Best Robert Cialdini Quotes

The aim is to get someone to want to buy quickly, without thinking too much about it.

Freedoms once granted will not be relinquished without a fight.

There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.

Be as precise as possible about your need for aid.

What is more accessible in mind becomes more probable in action.

The truly gifted negotiator, then, is one whose initial position is exaggerated enough to allow for a series of concessions that will yield a desirable final offer from the opponent, yet is not so outlandish as to be seen as illegitimate from the start.

Pre-suasion is the practice of getting people sympathetic to your message before they experience it.

To persuade optimally, then, it's necessary to pre-suade optimally. But how? In part, the answer involves an essential but poorly appreciated tenet of all communication: what we present first changes the way people experience what we present to them next.

To change minds a pre-suader must also change states of mind.

Optimal persuasion is achieved thru optimal pre-suasion; positioning people to agree with a message before knowing what's in it.

Mysteries can be a great pre-suasive tool.  They prompt people to want to listen more deeply and retain information to solve that mystery.

Before introducing their message, a masterful pre-suader arranges to make their audience sympathetic to it.

A well-known principle of human behavior says that when we ask someone to do us a favor we will be more successful if we provide a reason. People simply like to have reasons for what they do.

The more the managers attributed the success of the project to themselves, the more they also attributed it to the ability of their employee.

Audiences have been successfully manipulated by those who use social evidence, even when that evidence has been openly falsified.

There is a group of people who know very well where the weapons of automatic influence lie and employ them regularly and expertly to get what they want. They go from social encounter to social encounter requesting others to comply with their wishes; their frequency of success is dazzling.

No matter what industry you're in, the ability to influence others is crucial.  Your professional success can rely on it.

The most successful persuaders spend more time crafting what to say or do just before making their request.

The behaviors you witness others getting away with will influence you to join.

In meetings, sit across the person you want to influence.  A speaker in full view usually determines the outcome of a discussion.

pluralistic ignorance in which each person decides that since nobody is concerned, nothing is wrong. Meanwhile, the danger may be mounting to the point where a single individual, uninfluenced by the seeming calm of others, would react.

By concentrating our attention on the effect rather than the causes, we can avoid the laborious, nearly impossible task of trying to detect and deflect the many psychological influences on liking.

All the weapons of influence discussed in this book work better under some conditions than under others. If we are to defend ourselves adequately against any such weapon, it is vital that we know its optimal operating conditions in order to recognize when we are most vulnerable to its influence.

Often we don't realize that our attitude toward something has been influenced by the number of times we have been exposed to it in the past.

Similarities and compliments cause people to feel that you like them, and once they come to recognize that you like them, they'll want to do business with you. That's because people trust that those who like them will try to steer them correctly. So by my lights, the number one rule for salespeople is to show customers that you genuinely like them.

People will do business with people they know, like and trust based on your knowledge, your creativity, and your credibility.

We want to do business with people or brands that we like and have forged a bond with over the years.

Organizations can raise the probability that an individual will appear at a meeting or event by switching from saying at the end of a reminder phone call, We'll mark you on the list as coming then. Thank you! to We'll mark you on the list as coming then, okay? [Pause for confirmation.] Thank you.

It is much more profitable for salespeople to present the expensive item first, not only because to fail to do so will lose the influence of the contrast principle; to fail to do so will also cause the principle to work actively against them. Presenting an inexpensive product first and following it with an expensive one will cause the expensive item to seem even more costly as a result—hardly a desirable consequence for most sales organizations.