17½ persuasion tactics in 28 minutes

Summary

Nudge Podcast Episode Summary: "17½ Persuasion Tactics in 28 Minutes"

Release Date: December 9, 2024
Host: Phil Agnew
Guest: Steve Martin, Faculty Director of Behavioural Science at Columbia Business School

---

Introduction to Persuasion and Influence

In this episode of Nudge, host Phil Agnew delves into the intricate world of persuasion with renowned behavioural scientist Steve Martin. The conversation begins with a historical perspective, highlighting that the art of influence has ancient roots. Steve Martin references the works of Tehotep, an Egyptian city administrator from the 24th century B.C., who authored one of the earliest known texts on social influence, emphasizing societal harmony and appropriate conduct.

Steve Martin [03:19]: "Influence really is based on an equation, the influence equation, and that anyone can use this equation to create more effective campaigns, messages, appeals that can successfully influence and persuade others."

The Influence Equation: Framing

Steve introduces the foundational concept of framing—how information is presented can significantly alter perceptions and decisions. He shares compelling evidence from various studies, including hiring practices at Princeton University, where candidates interviewed last were more likely to secure positions. This phenomenon is attributed to recency bias, where the most recent information is more easily recalled and therefore more influential.

Steve Martin [05:56]: "The recency bias is probably at play here. When all things are averaged out, we are more likely to remember the last and first thing we've seen."

Three Core Strengths of an Effective Communicator

Effective persuasion hinges on three pivotal traits:

1. Similarity
   Building rapport by highlighting commonalities.

2. Trustworthiness
   Establishing credibility and reliability.

3. Competence
   Demonstrating expertise and capability.

Steve underscores the importance of showcasing competence with the example of Sutter Health, where introducing diabetes nurses with their credentials led to increased patient satisfaction and appointment adherence.

Steve Martin [07:10]: "Susan Hsu's study found that participants rated breakfast cereals, restaurants, and politicians as more favorable when they read three benefits about them, rather than four, five, or six benefits."

The Rule of Three

One of the standout tactics discussed is the Rule of Three. Psychological research indicates that humans are naturally attuned to information presented in threes, finding it more digestible and memorable. Susan Hsu’s studies revealed that presenting three benefits of a product or service maximizes persuasion, whereas adding more can lead to skepticism and reduced influence.

Steve Martin [08:03]: "Us humans, we have a psychological preparedness for things that come in threes... as more messages were presented, the desire to be influenced peaked at three and then fell off."

Incentives and the Power of Frequency

Steve presents a fascinating study involving New York bus drivers, where the timing and frequency of incentives profoundly impacted behavior. Drivers who received smaller, more frequent payments ($25 weekly) adhered better to safe driving practices compared to those receiving a single monthly bonus of $100. This underscores that how incentives are delivered can be as crucial as how much is offered.

Steve Martin [10:42]: "It wasn't the amount of money that you paid them, it was the timing and the frequency of how you paid them."

Unit Asking: Breaking Down the Ask

The concept of unit asking involves segmenting a larger request into smaller, more manageable parts. For instance, instead of asking donors for a lump sum, prompting them to consider the cost of supporting a single individual can lead to significantly higher overall contributions. Christopher See’s research supports this, demonstrating nearly double the donations when participants were asked about individual needs before committing to the larger cause.

Phil Agnew [13:14]: "Donors who were prompted to consider the needs of a single student from a poor family gave nearly twice as much as those who were simply asked to donate to the campaign."

Social Proof: When It Works and When It Doesn’t

While social proof—leveraging the influence of others' actions—is a powerful tool, Steve cautions against its overuse, especially in digital contexts. Studies showed that social proof messages are less effective online and can even backfire when individuals have strong preexisting preferences. For example, highlighting popular desserts at McDonald's increased their sales, but attempting the same with burgers failed because customers had fixed preferences.

Steve Martin [16:58]: "People aren't uncertain. They know exactly what they're going in for. There is a stated preference there... Social proof messages tend to work optimally when that human-centric connection applies."

