Speaking and Communicating Podcast

Without the science, if we keep thinking of reasons how to convince other people, we're trying to engage the wrong part of the brain.

One of my colleagues worked with McDonald's in South America, and they wanted to know if they could increase dessert sales.

My colleague helped them to identify a piece of information that McDonald's had known for years by adding a single sentence to what people were told in the drive-thru or at the counter, dessert sales across the category went up by 52%.

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating Podcast. I am your host, Roberta Ndlela. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning in to.

Communication and soft skills are crucial for your career growth and leadership development. By the end of this episode, please log on to Apple and Spotify and leave us a reading and a review. Now let's get communicating.

Now let's get communicating with our guest today, joining us from Down Under in Australia. His name is Patrick Van Der Burght. He is the founder of the Ethical Persuasion Institute.

He's trained by the Cialdini Institute, and he is the author of How to Hear YES More Often. Patrick is here to help us with ethical persuasion and using behavioral science in order to explain these concepts.

And before I go any further, please help me welcome him to the show. Hi, Patrick.

Hi, Roberta. Thank you very much for inviting me. I always love sharing this with people because behavioral science is fascinating, eye-opening, sometimes frightening, but always interesting.

And when people hear how simple it is to use some of this stuff and how impactful it can be. Normally with an audience, I love seeing the eyes get bigger as I progress through this. I'm hoping to achieve a similar reaction in your audience.

Most certainly, yes.

Welcome to the show. It's funny that you say that because whenever we think of ethical and persuasion, we don't see them belonging in the same sentence. It's almost like an oxymoron.

How is that? Because, you know, usually we think ads are trying to persuade us to buy things we don't even need. Is that even ethical?

Yeah, absolutely.

So a lot of people, when they hear the word persuasion, they sort of think manipulation. Yeah, you can use persuasion science in an ethical way or an unethical way to manipulate people.

The good news is, or what I love sharing, is that research shows that if you use this unethically, it may produce short-term results, but it results in long-term disaster because people don't come back to a situation where they didn't do well in the

arrangements. Research shows that ethical use provides short-term and long-term results. It actually builds, strengthens, and repairs loyal relationships.

To put it in a small paragraph, I think ethical persuasion is about raising the pieces of information to the surface that allow our audience to make an easier yes decision if it's within them.

We're not going to get anybody to do anything that they don't want. If your product or your service just isn't right for them, then it's just not right for them.

But what a lot of people, especially in business, don't realize is that we make our requests, we make our proposals, and we get a certain amount of yeses and a certain amount of no's.

And a large percentage of those no's, they're not actually no's, they're in decision. People decide not to decide. They could have been yeses if you had raised the right pieces of information to the surface.

We'll get to explaining that in more detail in a few minutes, I'm sure.

Absolutely, because here's the thing, when it comes to sales, like you said, it's in decision, it's not necessarily a no.

How do you, when presenting your sales pitch, address whatever concern they have in their minds, especially if they don't communicate it, so that the indecision then transforms into a yes.

Okay, I think this might be a good time for me to introduce the science of human decision making. Shall we do that?

Yes, please.

Okay, cool. I'm going to lean on the work of a professor, Daniel Kahneman. He died in 2024, and he was a professor in psychology and a behavioral scientist.

2002, he won a Nobel Prize in economics. A little unexpected, right? Behavioral scientist wins Nobel Prize in economics.

What did he figure out that had such an impact on economics? Well, a lot of his work was about decision-making and decisions shape economics. And so he basically won Nobel Prize for disproving a popular belief that old economics had.

Old economics had the belief that human beings are logical, rational creatures, and we would therefore use logic and reason to formulate our decisions. And Daniel Kahneman proved that that was wrong.

So he explains, when it comes to decision-making, your brain or anybody's brain has two parts. System one and system two. System one is fast.

It's an unconscious brain. It works outside of our conscious control and it works largely on shortcuts. So for example, you're looking to purchase something or make a decision about something you don't know too much about.

You could delay your decision. You could go to the library and start reading books on that topic and then do some courses on that topic. And then half a year later, you'd be in good shape to make a well-educated decision.

But chances are is that you don't have the time for that. Something in the back of your head might go, hang on a second, expensive equals good, right?

