When you’re looking to improve your marketing skills, books are often one of the best sources you could turn to. In fact, a lot of the most successful marketers claim to have learned some of their most important lessons from books.
I’m not talking textbooks either, I mean books written by other successful marketers.
Enter Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini, PH.D. This is one of the most powerful sales-related books you could read. Not only does it teach you how you can use simple psychology to increase your sales, but it provides great anecdotal evidence to back up the claims.
There’s a reason why this book is on every top marketer’s list of “must reads” and why it’s sold well over 3-million copies worldwide. Partly because it’s not just another “self-help” book filled with cliche quotes and recycled information. But more importantly, because the knowledge taught within works and it works well.
The Lessons
The lessons learned in Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion are basic but powerful. At the core, you learn the reasoning behind people saying “yes” instead of “no” when considering a purchase.
Across 7 chapters spanning a quick 237 pages (311 pages if you want to read absolutely everything), you’ll learn invaluable lessons from one of the world’s leading marketing professors. Robert B. Cialdini spent 3-years “undercover” to gather the knowledge contained within his book. During that time, he was “applying for and training at used car dealerships, fund-raising organizations, and telemarketing firms to observe real-life situations of persuasion” according to his Wikipedia page.
What he discovered was, increasing your sales can be broken down to 6 basic principles.
- Reciprocation
- Commitment and Consistency
- Social Proof
- Liking
- Authority
- Scarcity
Implementing 1 or more of those 6 basic principles is almost guaranteed to increase your sales. You might even be doing 1 or 2 of them right now without even knowing it. If you’re an internet marketer, then you already know how valuable social proof and authority can be. Now, imagine if you implemented the other 4 principles?
That’s what you learn in Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, how to identify and implement those principles. That’s really all the book is about – and that’s a big part of why it’s so damn good; pardon my language.
Who is Robert B. Cialdini, Ph.D.?
I guess you’d like to know a bit about the author, that’s understandable.
Robert B. Cialdini Ph.D., the “Godfather of influence”, is a Reagent Professor Emeritus (basically means: a distinguished and retired Professor) of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University. He was also a visiting professor of marketing, business and psychology at Stanford, as well as the University of California. You could say he’s quite knowledgable when it comes to both psychology and marketing, especially when it comes to how they work together.
He has written numerous bestsellers in his time authoring books. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion is the most notable and most successful, but his other works include Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive, and most recently Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade just to name a couple.
Long story short, if you’re looking for an author who really knows how marketing and psychology work together, there’s no better than Dr. Cialdini.
Conclusion
There is no better book out there that combines psychology with marketing to form a system of influence. Reading this book is almost guaranteed to make you a better salesperson, marketer, or even just more persuasive in general.
That is, it’ll help as long as you take the knowledge and actually apply it. Reading a book isn’t good enough; no, you actually have to make an effort to implement what you’re learning. Without doing that, you’re basically just wasting your time. Time = money, so let’s not waste any of it.
Since Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion could be read in a weekend, it’s definitely not something you should ignore. It’s the same knowledge that a lot of “marketing gurus” will charge you $5000 to attend a weekend workshop to learn. What’s better, spending $5000 or less than $20? You could even pick up the audiobook version and listen to between appointments or while you’re on the road.
Now that you know Influence exists, not reading it would be akin to flushing money down the toilet. I know for a fact you wouldn’t do that, so here’s a link to buy Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. Add it to your cart and buy it ASAP – procrastination is the thief of time!!!
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