The Principle of Commitment and Consistency

Consistency is a fundamental psychological principle where individuals strive to align their actions with their commitments. Steve provides several examples:

• Healthcare: Reminding doctors of their Hippocratic Oath significantly increased hand sanitization practices.
• Webinars: Financial institutions reduced no-show rates by prompting registrants to submit questions, fostering a sense of commitment.
• NHS Appointments: Allowing patients to write down their appointments themselves led to an 18% reduction in missed appointments.

Steve Martin [24:37]: "People would often... get them to write down their own appointment... it led to an 18% reduction in subsequent no-shows."

Conclusion: Synthesizing Persuasion Techniques

Phil Agnew wraps up the episode by summarizing the key persuasion tactics discussed:

1. Recency Bias: Positioning oneself last in interviews can be advantageous.
2. Frequency of Incentives: Smaller, frequent rewards are more effective than larger, infrequent ones.
3. Rule of Three: Limiting informational points to three enhances persuasion.
4. Unit Asking: Breaking down requests into smaller parts can amplify overall commitment.
5. Social Proof: Effective primarily in contexts with strong human connections.
6. Consistency: Leveraging individuals' desire to remain consistent with their commitments fosters desired behaviors.

Steve Martin emphasizes that these strategies are part of his broader exploration in his new book, "Influence at Work," which delves deeper into the mechanisms of effective persuasion.

Phil Agnew [26:09]: "Recency bias gives interviewees a noticeable advantage. Social proof can boost sales, but not for products where there's an existing preference and often not. Online unit asking can dramatically increase donations. And handing out incentives in smaller increments stopped bus drivers from speeding."

Steve shares the genesis of his book, reflecting on the abundance of information on influence and his decision to distill it into an ordered, concise framework focusing on the most impactful components.

Steve Martin [27:08]: "There is so much information and data about it that we seem to just keep adding more and more. And it seemed to me sensible to start to think about what could we take away and then what are we left with, which are the crucial components of how to be an effective influencer."

Final Thoughts and Takeaways

This episode of Nudge offers a treasure trove of evidence-based persuasion tactics grounded in behavioural science. By understanding and applying these principles—from the strategic use of framing and the power of three to the nuanced deployment of social proof and consistency—listeners can enhance their influence in various aspects of personal and professional life.

For those eager to delve deeper, Steve Martin’s "Influence at Work" is a comprehensive resource that expands upon the strategies discussed, providing actionable insights for effective persuasion.

---

Stay tuned for more insightful episodes of Nudge, where Phil Agnew continues to explore the subtle art of making impactful changes through small, evidence-backed nudges.

Transcript

[Steve Martin]

Lord Grade now passed away, but at the time he was interviewing someone in his house of Lord's chamber. One morning he put this large jug of water on the center of his desk. He turned around to this young job seeker and said, I've been told that you're quite the persuader, young man, so sell me this jug of water. And rather than launch into a tirade of all the reasons why this Lord Grey would want to buy back his own jug of water, he simply went to the corner of the room where he saw this waste paper basket. It was full to the brim of discarded documents and things and he brought it back, placed it next to the jug of water, lit a match, dropped it in this waste paper basket and you know, as the flame started to mushroom, he simply turned around and said, how much will you give me for this jug of water?

[Phil Agnew]

Hello, you are listening to Nudge with me, Phil Agnew. Today on Nudge, I'll share 17 and a half persuasion tips just like that. I'm very fortunate to be joined by someone who knows more about persuasion than really any other person I know.

[Steve Martin]

My name is Steve Martin. I am Faculty Director of Behavioural Science at Columbia Business School. I'm the CEO of Influence at Work and I am also the author of a new book, Influence at Work, published by the Economist.

