This advice will make you more persuasive

On today's episode of Nudge, I learned something that surprises me. Persuasive people aren't born persuasive. They are not persuasive because of their appearance, their character or their position. No. According to today's guest, Dr. Jonah Berger, their persuasiveness comes from the words they use. In fact, Jonah shares how the most persuasive people, like Barack Obama and Donald Trump, use simple tips that all of us can follow. So stay tuned to learn five simple tips that you can start using today to make yourself more persuasive. All of that coming up after this quick break. Most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but usually all of that data, records and history are scattered across different teams and different systems, which means no one can actually use it. HubSpot connects it all. Every interaction, every support ticket, every conversation, and they connect it into one platform that every team can work from. So when sales talks to a customer, marketing will already know what they've spoken about. And when you know more, you grow more. Check out HubSpot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. Today on Nudge, I'm joined again by the brilliant Jonah Berger. He is marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where he teaches one of the school's most popular classes. He is best-selling author of books like Contagion and Magic Words, and his previous appearance on Nudge, where we covered the hidden power of words, is one of the most popular Nudge episodes ever. There's a link to that in the show notes if you're interested. He has studied persuasive language for years. He's analysed what makes someone persuasive, and how all of us, from shy introverts to narcissist extroverts, can use some simple tactics to become more persuasive. To start, he shared an example of arguably one of the most persuasive men of the last 10 years. Donald Trump. Here's Jonah explaining how Donald Trump persuaded people to believe him. Whether you like Donald Trump or you hate Donald Trump, and everyone's entitled to their opinions, whatever they prefer, you can't deny that he's done a very good job selling his ideas. You've probably heard about this, even if you're not in the United States, but certainly in the United States. Many people have followed Trump's rhetoric and Trump's suggestions, even though a good portion of the population thinks they're crazy, that they're wrong, that they're only self-interested, they're not necessarily a good idea. He's gotten a good chunk of the American population to listen to. So one question is why? What is he doing that makes him so? If you go back and look, one of the speeches he made when he was running, he said something along the lines of the following. If I'm elected, I'm a builda of Great Wall, and nobody builds walls better than me. Our country doesn't have victories anymore. We used to have victories, but we don't anymore when there's the last time. We'd be China, the trade deal, I'd be China all the time, all the time. And so he made this speech, and I don't know if the speech, the reactions were kind of mixed. Made a lot of the popular press that it was empty and vacuous and not very useful. Yet less than a year later, he was elected press. So something he's doing is working. What is it? Jonah makes a good point. Trump's campaign speeches are absolutely packed with confident promises. I will never, ever let you down. We will bring back our jobs. We will bring back our borders. We will build new roads and highways and bridges. A new national pride will stir ourselves, lift our sights and heal our divisions. But what made this rhetoric so persuasive? I asked Jonah. And it turns out that what he's doing is not just about him, right? It's easy. Anytime there's somebody who has influence, it's easy to say that it's just who they are, right? They're a great writer or great speaker. But I think often these aren't things people are born with. These are things that are made. And so we need to look a little deeper. We'll keep on doing the same thing. Successful entrepreneurs often do top-sign. There are people, even gurus, who often do. We're speaking with a great deal of confidence. And to understand the science of confidence, there's what confidence is where it comes from. I think it helps to go back. And so a number of years ago, a scientist in North Carolina went to courtrooms to understand the language of courtrooms. And so obviously lots of people are speaking courtrooms. There are lawyers, there are judges, there are witnesses, both expert witnesses and non-expert witnesses, sort of regular fact witnesses. And he was wondering what made them seem more credible. And so he recorded what they said. He played what they said to other people. And he found that there was a certain way of speaking that seemed to make certain types of speakers more persuasive. And people tend to listen to what they said. So expert witnesses, for example, tended to speak a certain way that people listened to what they said. And part of that might be who they are. Right? Again, they are great speakers. And so they are experts. But he did some experiments and he realized it wasn't just who they were. It was what they did in particular that made them impactful. So it takes the same exact person, change what they say. And people are more likely to listen to them. And one thing he found that they were doing was, again, this language of comments. Right? Speaking with confidence. And one thing he found that related to this idea of confidence with what's described as hedging. And so let me explain that. So you know, to go back to Donald Trump, right, Donald Trump often speaks with a great deal of certainty. He speaks in absolute. Right? This is definitely right course of action. You know, it's an ambiguous what we should do. It's undeniable that this will work. And he speaks in black and white, right? Absolutes. There's no middle ground. Whereas