We've learned from experience that often when we want to buy something, if we spent more money, we get something that's a better quality, better suited to purpose, lasts us longer.

And so the shortcut, expensive equals good, gives us the opportunity to make a quicker decision instead of going away and studying up on this. And so there's a number of those shortcuts, and system one works a lot with those shortcuts.

On the other hand, we have system two. System two is a slow process. System two is conscious thinking, takes a lot of effort, costs a lot of energy to run system two.

Professor Kahneman calls it the lazy controller. It doesn't actually want to engage. It's quite happy for system one to do all the work and only kick into gear when it has to.

On top of that, system two relies very much on our attention span. We have a limited budget of attention every day. And if we can't concentrate when we're using system two, we don't perform those tasks very well.

Now, Daniel Kahneman demonstrates in 2002 that 90% of our decisions are made by system one, by the automatic, subconscious, out of your control brain that's always listening into the situation and makes lots and lots of decisions for us.

Later research shows or indicates that that is now 95% or even more. And that explains a few things.

So many decisions are made on autopilot, but it's interesting that this percentage is increasing and that the amount of decisions that system two, our logical brain is in charge of, is shrinking, is getting less.

What that explains is a lot of people who've been in sales for a long period of time in the same industry, they tend to say the same thing. It seems to be getting harder to convince people or get people to get that buy-in.

Right.

That makes perfect sense. If the amount of decisions that are based on logic and reason are shrinking, when we don't know the science, when we are sitting there thinking, how am I going to convince that other person?

When I'm consciously thinking, I'm using system 2. System 2 tends to come up with the type of information, the rational reasons.

It's good for the environment, it saves you money, it gets you there quicker for future generations, all these rational reasons. But they rely on system 2 and the other person to process those. And our audience doesn't have the time for that anymore.

And so we actually cause more uncertainty in our audience. They decide not to decide. What takes us back to what we raised earlier, you get a certain amount of no's, you get a certain amount of yeses.

But a large amount of those no's that you're getting are really in decisions. People are just deciding not to decide.

Without the science, if we keep thinking of reasons how to convince other people, we're trying to engage the wrong part of the brain. And you can imagine that relation is not a bad comparison, by the way, 5% versus 95%.

It gives you a good idea of what might actually happen when you start engaging with that intuitive part of the brain. I can give you a powerful example.

One of my colleagues worked with McDonald's in South America, 600 restaurants, because believe it or not, they're owned by one franchise owner. And they wanted to know if they could increase dessert sales.

My colleague helped them to identify a piece of information that McDonald's had known for years. But they didn't know how valuable that piece of information was or when to use it. It was genuine information.

By adding a single sentence to what people were familiar with, you want fries with that, right?

But by adding a single sentence to what people were told in the drive-thru or at the counter, as a result of that one sentence, which is costless to implement, dessert sales across the category went up by 52%.

One sentence increased sales by more than 50%. If I ask you what the sentence was, are you able to share that information? Because that's really mind-blowing.

Do your audience appreciate it?

I'm sure we would.

Because you said this is just a McDonald's fact. It's not something they made up. So I'm really curious now what that sentence was.

Yes, I can share that and I will share that to you because you asked so nice.

But realize that what I'm about to give you, how many millions that was worth to McDonald's? 52% across the dessert category. And then realize immediately after how much money they had been losing out on by not knowing this 20 years earlier.

I'll give you this one. Let's unpack this one.

Yeah.

The piece of information was associated to the principle of social proof. Social proof tells us that people have a tendency to follow the actions of others, especially when they are uncertain and when the others are similar and numerous.

So McDonald's knew that the McFlurry dessert was the most popular dessert that they had. That's a piece of information. That's a fact.

Something genuine, truthful in the situation, but they didn't know what to do with that or how valuable that was. So all that they were advised to do is in the drive-thru and at the counter, the people place their order.

And you get your normal sort of you want fries with that, da da da. And then it was, all right, would you like a dessert with your order? The McFlurry dessert is the most popular dessert at this restaurant.

That is the one sentence.

That's the fact.

That's it. Right? Now, I'm going to blow your mind a little bit more.

Okay. All right. So the fact that I say the McFlurry is the most popular dessert, that raised McFlurry sales by 55 percent, right?