[Phil Agnew]

Together we'll cover why you should go last in a job interview, why you should pay incentives out in regular but small sums, and how you should always list your benefits in threes, a bit like I just did there. All of that coming up after this quick break. The OPS Authority, hosted by Natalie Gingrich, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Every week on the OPS Authority, you'll hear transformational stories of powerhouse business owners who value business operations. You can't ignore the back end pieces that have to work together and flow smoothly to build a brand, grow a community, or disrupt an industry. If the OPS Operations side of your business is a mess, putting out fires will always take priority, leaving no room for the behavioral science improvements that I think every business needs to make. So listen to the OPS Authority wherever you get your podcasts. Influencing may feel new Influencer marketing is commonplace. Today, UCLA hosts an influencer course at its business school, and the word influencer was shortlisted for Word of the year in 2019. But influence isn't new. Steve writes how some of the earliest written records about how to influence others are in the works of ancient Egyptians. Tehotep was a city administrator during the Fifth Egyptian dynasty. He wrote what is widely regarded as the world's oldest textbook, titled Maxims and written in the early 24th century B.C. tehotep offered advice and wisdom on the betterment of society by encouraging citizens to establish a cosmic order and social harmony. He wrote about the importance of good table manners, how to conduct oneself appropriately in social circles, and how to reason with argumentative people. Steve makes the point that at over 4,000 years old, this is probably the world's first recorded text on social influence. Influence isn't new.

[Steve Martin]

Influence really is based on an equation, the influence equation, and that anyone can use this equation to create more effective campaigns, messages, appeals that can successfully influence and persuade others.

[Phil Agnew]

So let's break down the equation behind influence, starting with framing.

[Steve Martin]

Yes, so the idea of framing is simply this idea that something that we actually present to someone, be it a price, a proposition, a proposal, is never seen in isolation. We know from decades of research, basic psychology, that two things presented in sequence will appear more different to each other than those exact same two things presented isolation. And one of the examples we give in the book is job interviews. We don't really pay that much attention to when in the process we actually are interviewed or when we actually present. And it turns out that it can actually matter. It actually comes from a story of a colleague of mine at Columbia Business School, Adam Galinsky, who once was interviewed for a job at Chicago. He asked his colleagues, you know, whether he should go first or last. They gave him the opportunity because they said that you're flying in from New York, so would you prefer to kind of do the trip in a day, which would mean being interviewed later on in the day and going back, or would you want to come in on the night before and then we can interview first thing in the morning? And he canvassed the views of his colleagues and they said, you know, probably should go first. And so that's what he did. He got a call a few days later and said, look, thanks for coming over, but unfortunately we're going to give the job to someone else now. To suggest that the reason that he didn't get the job was the order in which he was interviewed seems laughable, but it did really annoy him. And so what he did in true kind of researcher style, is he started to look at other kind of performance related contexts. He gained the recruitment records from his university and he found something interesting. Over the previous five years, when they were interviewing multiple candidates for a job, it seemed that in about 75% of cases, the candidate that went last always got the job. And then he also found a similar thing when he looked at things like talent shows like Americans Got Talented. The X Factor Eurovision Song Contest was probably the best source of data. It's like 50 odd years of that. And similar thing that he's actually finding is that those that go on to be the most successful in those competitions, those performers typically perform towards the end.

[Phil Agnew]

The hiring records at Princeton University showed that those who interviewed last were more likely to get the job. An analysis of 50 years of the Eurovision Song Contest found that the countries who performed in the latter stages were awarded higher marks. The same was with American Idol and the X Factor. But why?

[Steve Martin]

Let's think about job interviews. Oftentimes when we go to job interviews or if we are interviewing others, we'll have a kind of like a crib sheet of things that we're looking for. And we also have the job description which typically describes a heaven sent candidate. And so if you think about it, if you go first, you're probably at a disadvantage because what you're being compared to is not nothing. You're being compared to that ideal candidate in the recruiter's mind.

[Phil Agnew]

The recency bias is probably at play here. When all things are aver averaged out, we are more likely to remember the last and first thing we've seen. But those candidates who interview first are ranked according to a high anchor, that imaginary heaven sent candidate. So going last is smart and it seems to be quite effective. Yet going last on its own, it won't land you a job. You'll have to be an effective communicator first. And Steve says that there are three core strengths that every communicator has.

[Steve Martin]

Again, three things to think about. The extent to which you can signal your competence before you present. The fact that you can signal that you are trustworthy. And what we're finding is increasingly important is that you are like your audience.