most of us when we speak, we're often hedge. And I'm guilty of this as anybody, right? I probably have done this during this conversation. If they, you know, this might work. I think this is a good idea. This could be a good course of action. And we do that because it's an easy conversational. Well, we're not sure exactly what we want to say or, you know, we reach for these these hedge words. But unfortunately, without intending to, we're often undermining our impact. If you go back and listen to some of the most persuasive people in history, you see the same theme. They don't make hedges. They don't say we could. We might or we may. They declare things confidently. Take Martin Luther King. Or Bill Clinton. We began the new century with over 20 million new jobs. The fastest economic growth in more than 30 years. The lowest unemployment rates in 30 years. The lowest poverty rates in 20 years. The lowest African American and Hispanic unemployment rates on record. The first back-to-back surpluses in 42 years. And next month America will achieve the longest period of economic growth in our entire history. Or even look at George W. Bush's famous rallying speech at Ground Zero, the day of the Twin Tower attacks. I can hear you, the rest of the world hears you, and the people. And the people who knock these buildings down will hear all of us soon. And it's not just politicians. All types of individuals benefit from sharing views with confidence. Removing hedges from a pitch increases persuasiveness for all types of professions. Research on financial advisors, for example, has shown that advisors that speak with greater certainty, people prefer them. They're more likely to choose them. Why? Because if an advisor speaks with more certainty, it seems like they must be right. Because they seem so confident in what they're saying. How is it possible that they wouldn't be right? And the same thing is true with us. When we hedge, we do the exact opposite. We are under my armpit research. We conducted, for example, it shows that the more people hedge, the less persuaded other people tend to be. And so what do we do with this? How can we communicate more effectively? I think there are a few takeaways. The first is ditch the hedges. Let's stop hedging just because it's convenient. If we mean the hedge, if we mean the hedge, if we have to hedge, we want to communicate. It's fine. But don't just hedge because it's convenient. Don't just hedge because we're used to doing it. Make sure we're hedging because it's the right way to get across the ideas we want to communicate. The second, they're better in worse ways to hedge. Imagine I'm not sure about something. I'm not sure this is a good idea. Where I could say, I like this idea a lot, but to make it work, three things need to happen. I'm not expressing no uncertainty. I'm making it very clear that for this idea to work, these three things need to happen. But I'm also not just saying, I don't know. And I'm calling out the uncertainty. I'm identifying it, which not only makes me seem more confident, but it also helps the people I'm talking to identify where that uncertainty is and figure out how to solve it. So even if we're going to hedge, there are better and worse ways to do so. And there's something we do on a hedge, right? When we are trying to encourage other people to fear their opinions, when we want to signal that we're receptive to other viewpoints, well, those are good time-dempts. That shows that we're interested in what they have to say. They're not so certain of ourselves. But like any language tool, we need to know how to use it. Right? Sometimes we need a hammer. Sometimes we need a screwdriver. Same here, right? Sometimes we should hedge. And sometimes we should end, based on the goals we're trying to achieve. Like Jonah says, removing hedges will make you sound more persuasive. But you can also include hedges in a confident way. Don't say, I'm not 100% sure this will work. Say, I love this idea, but three things are needed to make it happen. This study, Jonah refers to, with financial advisors, shows the evidence behind this approach. In the 2004 study, participants were told to imagine they had inherited some money and were looking for an advisor to help them invest it. Some of their friends recommended Advisor A and others recommended Advisor B, so to help them decide they were holding a competition. Each advisor would judge the probability that some individual stocks would increase in value after three months. Participants would be able to see the accuracy of those predictions. Advisor A for example said that there was a 76% chance that a particular company's stock would increase in value. Advisor B said there was a 93% chance that that company's stock would increase in value. After reading a few dozen predictions from each advisor and viewing each stock's actual performance, participants were asked which of the two potential advisors they would hire. Now one thing to clarify, the researchers made sure that both advisors gave essentially identical advice, so they were both right 50% of the time and they were wrong the other 50% of the time. After the time when they said the stock would go up, it did, half the time when they said the stock would go up, it didn't. So it didn't matter which you invested in, you would get the same money back regardless. Both advisors had the exact same success and failure rate. But unknown to the participants though was that there was an important difference between the two advisors. Though they were equally accurate, one advisor consistently made judgments that were much more confident and more extreme. While their more moderate peers thought that a stock had a 76% chance of going up, for example, the more extreme advisor would consistently say it had a bigger chance like a 93% chance of going up. And while this more restrained counterpart thought a stock had an 80% chance of going down, the more extreme advisor would say it's only