Book Titles & Presuasion

Stuart: Stuart Bell, welcome to the Book More Show.

Guest: The Book More Show. Was that copyrighted?

Stuart: Probably not. Probably not.

Guest: We have a connection.

Stuart: So, you know, it's. It's very interesting because I've been reading the. Robert Cialdini's new book called Pre Suasion. Free Suasion. Yes, yes. And here's the thing I've always suspected and I've talked about how the value of having somebody ask for a book that implies that they are desirous of the outcome that the book promises. And I've used example all the time of the adult acne cure as an example, you know, or a title of a book that somebody is really, that that's what they want. We've talked on podcasts before about this idea that the title of your book is really best if it conveys what your prospect really wants. You know, like if by having and holding this book that they're essentially, you know, claiming that benefit for themselves. And I talk about Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace as the great example. Right. If somebody is in. In turmoil financially, that's stressful and there's a lot of. Of upheaval in their life and worry and, and all these negative feelings. And you could just imagine somebody holding that book and getting this sense of peace because it's as if they've been thrown a life ring, you know, a life jacket that they can put this on and they're gonna be on their way to that sense of financial peace. And the same thing when somebody asks for the adult acne cure. Now, what I learned from Robert Cialdini's book Pre Suasion is the now the documented kind of experimental case for why these things happen. And Robert, for people who don't know, wrote the seminal book on social psychology called influence about 30 years ago. And you know, I have to say, like any marketer that you can. That, you know by name, if you were to ask them their most influential books, Influence is definitely on the list because Robert spent a lot of years documenting what he calls the six weapons of influence. And you know, he. The book was written as a way of helping equip consumers, equip people to recognize when influence is being applied to them so that they understand why they have these feelings, that they, that they're compelled to take actions to buy something that they may not want. You know, because, yeah, the weapons are so, so powerful. They work regardless of whether they're, you know, invited or. Or not. And so being able to recognize, and that was his hope, that they would, that we would be able to defend ourselves against them. But you know, like any, like Gary Vaynerchuk says, marketers ruin everything. And they of course claimed all of this as a way to understand what, how influence really works. And it's been, you know, a tremendous book and I've, I've been, I've, you know, I don't know how many times I've read that book. I know every single example in it. I've used every single one of the, the six weapons of influence, which he, you know, just to give kind of the two minute version of it and realized that a 90 minute book, a book is really ticking a lot of these influence boxes right away that, you know, one of the, the, one of the influence factors that he talks about is authority. And so there's no greater authority icon in our society than being the author of a book. Right. Because you know the topic well, he wrote the book on it. You know, we're so, we're so, has a passion. Yeah. We're so conditioned that if it's in a book, it's, it's credible and it's, this guy is an authority. Right. There's reciprocity, which is one of the things that he talks about. If, if I do something for you, if I do you a favor, you owe me a favor. That's the way society works, right. So if I give you something of value, then I have. That sets off this sense of you needing to balance the books here. Right. So when you start a relationship with a prospect by giving them a book, you've given them a gift, you've given them advice, you've given them information. And that's really a, you know, it sets off this chain of events that all of a sudden everything is tipped in your favor because you're giving before getting, you're giving something to somebody, you know. And so we use all the other elements in this too, in that one of them is social proof where, you know, we show and share examples or what other people are doing and how we've been able to help other people with this. We use liking where, you know, the fact that you give somebody something and when they ask for it, we're engaging in a dialogue that we're acting and sort of being in relationship with somebody that triggers people to like us and that's, we love to do business with people that we like. So there's all of those things that are kind of working in our favor. So I would highly recommend first that people read that book Influence. And there's another example of a Great book title. But what Robert has done now, 30 years later, is. Has written a book about what he calls the pre suiters. And this is pretty fascinating because he really identified well, why do these influence practices and these influence moments really work when we deploy them? And so often it's just what happens right before the influence moment that he calls it. And so they. I'm. I've read the book three times now, and I'm still going back and highlighting and really letting the examples sink in because they're so phenomenal that they're almost unreal. Right. So I have to go back and continue to like, really grasp what they mean. But I'll give you a couple of examples. So in, in setting the stage for something, we find that in one of the experiments they did in a wine store. And by the way, when I was in Toronto, I got to catch up with Gary Vaynerchuk. I hadn't seen him in, but he was speaking at an event where I was in Toronto. So we got to spend about an hour together. And I was sharing with him this example, and he said, that makes total sense. But they went into a wine store, a wine retailer, and when they played French music in the background, just no mention of it, no, you know, no setup for it. They just walk in and there's French music playing that. That the sales of French wine went up disproportionately. When they played German music, the sales of German wine went up disproportionately. And so you start to see that just what setting that tone is affecting on a subconscious level to kind of set the stage for something, you know,

Guest: and so subconscious, the subconscious triggers, which is so ingrained in the rest of every other social interaction in society, to be able to understand what those are and use them for good and just orchestrate the process that little bit more to set them up. It's almost like a magic trick.