[Phil Agnew]

Similarity, trustworthiness and competence are the three traits that make an effective messenger. But even if you have just one of those traits, you should share it. You should let your audience know. Steve, in his book, writes about how doctors at Sutter Health, a Californian health provider, started introducing the diabetes nurses not just with their names, but also with their credentials and their level of expertise. After doing so, patients became far more likely to attend future appointments with the nurses. These same patients were more likely to report higher levels of confidence and satisfaction, not just with the nurses who treated them, but with the organization itself. Showcasing your competence will change perceptions, attitudes, attitudes and behavior. Now, notice that I Listed three reasons to showcase your competence there. Well, here's why I did that.

[Steve Martin]

Us humans, we have a psychological preparedness for things that come in threes. Why three? Well, there's a couple of reasons. The first, of course, is that three is the minimum number we need in order to create a start, a middle and an end. And it turns out that in the marketing literature, this importance of three resonates and has been proven many, many times now to be really, really important. One example that I'm really fond of, Susan Hsu, who was in California at the time, she's now at Cornell, ran a fascinating set of studies. She presented people with a range of different propositions. Sometimes they were premises like a restaurant or supermarket. Sometimes they were products like shampoo or breakfast cereal. Sometimes they were people like a politician. And each time she presented these premises, these products or these people, she presented a number of reasons why people would like to or should pay attention. Sometimes it was a single message, other times it was two messages, sometimes three, four, five, six and so on and so on. And then she plotted people's tendency to essentially be attracted, to lean in, be more interested in information, and eventually act or buy or vote for these different attributes. And what she found was that as more messages were presented, more features, you got an increase in influence and persuasion towards that product. But the moment it hit three, that desire, that need to be influenced, that interest, that engagement in that product, that person, that premises fell off a cliff, and it was replaced with skepticism.

[Phil Agnew]

Susan Hsu's study found that participants rated breakfast cereals, restaurants and politicians as more favorable when they read three benefits about the cereals, restaurants and politicians, rather than four benefits, five benefits or six benefits. Adding additional claims, lessened persuasion and increased cynicism. Now, here's an interesting challenge. Imagine you run a company that operates a fleet of coaches. Your drivers are a little bit reckless. They're getting into scraps on the motorway, accidentally bumping other drivers due to their reckless driving. So how do you persuade them to drive safer? You could threaten to fire them, but that would ruin morale. You could threaten to dock pay, but that would result in union action. Or perhaps you could incentivise them, pay them to drive safely. Well, to find out what persuasion technique works, Steve conducted a study.

[Steve Martin]

So we did this study with bus drivers in New York. Actually, as it happens, and this is New York State, the problem was easily stated, which was there were too many situations where buses were braking heavily. There were near misses, sometimes there were accidents, and of course, the bus authority wants to reduce that America is a very litigious society, and they were paying a lot of money in damages to passengers that were complaining about pulled muscles and whiplash injuries and these kind of things. And of course, insurance rates skyrocket as well. And so the industry already knew what the intervention was that would help. And it concerns what they call safe following distance. It's basically the distance fill between the front of the bus that's being driven and the vehicle in front. And the industry recommendation was that that should ideally always be a minimum of two seconds. The thing that's difficult here is how do you persuade bus drivers to actually do that? And it turns out there's a simple answer. You pay them. You pay them and they comply. But what we found of perhaps most interest was it wasn't the amount of money that you paid them, it was the timing and the frequency of how you paid them. If they were paid, let's say, $100 a month. And by the way, the buses had these sensors and videos and things like this, so they could have a pretty good accurate track. And let's say we set a key performance indicator that bus drivers need to be driving in this condition you 80% of the time. And if you do, at the end of the month, you get a bonus of 100 bucks. That had an effect. But when you paid them 25 bucks a week, they were much more likely to comply, even though the economic incentive, the amount of money that they would actually receive would be the same. And so it does seem that it's often not what the incentive is or how much, but rather the frequency and the timing of it seems to matter a lot.