a 3% chance of going down. Now one might think that people would prefer the moderate advisor, after all they were being calibrated, and given all the uncertainty around performance, the fact that they were both wrong 50% of the time, their more moderate estimates were probably more reasonable. But that's not what happened. People did not prefer the moderate advisor. In fact when choosing advisors, almost three quarters of people picked the very confident advisor. They preferred guidance from someone who expressed greater confidence and seemed more certain, even though that confidence didn't lead to accurate predictions. So confidence definitely increases your persuasiveness. But removing hedges from your language is just one way to increase confidence. As another tip that you've undoubtedly heard before, yet I was surprised by how undervalued this advice is. Yeah, I was working with a client, I do some consulting with both individuals and firms. I was working with a client who was trying to become a better communicator. And we were working together over the time that COVID was happening and Zoom was sort of up as a way to communicate during that time, Zoom released some new features. And one of those features was transcription. And I feel like it's been a game changer in general, makes it really easy to get an output of a conversation. I was talking to this client, trying to figure out what wasn't working. She was going over the sales pitch that she was looking to make. And it wasn't landing how she had hoped. And I had some suggestions that made it better, but it still wasn't working exactly right. We're trying to figure out why. When I looked at the words on the page, they seemed really good. But the pitch still wasn't landing. And so I had her give me the pitch and I transcribed it. And when I transcribed it, the reason was clear. She was using filler words often. She was saying, this is the reason why. But if you're thinking about it, the reason is, in using these fillers, again, it's clear we use fillers. I use fillers all the time. The problem is when we use fillers, not surprisingly, it makes us seem less comfortable. It makes us seem like we know less about what we're saying, which makes other people less like it to take our advice and less like it to want to see us as credible communicators. And so how can we get rid of these fillers, particularly if they're something we do all time? I think the first thing is to speak rather than write because we would never write the fillers. No one would write something and say, well, we're writing because when we're writing, we have the time to think through what we're going to say and edit it. We're going to get rid of those disfluencies in our writing. Speaking we don't have that. So if you think that you don't say, or great, record yourself, transcribe it and we'll listen to it and see if you do. Some as we don't think we do, but we do a lot more than we think particularly in speaking because when we're speaking, we have to say something off a car. We have to construct and refine what we don't have time. So when I ask this a question and we're trying to respond, we often use us or errors as a way of essentially buying thinking time. Someone asks us something. We say, um, or error because we're trying to figure out what to say next. We're making a sale. If we're giving a presentation, we forget what we want to sell. So we fill it in with um, or the bias time to think. And so watching ourselves speak, watching a recording or listening to a recording or even better reading or recording will help us identify those fillers. In his book, Jonah shares a great study on this. For this study, participants listen to tapes of speakers making opening comments at the beginning of a class. The researcher was interested in how the language shaped the first impressions people had. So some students listen to a recording where the speaker hesitated a few times. They said, er, or um, five to seven times throughout the message. For the other students, the speaker didn't use filler words at all. Otherwise, the content was exactly the same. They said the exact same words. Beyond what the speaker said, though, the study also manipulated how the speaker was described. Some students were told that the speaker was relatively high status, so a professor, while others were told the same speaker was a lower status. So a teaching assistant. When presenting ideas, we tend to think that status matters a lot. In a meeting, for example, we think that attendees will be far more likely to listen if the boss says something rather than a subordinate. Or that the same idea will have more impact if a higher status person brings it up. But Jonah's research says that's only partially right. Status does matter, but only sometimes. See, when the students thought they were listening to a higher status speaker, they did think that person was a stronger, more dynamic speaker. But what the speaker said mattered far more. The filler words, the arms and the ars, they hurt. Speakers who used filler words were seen as less intelligent and less well-informed and less qualified. Listeners thought that these people had less expertise and saw them as lower status, regardless of what their actual title was. In fact, a lower status speaker who didn't use filler words, so didn't use arms and ars, was perceived more positively than a higher status speaker who did use filler words. Jonah says this is clear evidence that style trumps status. So watch yourself speak. See how much you use filler words, because removing them can make you as persuasive as your boss. But that is not the only advice Jonah suggests. But secondly, what do we do instead? Because it's great to say, don't use fillers, but most of us would say, well, but sometimes we just need to think, how do we do that? How do we solve that problem? And so then it's not about never using fillers. It's replacing them with something better. And that thing that's better