According to Susan Weinschenk, Ph.D, dopamine is a powerful attraction mechanism.

The myth — You may have heard that dopamine controls the “pleasure” systems of the brain: that dopamine makes you feel enjoyment, pleasure, and therefore motivates you to seek out certain behaviors, such as food, sex, and drugs.

It’s all about seeking — The latest research, though is changing this view. Instead of dopamine causing us to experience pleasure, the latest research shows that dopamine causes seeking behavior. Dopamine causes us to want, desire, seek out, and search. It increases our general level of arousal and our goal-directed behavior. (From an evolutionary stand-point this is critical. The dopamine seeking system keeps us motivated to move through our world, learn, and survive). It’s not just about physical needs such as food, or sex, but also about abstract concepts. Dopamine makes us curious about ideas and fuels our searching for information. The latest research shows that it is the opoid system (separate from dopamine) that makes us feel pleasure.

Read more on Weinschenk’s blog

When you tap into this, any persuasion you do could be compounded exponentially. A powerful tool when you can figure out how to use it.

Which triggers are you using to persuade and captivate?

You have seven potential fascination triggers: power, trust, mystique, prestige, vice, alarm, and lust. Each trigger leads to a different style of communication, and a different type of relationship. The more accurately you identify your personality triggers, and the more intelligently you hone

them, the more influential your message becomes.

Through proprietary research of 1,059 people, with bite-sized video explanations, the F Score has been carefully designed over the course of six months to highlight which triggers you naturally apply.

Click to take the F Score test yourself

Inside Influence Report shared this great piece by Steve Martin, CMCT

Whether it’s exercising, saving money for a rainy day or finding the time to prepare for that new project, many people find it easy to come up with an excuse that puts off completing some tasks to another day.

Typically, there is a perception that we associate procrastination with tasks that are less pleasant to us. But an interesting new series of studies points out that often we are just as likely to put off activities that we find attractive and enjoyable. As well as providing insights into the persuasive pull of procrastination the results of this study also point to some potentially important considerations regarding persuading people to take you up on your offers and proposals.

Read the full article here

Noah Goldstein, writing in the current issue of Robert Cialdini’s Inside Influence Report shows how flow up questions can increase commitment to Yes response,

This research makes it very clear that simply hearing “Yes” from another person is just a starting point, rather than an ending point, for persuasion. To optimize the likelihood that others will follow through with their intentions, consider specifically asking them how they plan to go about accomplishing the goal they’ve promised to pursue. This doesn’t need to be done in a micro-managing or demanding way. Rather, you could ask about the details as they relate to whether or not there are specific aspects of the tasks with which you can help.

Applying this to a Sales Process:

When you get your buyer to plan their implementation with at concrete plan they will be more likely to follow through and get the value they desired.. and your sales will be more likely to stick

The brand is what your customer feels

We don’t control out brands.. but we can persuade the people who do

Some men see things the way they are and say “Why?”

I dream of things that never were and say “Why not?”

George Bernard Shaw

An answering service that works backward? a different way to peel bananas? Changes in traffic signals? And how about upside-down Christmas trees.

Turning around the way you think about a problem will give you creative new answers

What other ways can we apply what Barry Nalebuff suggests?…

Originally from Aartjan van Erkel blog post De 6 geheimen van verleiding

In recent days I devoured the book Influence of persuasion, Professor Robert Cialdini. He presents it 6 scientifically proven seduction techniques from social psychology. The book gave me a few ideas that websites can increase their conversion. Plus, I give examples of Dutch sites that already use the techniques.

If you read this, you are by 4 methods of Cialdini’s tempted to read. I’ve used them because in my intro …

Cialdini calls itself the "weapons of influence": psychological "buttons" which can be printed for an automatic response.

The 6 secrets of Cialdini are:

1. Reciprocity
2. Commitment & Consistency
3. Social attachment
4. Sympathy
5. Authority
6. Scarcity

1. Reciprocity

Give away something free and the recipient feels obligated to give back to. That is the principle of reciprocity. People who are in debt will always redeem their debt. That is so because. This social obligation is inherent in humans. Give a gift, and your client is trapped in an invisible safety net.

Freebies work often increasing conversion. Because sooner or later the prospect repay the favor. The easiest way to do that is by an order.Simple gifts are enough. Do you have a website, think more of a free:

• Newsletter
• E-book
• Quickscan
• DVD with movie product
• Love Call
• Tip or secret (eg this article

Entrepreneurs make extensive use of the temptations of power presents, and thus of reciprocity. Gifts, Christmas gifts and giveaways are a complete industry.

Most of us think we’re rational.

I know the readers of this blog are smart, rational people, so I’m sure you are aware that you really don’t know what your brain is doing sometimes.

There is a slight gap between the time we say something an we realize what we say. Fortunately, most of us don’t have to do this on national TV

Our prospects brains give us many openings to hook onto. How are you using them?

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Quoted from MySpace.. Read the Full Article Here

Fiat is taking over Chrysler after Daimler lost billions trying to do exactly the same thing. Time Warner and AOL ended up in a fiasco. GM lost Saab, Ford lost Jaguar and Land Rover and today we have the battle of Kraft taking over Cadbury.

Why do most of these mergers and acquisitions end up in disaster?

Because they don’t know the code… they don’t know their own code – their corporate code. They don’t understand that a corporation is a culture (rituals, myths, heroes) and has a code. They also don’t know the code of the company they want to acquire or merge with. Of course they end up experiencing a “Culture Clash” and “Cultural War”. Then they have no idea of the country culture code, (see how the Cadbury people in ..England.. are reacting to the American take over or the Danone disaster in China).

To succeed you need a corporate Psychologist-Anthropologist. You need a corporate culture Match Maker who can identify each corporate culture code and facilitate the creation of the NEW culture while keeping the best of each of the old cultures.

Royal Bank lost most of the brilliant people from Royal Trust when they acquired Royal Trust. Daimler lost ALL of the Chrysler executives when they took over Chrysler (most of them went to GM).

What is the value of a company if all of the brilliant people leave?

Mergers and acquisitions should bring more than the sum of their parts. How do we do that? By creating a new corporate culture that integrates the best of each original corporate culture. This new corporate culture should have “babies” with both companies DNA.

Continued on Dr. Rapielle’s MySpace blog

Robert Cialdini talks about persuasion psychnology at affiliate summit las vegas

Attendees at Affiliate Summit West being held at the Rio in Las Vegas this week got a chance to learn how to apply Robert Cialdini’s persuasion principles to getting a higher response and conversion in their marketing efforts.

The keynote by Cialdini included many of our favorite stories… the hotel towel studies, the power of “but” used between a negative and positive and emphasis on how leading with a con, specifically an objection that the target audience will perceive.

One story I did not remember hearing before was the Cialdini’s doctoral student’s thesis on the power of scarcity of information about a scarcity. Studying orders from imported beef, they broke the client pool into 3 groups. They were given distinct messages:

There is an allotment of beef available for orders

The will be a limited amount of beef available

We have just heard from our exclusive source that there will be limit

Group 1 was the baseline with with a result of 10. Group 2 more than double their orders when told of the scarcity (24) and then there was group 3.. told that an exclusive weather bureua source had shared information that there would be a scarcity due to weather conditions. That yield 6 times the orders (61).

When you have news to share, let people know that it’s new, that you made an effort to get it to them, and then how they can benefit.

I talked briefly with Dr. Cialdini about his new focus.. a book due out by the end of the year. I wanted to share this with you as soon as I found out and raced to post this.