5 Persuasion Techniques You Should Be Aware Of

5 Techniques to Persuade and Influence Others

If you want to improve your influence over others, then these techniques are for you. They employ an unconscious involvement from the person being spoken to. You’ll see how, shortly. Look for opportunities where you can use these techniques to work in your favour. Even if you choose not to, you will have people who have definitely used it on you at some point and will do so in the future as well. Maybe a salesman, work colleague, family member or a friend.

This blog post is a summary of one of our best Youtube videos about persuasion and influence. Leave a comment and subscribe to our channel!

Let’s dive right into them:

ARTIFICIAL PHYSICAL TRAP 

When you unknowingly become entrapped in another person’s agenda. For example, a clever salesman may accost you on the street and hand over a product for you to hold. If you end up taking it from them, you unwittingly must then listen to what they have to say about it since you are now holding the product they gave to you. The smart thing to do is to be aware of these gimmicks and refuse to engage with them. That way, you have the option to leave when you choose to or to just say that you’re not interested and walk away.

DOUBLE BINDS 

This technique is so effective we made a whole blog post about it. When you are given the option of only two alternatives, you tend to forget that you can consider more alternatives outside of the ones that have been offered to you and will inadvertently end up choosing one of them instead. For instance, if your mom has said the following or some version of it in the past, ‘Would you like me to cut up your vegetables into circles or squares?’, you tend to choose one of them thereby accepting your plate of veggies from her. Your clever mom has used a double bind on you.

MATCHING AND MIRRORING

We commonly tend to like and respect people who are more like us. This technique therefore is to step into another person’s model of the world. It is where you match their tone and body language as you communicate with them. A really skilled person will match and mirror you to a point beyond where you suddenly find yourself matching their movements and gestures, which is the entire point of the exercise. Before you know it, they are leading the conversation – its pace and tone. It’s aimed at building rapport with the person. If you are familiar with this technique, you can catch on when a salesperson is doing it and therefore avoid any imminent sales pitch altogether.

RULE OF RECIPROCITY

A technique where you create an obligatory loop with the person in front of you through a specific action. Picture this - You are at a kid’s party with your daughter and a person hands over a bar of chocolate to your delighted child. You end up thanking them and having a conversation with them only to find out they are raising funds for a noble cause. The rule of reciprocity kicks in and you end up donating for the cause, sometimes far more than the price of the candy that has already been consumed. All they did was pick it off the treat table set up at the party and give it to your kid. Full points for being smart enough to do it though. It gave them a segue into talking about their charity/ work/ product. Remember, there are no free lunches, well….. for the most part.

YES SETS

A smart technique where you get a person to internally agree to a set of statements – sometimes very obvious ones. It kicks off a positive momentum and they are more likely to follow along with the rest of what you have to say. Here is an example of a yes set. 

A salesman walks up to your door and as you open it, he says….

  • It’s a wonderful day, isn’t it? (You find yourself saying Yes)
  • Do you live here? (Uhm...Yes...obviously)
  • Is this your car? (Yes again)
  • This is such a great neighbourhood, isn’t it? (Yes...you’re hardly going to deny that)


You get the drift….. You can add on more questions to get them to agree and before long they end up saying yes to other questions about their product or service. Like if they ask you if you want to learn about the new (insert product name here), you are very likely to say YES.

It’s time to go out there and use these techniques both in your daily life and in your hypnosis practise, to influence the people around you and your clients positively. Look at ways through which you can adopt these techniques into your hypnosis sessions to improve its effectiveness.

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