To this point, I'm sure you can follow that, right? As in if I say, okay, this is the most popular item, then you go, okay, yeah, I can grasp that. Why that would increase the sales of the McFlurry dessert.

To be honest, yes, I can see how that plays out because you know how sometimes when you go to a restaurant for the first time, if it's my first time at a restaurant, because I'm really trying to minimize the risk of ordering something that I might

not end up liking, I usually ask the waiter, I say, what's your most popular dish? Yeah.

With that question, you're asking, what are other people that are visiting this restaurant just like me? What are they choosing?

Right.

So the same strategy was right, as in the McFlurry dessert is the most popular. McFlurry sales increased by 55 percent. But then how does the entire category increase by 52 percent?

How do you think that works?

Because you said all desserts, not just specifically the McFlurry, which by the way is also my favorite.

So the other desserts then, does that mean if somebody likes dessert, but not specifically the McFlurry, they would have ordered one of the others?

Yeah. But the reason why is a little deeper. If I make you aware that the McFlurry dessert is the most popular dessert at this restaurant, that also implies that other desserts are also purchased.

Otherwise, we wouldn't know that the McFlurry is the most popular. The subconscious information in the situation is people are buying desserts in general. Even the desserts that are not as popular as the McFlurry.

Therefore, the subconscious news is people are buying desserts and so I can't go too far wrong ordering a dessert as well.

And so hot apple pie, all the other ice creams, all that stuff went up because if one is the most popular, people must be buying the other ones as well.

It's making that relation, that correlation, even though only McFlurry is mentioned in the one sentence that they added.

It's all about we follow the actions of others, especially when we're uncertain.

And so the message for your audience, if you have something that is genuinely the most popular option people are choosing, and you want it to become more popular, all you have to do is point it out.

Just let people know what other people are choosing.

You have a similar example to that with the company that had a receptionist, where they also asked to add one sentence. Would you like to share that example with us as well?

Maybe I should introduce the principles. What do you think?

Yes, please.

All right. I'm a business partner of Dr. Robert Cialdini, who published his book Influence, which is considered by many top CEOs to be the best business book of all time.

And you'd absolutely have that on your bookshelf or have the audio book. It's a very entertaining listen to, doesn't necessarily train you how to use it or apply it in business. You really need some training for that.

But in that book, he basically, and it's been around for 41 years now, and it keeps surfacing as the number one timeless reads on Forbes and those sorts of things. But in that book, he introduces us to 7 Principles of Persuasion.

And we refer to those as universal principles. Why is that important? Universal, as in that they work in all languages, in all cultures, and all countries, right?

So this is a skill that allows us, I mean, you know, in our own country, we have a mix of different cultures together. And of course, now it's very easy to also trade with people in other countries.

So this is universal information that works everywhere, which is of course very powerful and handy. All right, so there's 7 principles. All these words you've heard before.

And you might also know what they mean, but you probably don't know what the activators of these principles are and what the amplifiers are, the things that make them work harder.

Plus per principle, there's probably at least a dozen different application strategies per principle. So there's a lot of finer nuances. So sometimes people go, oh yeah, reciprocity.

I know what that is, right? But then when you actually look at their business communications, they're not using it or hardly using it, because they don't have the application skills or confidence. All right, so reciprocity is one.

We have a tendency that we want to give back to people the same type of behavior that was first given to us, right? If you invite me to your birthday party, well, then I should invite you to my birthday party.

But if I do you a favor, then you owe me.

You owe me what?

Right. And so in the context of compliance, we more readily say yes to people that we feel we owe. And so a lot of people in business, they have taken that as in, okay, we got to gift people stuff.

Whilst that in essence is correct, a lot of people also get it wrong. A classic example of thinking you're using it, but you're not, is the downloadable e-book on a website. This e-book that you're willing to give away.

So you advertise, oh, you know, we've got a wonderful e-book. Just put in your name, your email address will send you the download link, our gift to you. Nice try, but that won't activate reciprocity.

Because a gift is something that's given without a requirement having to be met. And in the case of the downloadable e-book, it was name and email address first, then we will send you the download link. It wasn't a gift, it was a reward.

Might still be a good lead generator, but it won't activate reciprocity if that's what you're hoping to achieve. Liking is another principle. So we like to deal with people that we like.