Stuart: Yes, absolutely. And then, you know, they would do another experiment where, where they, if you've ever been, I don't know if they do this in London or the uk where they're in the mall or on the street, sometimes there will be survey takers where they'll come up with their clipboard and they'll ask, you know, if you have a couple of minutes to take part in a survey. Well, they did that and they would go up with that standard approach, hey, do you have a couple minutes for a survey? And they would get 29% of the people who they approached to do the survey. Then they switched their approach to instead of leading with the survey, they would go up to people and just say, hi, do you consider yourself a helpful person? And after people paused and said yes, then they would ask them about the survey. And 77% of the people that they approached would take the survey.

Guest: That's my favorite example because it's so easy for people to understand the difference in just the small approach change and the layer after layer of social commitments and predefined pattern and pre suasion that sets up all of that success and such an easy change for people to make. I think one of my favorite examples in the book.

Stuart: Yeah, well that's, you know, there's, that's the perfect precursor to commitment and consistency, which was another one of the influence factors that Robert talks about. That we feel this internal drive to act consistently with the commitments that we've made. So if we say we're a helpful person and then immediately the first time we're presented with an opportunity to be helpful, we say no, we've completely discounted what we just said. And that's where, that's what I think is happening with a, with a book. You know that when somebody does. Writes a book like this, that we are, especially when you've got a title that indicates that you're moving towards something. Right. When we say the adult acne cure, that the only people who are going to want a book like that are people who are seeking that benefit. So when somebody asks for a book like that and then we immediately ask them in a short personal email. Hi Stuart, welcome aboard. How often do you get breakouts? That's really a simple way to engage with, with people. And so I was so encouraged to see kind of the evidence, you know, documented experimental evidence to back up why books are so important. You know, why this is really why it works so well. And I think it's just a, it just sets the stage so well. You know, it's like once somebody is kind of like you get somebody's attention first by them asking for the book. You set the frame on how this is going to, this is going to go. And then what we say in the book itself can really set the tone for the way people experience the rest of the, the rest of the journey.

Guest: Yeah. And I think understanding that it is a journey, that the, the job of working the book itself is to help identify those invisible prospects. And then there's the added power of setting the context for the follow up afterwards.

Stuart: Yes.

Guest: And then staging that, understanding that it's one step in the process. It's not the be all and end all.

Stuart: Right.

Guest: In the context that we're talking about, we're not really that interested in book sales as such. We're not much more interested in engaging an audience that then lead towards an outcome that's beneficial.

Stuart: It's just, it's the equivalent of, you know, getting, making sure that somebody is interested in something. If somebody asks for a book called Financial Peace, there's a good chance that they are seeking financial peace. So that sets the tone for how we communicate with them. If they ask for, you know, a book called Return on Safety, turning workplace safety into a competitive advantage and bottom line profit that can you can, you know, go that they're looking to take a different approach to workplace safety. So you start the conversation from a position of I'm already interested in this

Guest: and that's the we've I've heard you talk about before both here and on other podcasts that that frame of of writing an email or writing a book with the mindset of imagine that the perfect prospect, the gold star prospect was sat in front of you and you just having a conversation. Yes. Thinking about it in that helps all of this because it really narrows down the conversation. You know what you're trying to achieve, you know how specifically you can help them and it just makes every stage before that much more straightforward and easy to bring together, much easier to create and then lay on top of it some of the pre persuasion elements that kind of amplify that message and really help the people that you can help the most identify themselves and set in a framework. I can remember going to a Tony Robbins this three day event, the name

Stuart: UPW Unlimited Power Weekend.

Guest: Thank you. Perfect. So about 15 years ago now in London and I don't know whether they're still doing it. I guess they are the firewalk. So yes on the first evening is the firewalk and I can remember so this is in London, so perhaps a slightly more conservative crowd 15 years ago at least compared with an American crowd maybe. But in sat in the room ready for the Friday night knowing that the firewalk was coming up at the beginning of the event. There's lots of kind of standing up and making some noises and physical contact with other people there which again in the UK might not be the most comfortable thing to do. But I can remember saying to myself, I know in about seven hours time I'm going to be walking over some hot coals. So I'm just going to suspend any disbelief I've got at the moment. I'm going to go all in, because I don't want to be the one there trying to be clever, not listening to what's being said, and then ended up with burnt feet. So that is a setup. Yeah. And I can actually remember having that conversation with myself slightly. So that, as a setup, has the kind of pre suasion element for the rest of the weekend, where that kind of suspension of disbelief and the willingness to engage with what's going on is really the power of the rest of the event. A lot of people would look at the firewalk as a. Okay, it's trying to achieve one thing, like breaking boundaries or barriers. But really, the setup, the persuasion element of it was really pretty powerful.

