Hey E-com Insiders, today we’re going to go over how to mind hack someone else’s mind instead of working on your own and that’s called influence. You would know that influence is a key part of what we need to do as business owners. Not only do we need to influence people to become customers but we need to influence our vendors and our staff and all that sort of things. So, you’re going to love what we cover today. The reason is I’m going to simplify influence down for you into something that I can easily upload into your mind and something that you can apply directly today in a simple way that you can just use over and over and over again to maximize your influence.
Now, of course you can go deep and do a big deep dive into influence which is what I’ve done. I’ve read all the books and all the research papers. That wasn’t enough so I flew all the way to Arizona to hang out with Professor Robert Cialdini who’s kind of the father of social influence. I hung out with him and his postdoctoral research students to really get deep into it. But, even having done all that it all boils down to this very simple thing that I’m going to upload into your brain today. Are you ready for it? Good because it is this RCMA. I want you to write that down because that is all you need to remember because that’s the cue for everything you need to do to make every piece of content you write and put together highly influential.
Now if you’re familiar with Cialdini’s work at all you’ll know that there’s the Six Powers of Influence. Even if you read his book you read about each of them individually and it’s each one’s great. But when I have coached people about this they kind of remember the main idea they lose all the detail and they really lack a cohesive way of knowing how I stack all these six together to maximize my influence. It’s actually not covered in his book and it’s what I’ve had to do when I’ve got all of this and been using it to break it down into an even simpler system which is RCMA.
So, let’s talk about what the ‘R’ stands for. The ‘R’ stands for Relationship. Now let’s just go over something you want to buy something or you don’t even want to buy something yet. You’re in the market for something and you’ve got a problem. You come across someone who can solve that problem but you don’t even know who they are. So, how likely is it that you’re going to buy from them if you don’t first know them and especially if you don’t have a good relationship with them? So, if you know them and you don’t like them then the chances of you buying from them are very slim, but this is what we’ve actually got to overcome online with our stores isn’t it because that is the first thing people don’t know you when they first come across you. So, you have to build relationship as a primary thing that’s the first thing to do.
Now just because I like you doesn’t mean that I’m certain that you are the person who can actually solve my problem and that’s why ‘C’ is for Certainty. Certainty is number two.
So, first of all I need to know you and have a relationship and like you secondly I need to be certain that the thing you’re offering is what I need. Now I might like you but if I’m not certain that it’s really what you can do for me that it’s going to help me then I’m still not going to buy. There’s no point asking me to buy anything yet if I’m not certain that you’re the one who can actually help me. So, think about that from a store perspective, they’ve got to like you, and there’s a range of elements around that, but I think it’ll be certain that what they’re going to get is going to help them and so you have to improve their certainty.
Just because I have a relationship with you and I like you and just because I’m certain that what you’re offering me is the solution I have no reason to take action now. That’s why the next thing is Motivated Action that’s the third thing. So, that’s what our RCMA stands for [Relationship Certainty Motivated Action] those three things. Now that is the order in which you need to think about influencing people. It doesn’t mean to say like if you were to jump the relationship part, the certainty part and just go in for motivated action yes you’re going to make some sales doing that, but it’s at the small end of the spectrum. What you’re trying to do is increase the sales and the number of people who will buy from you and this is the most logical sensible approach to doing that. First build relationship, certainty and then motivated action.
Now this is really important it’s going to come out more and more and more as John and Brett and I take you through the behavioral remarketing system because RCMA is critical to the way all of us work. So, this is something we’re going to revisit over and over again when we start with our sessions going through all of that behavioral remarketing stuff. So, that’s why I’m teaching this as a standalone theme for you as a way to mind hack other people.
So, let me just clear that of the board and expand out what each of these is.
So, how do you build relationship? One relationship, well, there are lots of things you can do, but the ones I want you to remember is likeability. Likability can you see that on there? I want to adjust the lighting on this. Hang on a second here we go. There we go. Likability now there’s a range of things, but all you need to really remember here is you want to be similar, similarities; similar and compliment. Compliment should have an ‘I’ compliment. Well, you’ve already got that kind of covered because you’re providing a solution for them in a topic that they’re interested in so you’ve obviously shares some similarities. But don’t just leave that without stating it. Actually state those similarities and you have to show them that you’re similar right that you’re part of the same team that and like the similar number of things. If you’re similar to someone that increases likability and likability builds a relationship. Also if it is nice and cool to people if you compliment or helpful to people that is actually going to help them like you. If you they like you then you’re going to have relationship.
Here is where it goes so wrong, if you aren’t likeable right then you won’t build relationship and their chances of buying and you influencing them go down. So, how can you end up being not likeable? You can be a douche. You can be like hassle people. You can just try to be money-grubbing. You can be disingenuous. You can be obvious. You can have false scarcity. You can be too spammy looking. All of those things making you not likable and therefore you reduce the relationship quotient here and that reduces influence.