[Phil Agnew]

Bus drivers offered a monthly bonus of $100 a month for adhering to follow the 2 second rule are much less likely to consistently follow that rul than drivers who are paid the same amount, but more frequently at $25 per week. This is totally irrational. The financial amount of the incentive is the same, yet the way it's paid changes our behavior. Breaking incentives down into smaller yet more regular payments seems to persuade. And this reminded me of another of Steve's persuasion tips. It's unit asking.

[Steve Martin]

Unit asking is essentially this idea that people will often be more persuaded and interestingly, will often pay more for a product, a proposition, a proposal, to the extent to which before they are presented with the total cost, they are asked to consider the cost or the price of a component of that total project. Okay, so for example, let's say I'm a transport manager and I'm going to my financial officer And I'm thinking about how much money I need to ask for for next year's travel budget. Okay, I might go in and say, look, I've done the math and I think I need like £2.5 million for next year. It turns out it's quite a good body of evidence now that suggests that if alternatively, I go in and I either ask the person or the decision maker or I present to them how much it costs for one flight or one hotel stay or one attendance at a conference, and then essentially work up from that people's appreciation, and often their estimate of what a total annualized budget will be often will be higher than the 2.5 million that we actually asked for in the first instance.

[Phil Agnew]

Research by Christopher See, a behavioral economist at the University of Chicago, shows that using a unit asking strategy can significantly boost donations. Instead of requesting a contribution from a group, for example, saying, we need $5 million for the people of Ukraine, potential donors should first be asked how much they believe a single individual in that group might need. They should be asked, how much do you think a single Ukrainian student may need? In sy's study, donors who were prompted to consider the needs of a single student from a poor family gave nearly twice as much as those who were simply asked to donate to the campaign. This is why unit asking could help you secure travel budget for your next work trip. It could persuade a customer to buy more, and it might even help me persuade more people to subscribe for my newsletter. Now, one of the persuasion techniques I use to encourage people to sign up for my newsletter is social proof. I say 7,500 marketers subscribe. I tell my LinkedIn followers that 500 new people subscribed this week. I tell advertisers that it's one of the most popular behavioral science newsletters. But Steve reckons I'm using social proof incorrectly. Find out why after this quick break. Once on holiday, a local asked me to explain what marketing actually is, and I struggled. How do you even begin to describe marketing? You have to generate leads, you have to score leads, you have to contact leads, you have to create content, you have to gather data. And the next day you'll need to do it all again. And you wonder if it's even working. It's clear that marketers are spread far too thin, trying to do so many different things. But HubSpot really can help. With the help of Breeze, HubSpot's collection of AI tools and features like Content Remix can really help. With Content Remix, you can turn one piece of content into a suite of assets. With HubSpot, you can also pinpoint the best prospects with a predictive lead scoring system. And you can level up your campaign's KPIs with a new analytics suite so your day to day becomes less busy work and more driving revenue through the roof. Even if all of that won't actually help me explain what marketing is, visit HubSpot.com marketers to learn more. Hello and welcome back to Nudge with me, Phil Agnew. Now, Steve says that social proof can often backfire. In fact, I think I'm using it incorrectly. He's conducted studies that help reveal why.

[Steve Martin]

Helen Mankin and I did a series of studies in McDonald's restaurants in South America a few years ago. I think you mentioned one of the experiments on a previous podcast of yours with the balloons. We also found that if you put on the menu boards in McDonald's what the most popular dessert is, the sales of that dessert rise considerably. The managers in these restaurants then said, well, we should do this with the burgers as well. And we're like, no, please don't do it with the burgers. They went, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're convinced by you now. You know, it works for desserts. They tried it with burgers and then they phoned us back three weeks later. They said, yeah, you're right, it didn't work. Well, of course it didn't work. People aren't uncertain. They know exactly what they're going in for. There is a stated preference there. You know, it doesn't matter what other people are doing if they've got a fixed view or a belief or they've stated a preference about what they're going to do. And so one of the things that's really interesting, I think, particularly when I did a few experiments recently with social proof messaging in email environments and I found that they were significantly less effective than a message that was, was either delivered in person or via some sort of mechanism. You know, a signal on a menu, a poster on a wall when people were present. And this is pure speculation on my part. I need to do some more work on this film. But my, my hunch is, and it is a hunch, so it comes with a caveat that I'm not saying that this is gospel, but my hunch is that social proof messages tend to work optimally when that human centric connection applies. You know, I'm speaking to you or you see a message that' to you by a person or importantly, you're in an environment that you chose to enter, you chose to go into a restaurant, you chose to go into a GP surgery, as opposed to these blanket emails that aren't invited, that are going out saying, hey, you should think about this, because everyone else that's similar to you is thinking about these.

