The Necessary Art of Persuasion in Your Book (Part 2)

This post should really be called ‘How Your Book Makes Selling Superfluous’, whether that’s for your product, your service or your vision. But we’ll get to that in a minute.

If you remember Jay Conger, last time on LinkedIn, you can see why books should become the workhorse engine driving people towards your ideas and your business.

If this is your first time here in the newsletter go back and check out part 1 of this post. I’ll wait.

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In short, as I read Jay Conger, books are a powerful way of influencing the people you care about to change. Books are how you make a real impact. (Meaningful.)

And if you embrace the concept of your book as a persuasion mechanism, books will also completely change how you attract new customers into your world, too.

So let’s zoom into what a book world looks like – let’s deconstruct it…

(Click on this book world image. Save it to your machine. It’s instructive.)

As shown here, people move through a sequence of stages flowing from left to right. Because your book is – or should be – a reader-centric story.

On the left, they find out about your book somehow and enter your book world.

(We'll talk about how that connection happens very soon, when we look at the work of David Meerman Scott.)

And although people at this stage are typically already attuned to your message (they’re likely to be interested in the topic you’re writing about in some way… leadership, for example, or writing a book), they represent a mixed bag of beliefs and worldviews.

Pay close attention to that last part: your readers hold a mixed bag of beliefs and worldviews.

Initially, at least.

And here’s a second massive takeaway for you, right out of the gate.

Beliefs and worldviews can’t be switched on or off like a light.

It’s why so many change efforts fail.

Beliefs and worldviews are too subtle for that.

Now, in many cases people just can’t explain why they believe certain things.

Or why they behave in certain ways.

Many times those feelings and behaviors are subconscious.

Sometimes positive. Sometimes negative.

And sometimes even ego-driven. (Sometimes things that people would never admit out in the open. Ever.)

In short there’s a tug of war between what Professor Jules Goddard, a friend at London Business School, calls uncommon sense and common nonsense.

You can watch this video of Jules explaining the concept from his recent brilliant book, also called Uncommon Sense, Common Nonsense.

He lays it out in full here in an alumni lecture at London Business School. Really thought provoking.

The model itself kicks off at 4m12. But the whole lecture is well worth 30 minutes of your time. (Q&A also useful, but not necessary for my argument here.)

In a nutshell, and I summarise drastically, it’s about beliefs and how we see the world through a lens.

But pay attention to this distinction, which Jules points out so eloquently in the video...

What people see as common sense and common nonsense are the lenses that turn people’s attention off.

Read that line again. Savour it.

Common sense turns people’s attention off. (And, it has to be said, uncommon nonsense does the same. Big turn off.)

So what you’re trying to do with your book is to have your readers see the world through the lens of uncommon sense.

(And to avoid the backwater of uncommon nonsense.)

Brilliant, Jules. Thank you.

And uncommon sense is why a book works so well as a filtering device and a mechanism to influence people’s thinking.

Because with a book you’re respecting people’s worldview, taking it seriously, and yet you’re taking the time to shape it and reframe it in a different way.

This is why you can build credibility and authority in a book (unapologetically long-form content) in a way that you can’t in 280 characters on Twitter, for example, or with a TikTok video. (Shocking, I know.)

Perhaps this is the most important role of a book, then. To reframe specific beliefs so that the people who make it to the right-hand side of your book world end up seeing the world through a new lens. (Hopefully a better one.)

Let that sink in, if you want to inspire your community to change the way they work or live.

And particularly think about this if you want to attract new clients and generate revenue for your business.

You win people over BECAUSE of what you expose a segment of your audience to.

And – get this – BEFORE they are ever given the opportunity to purchase anything.

I’ll say that again. (Bluntly.)

Before they even know you are selling anything. (Whether what you’re selling is a vision, a product, or a service.)

Which might seem strange.

Until you remember what Peter Drucker said.

The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous. To know and understand your customers (clients, employees, whoever) so well that the product (or service or vision) fits them and sells itself.

Amazing insights.

Why is this so important?

Because this is what happens when you write a book.

You paint a picture so clear – so vivid through the stories you tell – that in the minds of your readers, by the time they’re part way through your book, they have already decided. The product or service or vision you have fits them perfectly.

Every old sock meets an old shoe. (Ain’t that a great saying?)

This is what a book is engineered to do on a strategic or meta level, but only when you structure and write it the right way.

It moves the right (best) people TOWARDS you, and filters out everyone else. (This is so important there’ll be more on this shortly.)

But first I have to tell you about the second-best leadership movie in the world.

The Story So Far

1. The key question you need to ask yourself when writing your book: what do the people you’re seeking to change NEED TO BELIEVE? In order, that is, for them to take the actions you believe would benefit them.
2. Books are purpose-designed to reshape the beliefs of only a subsection of your audience – your readers – so that they see the world through a new lens.
3. You can’t do this – not with any meaningful depth – in a tweet.
4. Moving your readers to a desired action is less to do with telling people what to do (blunt force trauma) and more to do with teaching people what to do.

NEXT TIME: the importance of giving your readers what they truly need. And how.

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For transparency, this article will appear on our blog and podcast at Authors Channel