Now the other thing about relationship there’s only two things you need to know which is likability and reciprocity. Reciprocity, that is if you do something for somebody they will feel and I like the word to use the word here ‘positively obliged’ to do something in return. So, this isn’t about manipulating people into feeling like they were to do something for you and they don’t want to. This is about doing something selfless for somebody in such a way that they feel positively obliged to do something back. They want to do something back for you. You do this by giving and there’s a lot written all about that give to get. That’s a biblical principle as well right give first and then you’ll receive. So, giving, the way you can give things to people of course you can give them a discount code. You can give them money off. You can give them a gift that’s all monetary based. But you can also give people insights, a laugh, entertain people, let people off the hook or a favor, point people in the right direction, give them good advice, you can even giving someone the choice to do something is giving something to somebody. One example of that instead of saying you can buy this, you could say it’s your choice you could go ahead and buy this or you could buy this or not it’s okay. Even giving a choice to somebody is actually giving something to somebody and it triggers the reciprocity effect. That’s what you have to do.
So, don’t think that that you have to trigger reciprocity just by giving something monetary away it can be something else that’s the key thing. That is how you trigger relationship. So, think about that in terms of what you put on a page how you make an offer, what you put in email sequences and all sort of stuff.
The next here then [you’ll be able to see that down here] is certainty. So, now that you’ve you develop very quickly you can develop a relationship with somebody because you can trigger reciprocity and likeability now yet the next step which is certainty and the way you do that is through social proof and authority. Now for each of these things that you can go really deep, but we’re trying to keep it something simple that you can just apply on the fly. Social proof is easy, but I want you to think that there’s two parts of this. There’s many and there’s similar. I’ll explain what I mean. If many people are kind of endorsing what you do then that is social proof, but what’s even more important is when similar people endorse what you do. So, if you’re selling something to mothers other mothers who endorse you carry more weight and more influential than just a bunch of non mothers or dudes right or just random people. So, similar others they’ve got many others [you probably can’t see them] and similar others. So, wherever possible use similar others to maximize the social proof element. So, making sure you’ve always got that.
Now the other thing here is authority and this is all about trust, qualifications and credibility seals all that sort of stuff. This should be familiar to you if you studied influence at all. But more important than authority is similar others, but you want to use these kind of things to augment your authority in what you’re doing. Once you’ve built relationship they like you now there’s certain that it’s all going to be okay and that you can solve their problem.
The next thing of course is three motivated action. You see that down there? There are two things here, one is commitment and the other is scarcity. This should be again familiar to everyone who’s done it. Motivated action, you achieve through holding them accountable to the commitment that you know that they would have made and scarcity. There’s a couple of ways to introduce scarcity.
So, how do you use commitment? If someone is interested in the solution that you offer, then they are demonstrating by inference that they are committed to solving the problem they’ve got. So, if you know that they are committed to solving the problem they’ve got and they’re even taken some action to demonstrate that you can refer to and can call that out. That’s where you say if you’d still like to fix this up. That’s why the nine word email works so well. Are you still trying to XYZ? Because you knew that they were, it’s a commitment they’ve made and you are holding them accountable to that commitment.
Then scarcity comes through a number of ways its urgency and its exclusivity. If something is scarce because there’s a limited number or limited time then that creates urgency or something might be scarce because it’s exclusive. It’s not limited except that you can only get it in one spot. So, you have to figure out for you what you want to use for that but this is how you then give them a reason to act now so you’ve built relationship with them because you’ve triggered likeability and reciprocity. You can do this in a couple of sentences and with images that you’ve got. You have made them feel more certain or as certain as possible that you are the one to solve their problem that we have used social proof and you’ve triggered authority. Then you finish up with creating motivated action by holding them to account to the commitment that you can infer upon them. You can label them with having had this commitment or even refer to commitments that they’ve taken. Then you need to wrap true scarcity.
Now if you fake any of this stuff here is what you break immediately and that will reduce sales. So, if you aren’t likable right, act like an idiot, push them too hard, not cool and courteous that will ruin relationship. If you don’t have social proof or this is fake then you immediately break authority because you break trust. So, anything in here that’s bull-crap or that they even think is crap you ruin trust and then sales go literally walking out the door. These are so essential.
Now what a lot of people do of course is they just focus on trying to motivate people to buy and they do that by putting scarcity in. Often it’s false scarcity. We’ve only got four items left with three minutes left and they’re all going to be gone. People know how to know that’s not true. But if you were to just apply this to begin with it’s going to make the whole thing. You can layer the whole thing. So, how do you layer it? Well let’s just for the sake of being repetitive rub this out. How do you do it? RCMA-RCMA-RCMA. Relationship Certainty Motivated Action this is crucial to you being able to increase the influence that you have on people. Every email flow, every Facebook post every piece of content you write you can put through this filter. If you do that you can absolutely be assured that you are putting it through a filter which is the most evidence-based approach to influencing other people that exists on the planet. This phrase here and software upload to your brain contains all of it, relationship. Likeability and reciprocity first, certainty social proof and authority, motivated action commitment consistency or consistency with the commitment and then having an urgency through exclusivity or some kind of scarce offer time or limited numbers.
RCMA that my friends are how you mind hack somebody else. Let me know in the comments if this has given you some massive aha moments, if it’s made it simpler for you to learn how to bring together all those influence elements that you are already aware of. Let me know how you apply it in a post or an email let me know how you apply it to your staff and you can even go and apply it to your kids or your partner and increase your influence at home in all your relationships as well by using this. So, that’s cool. I’m glad we’ve got to cover this. Let me know in the comments below how you liked it, say hello to me and give me some feedback and I’ll see you in another mind hack video soon.