[Phil Agnew]

Social proof seems to backfire when there's an existing preference or when it's delivered electronically. I deliver a lot of social proof electronically, but perhaps I should swap it out for another tactic. Steve writes how one study designed to recruit people to take part in a market research initiative showed that social proof didn't really work online. The emails used a range of persuasive appeals, including an altruism message which said please help others, a loss aversion message which read don't lose this opportunity, and a social proof message that said many others have participated. Only the loss aversion message registered any improvement. The social proof version didn't beat the control. In another online study from the 2013 Behavioral Insights Team Report, social proof was used to persuade Brits to try and sign up as organ donors. The social proof version, which read thousands of people who visit this website decide to register was beaten by a message that simply pointed out that three people die every day because there are not enough organ donors. In general, social proof works, but online there might be better options for you to pick. Perhaps we've overused social proof online and now most of us who scroll through endless emails feel immune to it. So let's cover another of those persuasion techniques that you could use instead. It's one that Steve was heavily influenced by as a child.

[Steve Martin]

When I was a kid, I used to enter lots of competitions that were on the back of breakfast cereal packets. And at the time I was always convinced that I would win and I would win a trip to the BBC studios, or I would win a BMX bike, or I'd win whatever, you know, a holiday or whatever. And as I got to know about this stuff and study and write about it and everything, I started to reflect on that. And it turns out these breakfast cereal competitions are a masterclass in influence and persuasion. And regardless of the breakfast cereal itself, they all seem to have a similar pattern. So the first thing was that you would have to enter the competition and you'd have to collect tokens to entitle you. They called it the proof of purchase. So you'd like, cut out these little stars or tokens or golden nuggets or cornflakes or whatever it was, and you'd stick them down and you then answer a question and the question was always an easy one. What color is a banana? Simple things like this. So what you had or created or what they created, there was a ready, committed audience. People that were willing to kind of pester their parents to say, you know, we need to buy this breakfast cereal because I'm going to enter this competition. And then they had the tiebreaker. And the tiebreaker always went something along the lines of, I like cornflakes because. Or my favorite shredded wheat is X. And then what they did, Phil, was something really interesting that I never kind of figured out, which was this idea of your answer should be in no more than 12 words. I like cornflakes because. And then you have 12 words. Now, to write something concisely and rationally about why you like something in 12 words is really hard. What they were essentially constructing was a situation where kids had to think, they had to put effort, they had to actively involve themselves in this process. And then if that wasn't enough, the kind of icing on the cake was the entrant requirements, which was put your entrance on the back of a postcard, or if you don't have a postcard, seal an envelope and write on the back of the envelope. And I always kind of thought, well, the reason that they do that is because, you know, hundreds of thousands of kids up and down the country entering this competition, those poor people are having to open envelopes and things. It just makes life easier. No, it wasn't that at all. It was public. Everyone can now see what you've written down. And so I went through torturously, all these different stages and convincing myself that, you know, if I get this slogan right, mine is going to be the next marketing slogan on the breakfast cereal. I'm going to be driving off on that brand new BMX bike and these kind of things. And it was all bs, right? It was a really, really wonderful way to create a commitment to. And then a subsequent consistency and loyalty to a product in this instance. And what the psychological mechanisms that underpin that were an initial, small, easy thing. What color is a banana? Draw a picture. That's easy. And then. And active participation in it. Think about why you like this product. Write it down. And then the public nature of it. And it turns out that those voluntary, active and public actions that we actually take are the core psychological mechanisms that lock us into loyalty.