We like to deal with people that are similar to us. We like people who like us, and we like people who like us and say so. Deeper though is that if you're trying to sell me your product or service, it's nice if I like you.

But it's more powerful if I get the feeling that you genuinely like me. Because even if I don't quite like you, I'm not so sure about you, if I feel that you like me, well, then you're going to look after me and I'm safe with you.

A lot of sales training doesn't go there, right? They always say, you have to be likable.

Yeah, the whole know, like and trust, yeah.

We need to genuinely come to appreciate our audience. We need to do a bit of homework, learn about them, which is easier now than ever before, right?

With social media, you can figure out what people are into and see if you've got things in common, which is also similarities. So that's the other activator in liking. Then let's move on to Unity.

So Unity was the principle that was last introduced to us, often confused with liking, where liking is about similarities. Unity is about feeling that we're both part of a community that we share.

A situation where we could describe our relationship to each other as we, as in us, could be people who support a football team, right? Motorcycles.

Rugby team, yeah. With Africa and Australia, yes.

Yeah. When you're out with your mates, let's say, right? Your friends, you're part of this community, right?

When the team wins, you say, we won, because you identify with them. People who are part of our we group, we have a favoritism towards them. So localism is one of those.

You've probably been in an airport, you talk to someone, turns out you grew up in the same suburb. All of a sudden, big smile, you take people's advice more easily. And so you can have that with someone you're going to have a business meeting with.

But again, you're going to have to do a bit of homework. Another part of unity is co-creation. So some brands enjoy a very strong loyalty from their followers.

Apple is a classic example. Especially in the beginning, Apple was asking people for feedback. What do you want in your computer?

What do you want in this phone? And those sorts of things. And so people feel by having contributed to it, but they sort of share ownership of it.

And so even if things go wrong, Apple can put out a phone and it's got a fault in it. The followers of Apple will be very forgiving. Or if Samsung does that, they won't be that forgiving.

That has to do with co-creation. Then we can move on to social proof, which we've touched on. So social proof is we follow the actions of others, especially when they're numerous, similar to us and when we are uncertain.

Reviews in general or online reviews that we're very familiar with, which 98% of online shoppers say is an important factor on deciding where and what to buy. They're very powerful and it's great that lots of businesses are accumulating these now.

But if you think that that's valuable, there's so much more to social proof that you're most likely not using. Interesting side note when it comes to online reviews, we always want people to leave us a five-star review, right?

Places like Google, when somebody looks up your company, you get an average score. Over all those testimonials, what your average score was. Now, most people want that average score to also be five stars.

And that's not actually the most persuasive.

Yeah, because does that mean everybody had a five-star experience?

Exactly. Too good to be true, right? Nobody is that good, right?

So it becomes unbelievable. So while the information might say, oh, you're better, the trust is not there. Research shows that if the average score is between 4.2 and 4.7, that's the sweet spot.

It has credibility. And for most people, it's high enough to want to deal with you. Where 4.8, 4.9, and 5, we go, you deleted the bad ones or, you know, you got lots of your friends to leave good reviews.

We don't buy into it as readily. Interesting, right?

It is, yes.

Then next principle, fifth one, authority. So authority is about the fact that we have a tendency to take the advice of other people who genuinely know more about a particular topic than we do, which makes sense. We can't know everything.

And so when there's somebody there who knows more about this particular topic, it makes sense to follow their advice.

And so if you are trying to make a case to someone, a presentation, if you can bring in the opinions of experts, then that can help your case. But on the other side, you yourself, you're also an expert in your particular field. You have expertise.

And so how do you relate that to someone else? And that ties in nicely to that example you wanted me to touch on. So we'll circle back to that.

Right.

Authority is also about believability.

When we communicate with people, when we talk numbers, we have a painful habit of rounding off our numbers. We've been in business for 15 years. Last quarter, we assisted 1200 businesses.

And we saved our clients 75% on their expenses.

Right?

All these figures have a certain amount of believability. But by rounding the numbers off, our audience goes, well, it's clearly a rounded number. You took a liberty, especially like 9 out of 10.

Yes.

It's not exactly 90 out of 100 people.

It was 92 or 87 or something. You rounded it off. And I don't know how much liberty you took with your rounding.

And therefore, your credibility sinks. Stop rounding off. If you've been in business for 16 years, then say that.