Stuart: I agree. And so, you know, now you look at that and with these eyes that, you know, I just think that it sets the tone and even the imagery that, you know, seems so simple, can. Can make a difference. One of the experiments they did in the book was they took a retail furniture website and they overlaid in the background a picture of clouds on the. On the background of the webpage. And when they did that, inquiries and sales of the comfort featured furniture bed was higher. And when they overlaid in the background on the same web page, instead of the clouds coins, the sales and inquiries of the economy, the least expensive things went up. And so, you know, it's like, we often think that, well, that can't be me. That wouldn't apply. You know what I mean? But when you see that everyone else would fall for that, everyone else would fall for that, or. But now you start to see, like, the actual, you know, the actual imagery makes such a difference, you know, And I think that we've stumbled on, even just from an authority standpoint, saying to people on the back of a book, here's what to do next. Having those words of just setting that tone, where that imprint is made before they're ever asked to do anything that. Or invited to do anything, that really sets the stage that you. You. You're an authority. You know what, you're taking a leadership role for people. And, you know, that kind of thing is just so, so powerful. I think people actually can throw, like, I can't. I couldn't be any more thrilled about being the support that now I have, like, the real, like, you know, scientific kind of understanding of why the things we've been doing have. Have worked so well.

Guest: It adds an extra credibility dimension to it as well, doesn't it? It's anecdotally, we know it works because there's case after case, but for almost an independent study to back it up with, with even more examples. So I can remember just on the back cover, the telling people what to do next part. I think it was on one of the More Cheese Last Whiskers podcast with Jamie Smart a couple of weeks ago. He was saying that I was a Jamie. It might have been Joel. Anyway, someone was saying that on their site they'd kind of really gone overboard almost in their specifically, here's what you need to do next in their communications. And they'd seen a dramatic difference in uptake. Just because people's kind of innate, innate desire to take the path of least resistance, to want to have a clear path of what's next. As insiders, as people behind the scene, it might be easy to assume that, well, obviously they should do this next, that makes perfect sense. But to actually explicitly tell someone, it's like the instructions that you get on fairground, right. Like at Disney or, or a theme park, sort of. As people get closer and closer to the front of the ride, there's always a little sign saying, now do this, now go there. This is what you'll experience next.

Stuart: Right.

Guest: Sowing those seeds at every stage and on the books. To have that on the back cover, which is the place that the majority of people will look as they're thumbing through it and then have the content leading towards those exact same outcomes, really spelling it out for people, just far more effective.

Stuart: Yeah.

Guest: And easy for people to create. I mean, it's. We say it time and time again, people come and say, I've got five chapters in and sort of driven myself into a hole of where we're going with this. But have that very starting with the end in mind, knowing the type of the single target market, the type of people who you want to engage, what the outcome is, what you want them to do next. And then almost just dot to dot, filling in the blanks from the front cover to the back cover.

Stuart: Just the fact that just I think if we can get as an outcome for listening to this episode, the thought that we're setting the stage for somebody, if we can encourage the idea of thinking through the book title as being the best benefit that somebody is going to want, you know, to get them thinking, the thought that that will be the most fertile ground to plant the next seed of here's what to do next, you know, to start that relationship. And that's why, you know, when we look at the way we use the 90 minute book as an example, even the title, the 90 minute book is enough that, you know, we're, we're breaking down the barriers of people thinking that writing a book takes months and months and months and lots of hard work. And it almost sounds unbelievable that you could create a book in 90 minutes. Enough so that when we do present the, that in Facebook ads in online that we get 60 to 70% of the people that come to the page to leave their name and their email address to get the book. Probably many of the people listening to this right now have gone through that process because they saw this book book and it at some level was in the back of their mind that they would like to write a book and to start a conversation with, well, here's how to do it in 90 minutes. That's a conversation worth starting, you know.