is positive. Because it's not necessarily bad to take a little bit of a break from talking. And doing that can be even better than filling it with something that's not so much. Research, for example, shows the response speed when someone asks you a question, how quickly you respond, or when someone is talking and they stop talking, you start talking, how quickly you respond, can signal things about you? And in some cases, responding a little bit more slowly, particularly to questions, can indicate that you're being thoughtful, that you're thinking about what someone else. And that can be a positive signal of both you and what you're saying. Similarly, research we've done recently, because it's speaking speed. How quickly we speak in response to somebody else, and impact things by customer's distinction or social relationships. Because sometimes when we speak quickly, people go, "Oh, well, you're just saying whatever you're saying. You're not thinking about what I'm saying." Whereas when we speak more slowly and a little bit more deliberately, when responding to someone else, it indicates that we're listening and a bird what they're saying and are taking the time to respond to it in what we're saying. And so pausing gives us time to think about what to say, but also speaking more slowly, responding more slowly, and be great ways to make ourselves seem more competent, more knowledgeable, more empathetic, like we're a better listener, rather than just filling that space with some words that aren't so useful. And even take a speaker like Barack Obama, former president Barack Obama from the United States, he did such a good job of using pauses to draw attention. I don't do a good job of this, but he would say things like, "Look, they paused for a couple of seconds." And he used that pause to focus everyone's attention on what he's. Because he paused, we go, "Hold on, I got to pay attention to this, because we're focused on it once, speaking quickly, it's harder to focus on what I'm saying." Jonah is right about Obama. Here's a clip from his farewell speech in January 2017. You are the best supporters and organizers anybody could ever hope for, and I will be forever grateful, because you did change the world. You did. And that's why I lead this stage tonight, even more optimistic about this country than when we started. Because I know our work has not only helped so many Americans, it has inspired so many Americans, especially so many young people out there, to believe that you can make a difference, to hit your wagon to something bigger than yourselves. Let me tell you, this generation coming up, unsalphished, altruistic, creative, patriotic. In that 45 second clip, Obama poses for one second or more [BLANK_AUDIO] eight times. He also pauses for around a second four more times. He's purposefully slowing down and pausing to sound more confident. This works for persuasive presidential candidates, but Jonah reckons it's even more effective for salespeople. This is one of the findings from research, even from research I've been involved in, that I think is so, so amazing. So when we're talking to others, we have an opportunity while we're talking to pause while we're things. So if I'm explaining something you or just talking in general, I can take a little bit of a break while I'm talking, going down and then keep talking, continue. I might be telling a story and I can take a break in the middle and those are pauses within my conversation. What's so interesting we found whether we look at customer service calls and sort of customs, faction, whether we look at problem solving interactions with look at social conversations, pausing increases our impact. It makes people think we're more helpful, it makes them more service-fied, it leaves them to see us, it leaves them to see us, and the reason why is really interesting, just as you said when someone pauses while speaking, we have a tendency to what's called a scent. Basically agree with them. Not say literally I agree with what you said, but do something go yeah, uh-huh, okay, we're even just non-consciously shake our head to say yes. And what we're really saying yes to is keep going. Really saying like I heard you, I understood you, keep going. I followed your story, I understood your explanation, sometimes I agree with what you're saying, but even more like I am on page, I am listening, I'm following you, keep going. But what's so interesting is the more we spend in a conversation agreeing with someone saying yes, uh-huh, okay, a scenting, shaking our head, yes. Now later when we judge that person, when we judge the conversation itself, we sit there going non-consciously, by the way, we're not consciously domain, but we sit there going wow, I spent a lot of time shaking my head and agreeing with this person, I must have thought they did a good job. I must have been satisfied with myself because if I wasn't, why would I have agreed with them so much? And so I'm buzzing, I'm encouraging our audience to a sense, and sometimes I've to agree with us, even implicitly, can lead them to think we're better communicators. Jonas studies, they prove just this. In one of Jonas studies, he showed participants a recording of a speaker. Half the participants heard the speaker talk without pausing, a bit like this. The other half of participants heard the speaker talk with pauses, like this. Despite the speaker and the content of the speech being identical, Jonas found that pausing led speakers to be perceived more positively. It not only gave the audience time to process what was being said, it also encouraged them to respond with short, verbal indicators of agreement. For example, when the person paused, the audience would not their head or say, "Yeah, okay." And this led them to like the speaker more overall. So rather than saying, "Take a second to pause, people will perceive us more positively, and they'll be more likely to follow our suggestions." But Jonas has one more tip for boosting