If you helped 1152 companies last quarter, say that. Be accurate with your numbers. Don't say we saved this client $45,000 last month.

No, we saved them $44,512.20. Immediately, the believability goes up, because you took a straight of an Excel spreadsheet, it feels like. All right.

Then we got two principles left. So we have the principle of consistency. Consistency works because we have a tendency that we want to stay true to past actions and statements that we've made in the past.

Because if we don't do as we said we would, people have sort of mean names for us, right? They call us inconsistent or unreliable, and we don't want to be labeled like that.

So when we say we do one thing, or we say something is important to us, when we're faced with the choice that is an extension of that statement, it's very hard to say no.

A fun example is you like mountain biking or something, and you want to get your mate to go with you on Saturday, do a bit of mountain biking. You could ask your friend, hey, you want to come mountain biking with me on Saturday? I don't know.

Depending on your friend, you might have a 50-50 chance, right? But first, you said, hey, do you consider yourself an adventurous type? Most people think that they're adventurous, and most people also think that they're creative.

So when your mate goes, oh yeah, I'm an adventurous kind of guy. So that's awesome. Hey, I'm going on this bike ride on Saturday.

It's now much harder to say no to that because-

It's a rage to being adventurous.

That now makes sense, right?

So we need to create opportunities for our audience to reveal, to make a statement about what is important to them, and then by shaping our proposal to match what's important to them, which I think is highly ethical, then it aligns with them more and

it makes that yes decision easier. Scarcity is in the last principle, so things that are rare, things that are scarce, dwindling in availability, makes us value them more.

So scarcity we're often familiar with, when there's a sale on, salespeople will be very keen to remind us when the sale ends, or that there's so many of these things left, and so we have a strong reaction to that, which comes from far in our past, as

in, if you have a certain amount of resources, if you get more resources, well, that's nice. But if you lose resources, that could be detrimental, right?

So we pay more attention to the potential of losing something than gaining more, another powerful motivator. Now you want me to circle back to the example of the-

To the receptionist example, the one sentence that she used to turn things around as well.

All right. Let's do that one.

Okay.

A real estate agent in London. One of my colleagues, Steve, helps them in their business. What they want to achieve is that they get a certain amount of inbound phone calls from people looking to purchase, right?

And they want to increase the amount of appointments that are set as a result of those inbound phone calls. As we like to do, we like to observe how somebody conducts themselves.

I mean, you can learn this stuff, we can teach it, but we also consult on it. So in this case, we're listening, observing how people do this.

So phone call comes in, receptionist answers the call, and let's say a person is interested in buying a house in Chelsea.

The receptionist might say something along the lines of, Chelsea, no problem, I'll transfer you to John, because John is genuinely the most capable person for that Chelsea area.

The problem is that what we raised earlier with authority, when you are an expert, as in in your field, you are someone that has expertise. If you meet someone and you start singing your own praises, that goes against you.

A lot of people do this wrong. They'll stand up on a stage and they start explaining people about their master degree that they have and all this experience that they had, and they've been to this school and that university.

The subconscious of our audience goes, you're full of yourself.

Oh, not that I'm qualified to speak on the topic because I went to Harvard.

Yeah, exactly. My name is Patrick. Let me tell you the 35 reasons why you should listen to me today.

Doesn't quite work.

Right.

We lose authority. We hope to gain more, but we actually lose it. And we lose on liking.

So it's lose, lose. You cannot sing your own praises. Once you're face to face, you've lost the opportunity.

You know, when you stand on stage and you're in advance, there's an MC and they introduce you, right? Next speaker is Patrick. Patrick is da-da-da.

They reel off our background and then we can get straight into it. By doing that, it raises our authority, and people process what we are saying with the gravity that our words deserve, you know, related to our expertise.

Going back to the real estate agent. So the receptionist had an opportunity to help, in this case, let's say John, to help raise John's credibility because he can't do it himself, but the receptionist could. And so the phone call then changed.

The sentence that was added was, okay, you're interested in a house in Chelsea. I'll put you on to John. John has been with us for 17 years.

He's won multiple awards and he's helped hundreds of families, finding the right home for them in the Chelsea area. I'll transfer you now. It's a costless sentence to add.

And of course, we want this to be truthful, so we want to make sure we all know little pieces of information about our colleagues. And so by adding that single sentence, appointments went up by 20 percent and signed contracts went up by 15.5 percent.

