I haven’t written a review in a while on this blog, so I thought it was about time again. I got this book as a birthday present from my mother and sister and I’m very glad with it. 
… because this book has given me some things to think about and that’s also the reason why I decided to review it.
What is this book in short about?
This book is a practical guide for people who want to be more persuasive. This book contains a lot of scientifically proven methods you can use to get the results you want from other people. Very simple, but powerful, methods are described which actually when you really think about them make sense.
One of the most interesting research results I found in this book was that public companies who explained their failures in annual reports and blamed internal factors (controllable) had higher stock prices one year later than those that pointed to external factors (uncontrollable). So this means that taking responsibility for your mistakes and admitting that you’re wrong is an effective way to be persuasive. It also shows that you’re able to take control over the situation … and eventually it pays off!
This book also gives waiters, salespeople, parents, marketeers, managers and even writers interesting research results and tips on how to be more persuasive.
Some good quotes from this book:
- Small, easy changes to our messages and to our requests can make them vastly more persuasive.
- We know from other studies that people are strongly motivated to change their attitudes in ways that are consistent with their behavior.
- When fate gives us lemons, we should try to make lemonade, not apple juice.
- By blaming someone or some external factors to divert attention from the source of the problem, we create two bigger problems for ourselves. First, as the research suggests, this strategy is likely to be ineffective because it does nothing to prove to skeptics that we have any control over the problem or that we have the ability to fix the problem. Second, even if we do manage to distract attention from our mistake in the short term, the bull’s eye will eventually find its way back to us in the long term.
- Using overly complex language can produce the exact opposite of the intended effect: Because the audience has difficulty interpreting the language, the message is deemed less convincing and the author is perceived to be less intelligent. Make sure your message is clear and simple.
