How to be Persuasive

As a trial lawyer, I’ve studied persuasion my entire career. These two secrets will help you be more persuasive in your own life

I will never forget the first time I went to trial to represent someone in Court. It was almost 20 years ago. I was a baby lawyer, less than a year out of law school. I was defending a plumbing company that had caused one of its employees to fall off a roof and injure his back. I thought I knew everything, and I marched into court like a brash young lawyer and promptly got my butt kicked by a much more experienced and persuasive lawyer. (Aside: Even though I hated to lose, secretly, I liked the injured guy and thought he probably deserved compensation. Shortly thereafter, I decided I’d represent people, not big corporations, and I promptly started my own law firm so I could choose who I did and didn’t represent).

After that first loss, I realized I didn’t know much about persuasion. In fact, I think law school made me less persuasive in many ways, because when you graduate from law school you think you know everything. I thought I was so smart after law school. In truth, law school made me dumber, at least when it came to persuading people.

So I embarked on a 15+ year course of self-study to learn how to be persuasive. To say I’ve learned a lot about persuasion would be a massive understatement. I’ve studied psychology, neurology, neuropsychology, evolution, genetics, evolutionary psychology and biology, linguistics, marketing, selling, hypnosis, and more website articles that I can possible count. I’ll bet I’ve read over 1,000 books and articles combined on persuasion.

The Two Most Important Persuasion “Tricks”

Here are the two most important persuasion techniques that I’ve learned. These techniques are based on my experience as a professional persuader (i.e., trial lawyer) for the last 19 years (during which time I’ve won almost 100% of the cases I’ve been involved in), along with a large body of scientific literature on how the human brain works.

Technique Number 1: Passion Persuades.

A lot of us have heard the old saying “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” What’s that phrase mean, really? Here’s what it means: people aren’t persuaded by logic and reason. They are persuaded by emotion, then they use logic and reason to justify their emotion-based decision.

Reason, logic, and rational arguments don’t persuade people. Period. Human beings aren’t rational and never will be. We are hard-wired to think emotionally and intuitively. Then we use “reason” to justify decisions we’ve already made.

Humans are also great bullshit detectors. Juries are the best bullshit detectors I’ve ever seen. Humans in general and juries in particular see right through phonies and fakes. They disregard the words coming out of your mouth if they can tell you aren’t sincere, and human beings can detect insincerity intuitively and naturally.

How to put this into practice in your own life:

If you want to persuade someone, you need to believe whatever you are selling first. Whether it’s your wife, your children, asking your boss for a raise, or trying to win over a customer, if you don’t believe what you’re saying, chance are really good that the person you are trying to persuade will see right through you. And if they don’t see through you immediately, eventually, they will.

I never go into Court unless I am totally, 100% convinced that my client is right and the corporation or insurance company is in the wrong. Never. Because I know if I don’t believe in my client’s case, the judge and jury won’t either. If I believe passionately that my client is right the the corporation or insurance company is wrong, then the judge and jury will see that too.

Technique 2: People Ignore You Until They Believe You Are On Their Team

Humans are tribal creatures. Whether that “tribe” if your family, the members of your religious faith, your co-workers, or people who agree with you politically, we naturally form “tribes” or “teams” and support the people in our “tribe” or “team” while ignoring or disbelieving people who aren’t a member of our tribe.

It doesn’t matter whether your position is totally, one-hundred percent correct. It doesn’t matter if your reasons are bulletproof and your logic is airtight. If you are in the opposing tribe, it is almost impossible to convince someone to even listen to your argument, let alone persuade them. You must convince people that you are on “their team” before they will even listen to you. If someone believes you are on the “other team,” then the words coming out of your mouth may as well be a foreign language.

How to put this into practice in your own life

The worst mistake you can make when trying to persuade someone is to start with disagreement. If you start with something that you disagree on, they will shut out everything else you say because they will feel like you’re not on their “team.” Your persuasive efforts will be a waste of time and energy from the very beginning.

You must start with common ground. If you don’t have common ground, find it. For example, let’s say you want to convince your boss that you need a raise. The least persuasive approach would be to start by listing all the reasons you deserve a raise, however reasonable or rational those reasons may be. Because while you are listing all the reasons that you deserve a raise, your boss is ignoring you, and thinking in his or her mind about all the reasons you shouldn’t get a raise, and all the problems giving you a raise will create for your boss.

A better approach would be to acknowledge the difficult position your boss may be in. “Hey, I know you’ve got a lot on your plate. And you’ve got a budget to meet and probably tons of demands on you. I’ll bet you get asked for raises all the time.”

Now your boss agrees with you. She sees that you are on the “team.” Your boss is now willing to listen to what you have to say, because in her mind you and her are on the same team. You aren’t adversaries, you’re friends. Now, and only now, will your boss be receptive to logic and reason and facts and so forth.

Starting your persuasion by putting forth your best arguments is almost always doomed to failure. Seek common ground first. And if you cannot find any common ground, that’s your fault. Look harder.

I really, really love the study of persuasion. Once you strip out all the science and logic and so forth, the study of persuasion is the study of human beings. And learning what makes human beings tick is the most fascinating study of all.