. What was common fifty years ago is rare today, and what is rare always gets noticed. When you see a man wearing a hat and a handkerchief with a nice suit, whether you consider him to be a dapper or not, does not change the fact that you noticed that man in the crowd and you appreciated the effort he put in to his grooming. His grooming positively influenced your perception of the man (at least until you started a conversation with him). In the same way your grooming makes an impression on people, so does your handwriting. When you receive a handwritten letter or postcard, you appreciate the efforts of the writer and consciously, or subconsciously, you put that person in a special place in your head or heart. You will remember that person, especially if he or she has a beautiful penmanship.
Here is a tip to sell yourself more easily by making a subliminal impression on people and standing out from the crowd instantly: Since many people dress the same when in a group (e.g. in the office) and do not handwrite long letters anymore, adding a personal touch to your clothes with a few accessories and sending handwritten letters to people will give you an advantage. They will help to get you noticed and be the ‘purple cow’ in the herd.
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2. The Rules
To get along with anyone, there are three basic rules to follow.
2.1 Create Trust and Comfort.
Always make the other person feel important. Always.
As illustrated by the success of TV reality shows (Big Brother, X-Factor) and social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook), ego-publishing appeals to people. It’s the last stage of ‘self-actualisation’ in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: narcissism and the quest for the celebrity status. You are the star, you are the expert, you are an interesting person and people visit your online profile to see what you are up to.
It is not surprising that on the cover of Time magazine in 2006, the ‘Person of The Year’ was YOU.
See cover here: http://www.bit.ly/gp9sCR
People crave attention and they are not interested in what you think or like. For all these reasons, the topic of conversation you have with anyone should always be centred on them and what their interests are. Make the other person feel important by talking only about what interests them.
2.2 Be a Good Talker. Create Consultative Conversations.
Try to stand in their shoes and see things through their eyes.
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