your persuasiveness, and this surprising tip is easily the best you will hear today. I'll share that after this quick break. Marketing school is part of the HubSpot podcast network, the audio destination for business professionals. Every day on marketing school, Neil Patel and Eric Xu share one practical marketing lesson. And it's bite size, just 10 or 15 minutes with no waffle and no filler, a little bit like Nudge. There are over 2,500 episodes, so I'm certain there'll be something for you whether you are wrestling with SEO, content, email or conversion. Listen to marketing school, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to Nudge. Okay, time for one more tip. It is brilliant advice that all of us should follow. It's leaving something a little bit uncertain. Many times we want to not just get people's attention, but hold their attention. Right? So we're making a presentation, we're posting content online, we're starting the beginning of a podcast. We want people not just to, hey, you know, start listening to the podcast, but continue listening to the whole thing. We talked a little bit about the language of certainty and the benefits of certainty and certainty can be good because of persuasiveness. But certainty isn't always by Daniel and Westick tools, some of this better to be uncertain. And what is in a lot of eyes because it helps hold attention. So we analyze tens of that over the piece of online content. Now we essentially looked at people keep paying attention to them. So not just that they open an article online, for example, but how far down did they read? I just one sentence, not just two sentences, not just one paragraph, but three or four or five. And how did the way that each paragraph was written? Hope whether or not people continued to the next one, whether they kept reading or whether they stopped reading and went to do something else. And we found that using more uncertainly, evoking a motif that involved uncertainty, encouraged people to stay tuned. Right? So if we, for example, in an article, have opened a motion like anxiety, people more like it is stay tuned to figure out how that anxiety resolves. Even a positive emotion, I hope, when I then excite that by making people feel hope, they want to figure out how it's going to end. Right, often great stories, great narratives, you care for the characters, you hope it's going to end. Okay, if you knew it was going to end, okay, three, the rest of the book, because you hope it's going to end. Because we have some uncertainty, you stay tuned until they're uncertainty resolves. So uncertainty can be a great way to keep people hold their attention, whether it's uncertain emotions or uncertain language more generally, because people want to figure out how that uncertainty will resolve. We do not like uncertainty and we are desperate to resolve it. One, fairly harrowing study asked people who were waiting for their HIV results, how they were feeling. The researchers found that people felt worse waiting for the results than actually discovering that the HIV result was positive. Uncertainty is horrible. So we do what we can to resolve it. Whether that's diligently listening to a speaker, paying extra for a same day pregnancy test, or watching 121 episodes of Lost over six years. That's right, Derek Thompson in his book Hitmakers writes that entire TV series are built of this principle. He shares that when the popular television show Lost Ended, many fans erupted in anger that the showrunners failed to resolve the series many puzzles. This deprived, careful viewers of the final aha moment they thought they would have been promised. Some people felt like they'd wasted cumulative weeks, even months of their lives waiting for answers. But their final disappointment it didn't retroactively change the thrill they had felt throughout the series. Derek writes that Lost was a monster hit for many years because audience enjoyed the experience of anticipating answers even though the writers were just stockpiling riddles without resolutions. Uncertainty it keeps people hooked, so to persuade, don't offer all the answers upfront. Hold some back until the end. To recap, the world's most persuasive speakers aren't just persuasive because of their character or their status. No, the way they talk, write or present, boosts their persuasiveness. And almost every world-class persuader uses the same tactics. They speak confidently without hedges. They remove all filler words. They pause while talking, making them seem more sincere and more considered. And finally, they leave something uncertain to make sure people keep listening. Follow this advice and you will be more persuasive. You can use it to encourage your boss to give you a pay rise, to convince your partner to take that dream holiday, or perhaps even to start your political career. Okay folks, that is all from me today. Now if you've enjoyed today's show, I think you'll love Jane's book. In fact, there's one section of Jane's book I haven't mentioned, but it is very good. In that section, Jane shares research that predicts with accuracy who will get fired, promoted or leave a company just by looking at the language people use in the emails they send. I tell you about this study, I tell you what it is, but I want to leave you a bit of uncertainty, so go and pick up a copy of Jane's book to find out the answer. I've left a link to the book in the show notes. Thanks again for listening folks. If you've liked today's show and you enjoy the podcast, there is one thing you can do to help me out. You can share today's show with a colleague, a mate, or even a family member, anyone who's got a big presentation coming up or needs to make a pitch or request at work. Today's episode will hopefully help them. I'll be back next week with another episode of Nudge, and I'm 99% certain that that episode will be the best you've ever heard. I tell you why, but you'll have to listen to find out. Cheers for listening folks.