So quick recap, Patrick. Instead of John saying to the customer on the phone call, hey, I've been here for 17 years. I've helped a thousand families find homes in Chelsea.

Instead of him blowing his own horn, you needed the receptionist to talk about John. Just like you said, the MC talking about you introducing you, instead of you were saying, hey, listen to me, because these are the 50 reasons why you should.

For the astute observer here, the introduction came from within the company. Clearly, the receptionist stands to benefit from John being seen in a more favorable light. But that doesn't matter.

It just can't be you. Anyone else can introduce you. So within a company, you got to get in the habit of learning about everybody's credentials and introducing them with those thoughtful details.

Let me pass you on to Sally.

Sally's been with us for so long, and she's won these awards or she's got a master's degree in this, da-da-da-da-da, whatever is truthful about Sally, you raise that to the surface and it helps Sally in her efforts with that contact.

But then reciprocity kicks in, we reciprocate the behavior that's first given to us, right? So if I introduce you with thoughtful details, that's a behavior.

So when it comes around to you needing to introduce me, you will also start introducing me with thoughtful details. So you're creating a nice, effective culture of using that to your advantage within your business.

I can imagine how big the team morale is just for doing that. Because, one, you get to know more about your teammates, and this sharing with others, the positive traits, them being an authority on something, it really brings the team together.

Like I said, the culture, it improves the work culture.

Absolutely.

And then have you found that if you teach these 7 principles, what's the usual reaction? Do they find that this is new? This is something they've heard before, but didn't know how to implement?

Mix of all of that.

So, yeah, like with reciprocity, we all know that concept and we know we like people. By not knowing that there's a science behind it or what the finer nuances are, we don't tend to have the confidence that we actually know what we're doing.

And so we don't use it. And so every time we don't use it, at all these different touch points, we're losing time, we're losing resources and success. I'm basically throwing out this inefficient communication.

I recently did a talk at Westpac, which is one of the big four banks here in Australia. One of the lenders was explaining, and so it was about, okay, what's popular, people choose that as well. There was a workshop sort of setting.

So we were sort of coming up and generating ideas on how to use that. So I'm going around the room and so I'm talking to this gentleman. He was a lender and so they focus on mortgages for doctors and medical practitioners.

And so he explains, he says, now I understand something that has been happening to me sometimes.

He says, when we go through the whole loan application, at some point I'm going to have to explain to them the difference between variable home loan rates and fixed rate home loans.

And he says, normally that takes me a fair bit of time to explain that properly to an individual. He says, but I've noticed a couple of times that the decision was made very quickly.

And he says, I've now realized that in those situations, I've mentioned to people that out of the loans that we've been writing the last three months, nine out of ten doctors have chosen for the variable rate home loan.

And he says, then the person on the other phone goes, that's good enough for me. I'll do the same. Let's move on.

So instead of explaining it for 20 minutes, decision made. Because if other people like me are doing it, it must be the right type of behavior. So this lender, now that he realized, hang on a second, now I get why that worked.

Of course, now he's going to use that more consistently, because he's identified that it works. But he's also going to look for opportunities to raise that to the surface in other situations. So it's beautiful how that comes to the surface.

But yeah, we need to build application skills so we know how to use it. That's why a workshop setting or courses are good. And then we need to build the confidence that we got it.

Confident in applying it. And that's where this topic is often loved by people. I hear a lot of people say, you know what?

I've done different sort of sales training and I don't use any of it. And if you're an employer and you're just sinking money into training nobody uses, that's no good either.

But because this is ethical and the fun thing is it works at work, but it works at home as well with your children, get them to clean up their room, do their homework, get your husband to be nicer to you.

Every parent's dream.

Exactly. So people lean in to it. They like it because it goes, you know what?

I don't mind telling people what's the most popular option. So yeah, they lean in to it.

But if anybody is listening to that most popular option logic, Patrick, are you saying that as humans we are typically followers?

Yeah, absolutely. There's research that they did where they actually wired people up to brain electrodes and measure brain output.

And when people found themselves going out of step with the behavior of other people, in some people it lights up the pain centers in the brain. For some people it is painful to not do as other people do. So yes, we very much follow the crowd.