[Phil Agnew]

Consistency doesn't just work on children buying cereal brands. It works on us adults as well. A pre Covid experiment carried out with doctors found that they were much more likely to sanitize their hands between patients examinations if they were reminded that they had taken the Hippocratic Oath. Prompting doctors to remember their consistency with their initial oath was far more effective than sharing messages about the risk of cross contamination. Steve also writes how one financial institution found it could decrease webinar no shows by asking those who registered to submit a question. They said, submit a question that you would be interested in hearing the guest speaker answer. This simple commitment reduced no show rates by half. And Steve's even used this principle to reduce no shows for the nhs.

[Steve Martin]

You asked about the studies that we conducted. So this is a series of research that myself and two of my colleagues who are both doctors, Rupert Dunbaris and Suraj Bassey, we ran in 2012. The National Health Service has a problem had at the time, still does, with people that would make appointments and then fail to show up to those appointments. And we actually found that this use of this fundamental human characteristic of desire for consistency was super helpful. People would often, when they go into a doctor's appointment or an X ray department or hospital or whatever, they'd make an appointment. And by the way, this applies not just to hospitals. We see it applies to osteopaths, to dentists, to hairdressers, anywhere where an appointment is actually being made. And at the time, receptionists would often give patients a little appointment card, you know, size of a business card, and it would say, phil, your appointment is next Tuesday at 2:30. They'd write that down, give it to you as a reminder. And one of the things that we kind of observed was it was always the receptionist that wrote down the time and day of the appointment. And we simply said, well, what would happen if you gave the blank pen, the blank card rather than the pen to the patient, get them to write down their own appointment in the same way as the breakfast cereal companies got me to write down on a postcard the reasons why I like cornflakes. And what we found was that that simple change led to an 18% reduction in subsequent no shows. And at the time, the no shows were estimated to cost somewhere in the world, about £800 million a year. So if you think about that, scaled up an 18% reduction of an 800 million pound problem.

[Phil Agnew]

Consistency can reduce no shows, encourage hand washing and sell cereal. Recency bias gives interviewees a noticeable advantage. Social proof can boost sales, but not for products where there's an existing preference and often not. Online unit asking can dramatically increase donations. And handing out incentives in smaller increments stopped bus drivers from speeding. But the tip I'll remember most out of all of these is the rule of three. Don't bombard your audience with an endless list of reasons to buy, subscribe, renew, sign up or donate. Instead, stick to three reasons that'll make you more persuasive, more convincing, and more influential. That is all for today, folks. I hope you enjoyed today's episode of Nudge. All of the content we've covered today comes from Steve's fantastic new book, Influence at Work. But the book covers much, much more, focusing on all aspects of the influence equation.

[Steve Martin]

The story of the book goes back a couple of years, actually. Phil. I received a phone call from an old editor friend of mine, Claire Gris Taylor profile book, who called and said she was now curating this series of books for the Economist and would I be interested in writing a book about influence. And I immediately thought, no, I'm not going to do that. I don't have anything new to say about influence. I've published on the topic before, but then my other half turned around to me and said, claire has done a lot for you. You owe her. And by the way, this is the Economist that's going to publish this as well. Are you crazy? And so. So for about six months I thought about, well, what can I write that's new about influence, particularly in the workplace for salespeople, marketeers, leaders, managers, these kind of things. And I really kind of struggled with that film. I thought, I don't think I can. I've written with Bob Cialdini in the past. We've written work on all sorts of different aspects of the influence process. I didn't really have anything new to say. And then it suddenly struck me that the one thing that Influence doesn't have is an order. There's so much information and data about it that we seem to just keep adding more and more. And it seemed to me sensible to start to think about what could we take away and then what are we left with, which are the crucial components of how to be an effective influencer, persuader, communicator.

[Phil Agnew]

So if you're interested, go to the Show Notes. I've left a link to the book there. While you're there, consider signing up to the Nudge newsletter. It is very easy to read and it's packed with scientific studies to level up your marketing, and it is loved by thousands of Nudge fans like you. There's a link to that newsletter in the Show Notes. All right, that is it for this week. I will be back next Monday for another episode of Nudge. Cheers.