Chocolate or Worms?

Why is it more sensible to use worms as bait for catching fish rather than your favorite chocolate bar?

You guessed right; fish prefer worms to chocolate.

So why don’t we use the same idea when trying to influence people.

In order to influence people, we need to focus on what they want and how they can get it.

It may seem selfish, but in his bestselling book 'How To Win Friends and Influence People' Dale Carnegie argues that we are only genuinely interested in what we want.

Take for example the last time you donated to charity. It seems like an unselfish act but Carnegie sees it another way. You donated money because you wanted the feeling of having helped or you wanted to avoid the embarrassing feeling of refusing to donate. 

You need to understand what the other person wants in order to be able to influence them.

Most importantly, both you and the person you are influencing should both benefit from the deal.

A territory salesman for Shell Oil Company was eager to become the number one salesman for his district. But there was one station that was pushing down in sales because the owner refused to tidy up his station to entice more customers.

The salesman tried out a new strategy in a last-ditch attempt. He asked the station owner to visit a state of the art station that had just been built. The station owner was so impressed and inspired by seeing the new station that he cleaned up his own station.

The salesman strategy was so successful because he made the station owner want a cleaner station by showing him what a state-of-the-art station looked like.

Better again, it not only benefited both the salesman by increasing his overall sales but the station owner by increasing his earnings.

This is useful information but you will most likely have forgotten it in the next 24 hours. How could you retain this information? By encoding it in your memory like this. Your memory likes images and repetition.

1.   Encode key information as an image

2.   Position the image somewhere familiar

3.   Revisit the image

Key information: Focus on what the other person wants (WITFM - What's In It For Me?!)

1.   Encode as an image: A brand new radio station called WIT FM where the DJ's wearily trot out one witty comment after another. Painful to listen to after a while.

2.   Position: Imagine this new station appears on your radio and no matter what you do you can neither turn it off nor turn it down.

3.   Set a reminder: For 24 hrs and put 'new annoying radio station' in the reminder description. See what happens in 24 hrs time.

At UseBecause we turn bestselling books like How to Win Friends and Influence People into digital courses and we make sure you remember what you learn. Get more info about what we do and how we do it on our website HERE