Brilliant Influence

92 brilliant influence

The journalists’ principle

A common expression in journalism is: “Slaughter your dar-

lings.” It means: eliminate everything that does not contribute

significantly to the impact of your argument because it will,

instead, diminish it. Give me one or two good reasons to do

something and I will. When you promise 20, and the eleventh

sounds marginal, I am getting bored, I have forgotten the first

10, and I now assume they must all have been as lame as this

one. Paradoxically, more reasons create less persuasive force. In

the world of persuasion, less really is more.

Order your thoughts logically

The sequence in which you present your information matters.

You may have a long justification for your point of view, and you

may want me to hear it. But if you make me wait for your main

point, while you describe all of the stages of your thought process,

you run the risk that I will mentally switch off. The US Army has

it right with its injunction: BLUF – Bottom Line Up Front.

World GDP

1989

100%

82.7%

Percentage of world population

1989

100%20%

Figure 5.1 The Pareto principle

The importance of what you say 93

In the remainder of this chapter you will learn:

 how to BLUF with a powerful and repeatable process

for hooking your audience, whether it is one person or a

thousand, and whether it is in print or in person;

 how to sequence your ideas logically;

 how to close your argument elegantly.

The PPaP process for hooking your audience

The PPaP process sets out four steps that will hook your

audience. It presents people with the three essential pieces of

information they need before deciding whether to pay attention,

and combines four powerful pieces of psychology.

The first of these pieces of psychology is the primacy effect on

memory – the first piece of information we receive will stick

in the mind.So will the last piece of information – the recency

effect. This means that a powerful opening statement and a pow-

erful closing statement are vital to influencing people.

The PPaP process harnesses the primacy effect extremely well.

PPaP stands for:

 Position

 Pressure

 ask

 Point of view.

Each of the three Ps provides the person or people you want to

influence with valuable information, preparing them to accept

your argument.

Step 1: State the position

If you hit me with a powerful statement out of the blue, I may

not be ready for it; so it may not fix properly in my memory.

94 brilliant influence

If shock is your intent, you will achieve it, but you may want

a more considered response from me. You need to make me

comfortable.

Start by building rapport with me by telling me something

uncontroversial that I can accept without resistance. This will set

the context and allow my brain to access the right mental filing

cabinet, so it is ready to store the information you are about to

give me.

Step 2: Put me under some pressure

Too much agreeable background will allow me to relax more

than you want. I will think “So what, I know all of this”. The

next step is to give me a reason to pay attention. So tell me why

this matters to me. What is the problem, the pain, the pressure

that you are going to address? If you raise the stakes for me, then

I am compelled to hear you out.

Step 3: Now ask a question

What does a question do to the person who hears or reads it?

In your mind, you are starting to form an answer, so the first

impact of a question is to engage your mind actively. It is

reaching a peak of attention that will allow you to remember the

key insight that is coming up.

The other thing a question does is create in your mind one

or more answers. Better still for the questioner would be the

realisation that you don’t have an answer. Now you are at

a peak of alertness. You want to compare your answer with

mine or, if you have none, you want to find out what my

answer is.

Once you have put me under pressure, pose a question. You

can do this by asking one outright: “What is the next step?”

or by implying one: “You may be wondering what the next

step is.”