I guess that's built in to us, right? If a lot of other people are doing it, like a school of fish, right? When the whole school turns left, you don't keep swimming straight.

You go with the school. And in a way, we're also hurt animals, aren't we?

We are. And that's why they use testimonials. Because literally what you just described when you say the McFlurry is our most popular dessert, that's previous testimonials of McFlurry buyers.

So now the next person who comes to McDonald's is going to say, hey, wait a minute, they've got testimonials that the McFlurry tasted good. So let me get one myself, because that's essentially what that is. Yeah.

So now please tell us about your book, How to Hear YES More Often.

Yeah, thank you. There's different ways how people can learn more about this. I wrote a book with some of my colleagues, How to Hear YES More Often.

We didn't want to try and even replace Dr. Cialdini's book. Everybody should own that.

But our book sort of goes more into practical examples of how to implement it. So it makes it a nice combination. If you haven't got Dr.

Cialdini's book, you can buy that from any online retailer. You could combine that with that book of ours and make it makes a nice combination.

Another source to learn more about this, I recently started my own podcast channel, Ethical Persuasion Unlocked. And so in there, I'll bring different guests on on different topics. But when I do a session, it'll be persuasion focused.

So especially episode one and two, we dive deeper into persuasion science and the science of human decision making. So start with those two and then see if it intrigues you to learn more. There's also some freebies I can give away on our website.

Yes, please.

ethicalpersuasion.com.au because I'm in Australia.

There's a free section, maybe we can put the link in the show notes as well. In the free section, there's a downloadable e-book. No email or name required.

You can just right click and download and it's yours. It's a true gift. There is a 7-day email challenge.

For that, we do of course need your email address. You get a little nugget of persuasion gold delivered to your inbox every day for 7 days.

To learn it more substantially, of course I offer these training, certification training which takes about 8 weeks, but is all up only an investment of about 20 hours.

We do online workshops, three, four hours long, so that's a nice gentle way to ease yourself into things and walk away with strategies for your particular situation. And of course, keynotes and that sort of stuff.

Right. And where can we find you online if we want to reach out to you?

Yeah. So the website is good, ethicalpersuasion.com.au. People are interested in working out something for themselves and their team.

You can book a discovery call, we can have a chat or you can find me on social media, LinkedIn.

We're pretty active with and a lot of what we, about 80 percent of what we send out is there's a message in there, there's something to learn and so there's a lot you can get from that.

I will put all those details on the show notes and one last thing, Patrick, please just give us the seven principles again of ethical persuasion. Let's just list them for the benefit of our listeners.

Okay. Reciprocity. We want to help other people.

How can I help this other person genuinely? Liking, whatever got in common with the person that I'm dealing with, and let's bring that to the surface. Unity.

Is there a community that we both feel part of that I can make them aware about? Social proof. Are there actions of other people similar to them that have already done what I'm asking them to do now?

Authority. What expertise of others can I bring to the surface here, or can I have my expertise introduced at the right time before I meet someone face to face? Consistency.

People follow or stay true with past actions and behaviors.

So can I get my audience to reveal, or maybe they already have, and I can bring it to the surface, statements or actions that they have already made, to which saying yes to what I'm proposing is logically consistent. And then scarcity.

Is there anything about my situation that is limited in quantity, limited in time, or does it have any unique features that they can't get anywhere else only with me? And it doesn't have to be specifically to just the product, right?

If you buy a car in this dealership or that dealership, the car is the same, but the experience of buying it in that dealership or dealing with that particular person versus that person there, that makes things unique.

And so you can raise those things to the surface to make them be perceived more valuable.

Thank you so much, Patrick Van Der Burght from Australia, a Cialdini certified trainer, keynote speaker, author, podcast host, and ethical persuasion expert.

This has been very educational and so many of us will take a lot of nuggets from what you shared with us today. So thank you for being here.

Thank you very much for having me. And if anybody uses any of the things they've heard today, I'd love them to leave a little message on your podcast that they got something or leave a review on your podcast.

And the same thing with me, as in I love to hear something on our social media of you having implemented something. That's what drives us.

Absolutely. Thank you, Patrick. You've heard it all.

So we're looking forward to those reviews. Don't forget to subscribe, liberating and a review on Apple and Spotify and stay tuned for more episodes to come.