Guest: Yeah. And it's not, it's not too clever. It does what it says on the tin. It, it helps people self select as, as an engaged audience. There does seem to be a bit of a move recently of trying to come up with clever one word titles. I think a lot of what you see on Amazon is kind of condensed down to that, but it is a very different job that it's trying to do the whole, the purpose of doing this is with a specific outcome of engaging customers or engaging people in the tribe. That's a different job of work on the title. That might be clever eye catching that,

Stuart: you know, I'll use Frank Curran as an example. Good friend. We've had a lot of conversations about this, about the 90 minute book and about this approach to small books. And Frank almost exclusively uses these small books as a lead generator. Now, you know, you see all over Facebook right now is the book how to get High Paying Consulting Clients. Even if nobody's ever heard of you. Now, you know that here he's answering the question, he's posing something that anybody who asks for a book like that is implicitly interested in. How do I get high paying clients and overcoming that thing of even. But people have never heard of me because people look at that, I often get that a lot that people say, well you know, yeah, it's easy for you guys, people know who you are or you know, all these things. But you know, I look at it and I point to our email mastery experience in Success magazine that, you know, I mean, the majority of those people have no idea who I am. They, but they were very interested in hearing about an amazing nine word email that revives dead leads and sharing that whole process with them. That was, you know, enough to start the conversation and then offer the Rest of the, you know, the next step in the process of getting the email mastery book and that, you know, it sets the tone and I've said it again and again and again, that the book is, is the gateway. It's like a portal into a relationship. Somebody asks for the book, that's what gives you the opportunity now to ask them and say, hey, welcome aboard. What business are you in? That's the message that we send to the email mastery people. And always taking this incremental approach where we can say, what business are you in? And then no matter what they reply, the version of the response is somewhere in the, some kind of acknowledgment of what business they were in. And then asking them, have you tried a nine word email yet? And then when they say they either have or have not, to be able to invite them onto a call where we can say, hey, I'm getting together with some people on Thursday to brainstorm some nine word emails and subject lines. Would you like to join us? So, you know, you look at all of those, all of those things. I mean, we've used successfully this book model in so many different industries. I mean, I would say there's very little overlap in, you know, of all of the books that we've done, hundreds of books, there's probably hundreds of different industries that we've been able to help people.

Guest: And even in the same industry, there's the approaches that people have got or the audience that trying to engage or the people they can best serve is so unique to each individual person. No two books are the same, even if they're loosely in the same genre or same. Same industry.

Stuart: Yeah.

Guest: And that's the benefit of the specificity. You can really dial in, pick who it is that's your perfect customer and how you can best serve them and engage them. And a small book that answers that question absolutely comprehensively, knowing that it's the, it's the gateway, it's the first step in the conversation. And the whole aim is to engage people is absolutely the most effective way to get something out there that blows everything else out of the water in terms of response rate. Especially when you look at the influence elements of kind of authority and reciprocity and the persuasion elements of this is the beginning of a conversation makes perfect sense to this audience. Yeah.

Stuart: And so I think that just as a guiding thought for as people are brainstorming and thinking about their book title, that the, you know, the best title kind of path is one that talks about the destination more than the journey. You Know that it talks about where they're going to land. You know, if somebody is in financial turmoil and they're promised financial peace, that's really a great thing. If somebody is, you know, an entrepreneur that's working 24 hours a day, seven days a week and they see a book called the Four Hour Work Week that sounds like less than what they're working right now. And that, that would be a wonderful benefit to have. If somebody's thinking about, you know, getting a, writing a book and they see a title, the 90 Minute Book, that's a, that's worth investigating, you know.

Guest: Yeah.

Stuart: So encourage people is to think about the destination, you know, what is the, what's the end result? The adult acne cure. That's like so, you know,

Guest: all. She's really high. It's the benefits to them rather than the work involved.

Stuart: Yes.

Guest: It's not the 10 minute a day skincare regime, it's the adult.

Stuart: That's exactly right. Yes, that's exactly right. And it's not about the author. You know, like I think that's part of the thing is that a lot of, one of the mistakes that people make often is shining the light on themselves, you know. And yeah,

Guest: yeah, about, about you. It's, it's far too easy to say which is I ideally encapsulated in the email mastery example. Yes, it was an audience that didn't necessarily know you, but the subject, the, the results, the benefits.

Stuart: Everybody's got unconverted leads. Why not start with the baseline? Right. Why not start where everybody is and then be able to advance on that foundation? You know, and we've been doing this with high end financial advisors, you know, offering a, a 2016 Social Security benefits guide which every, no matter what level people are at when they get to retirement, Social Security is going to form some amount of their overall financial picture and everybody is, everybody is interested in how that is going to work for them specifically. And it's the best baseline now to start the conversation. And you've got that one sliver of how Social Security fits into your overall financial picture. So, you know, it's just getting a foundation to start a conversation.

Guest: Yeah, we talk about, use the example of being at a party and you wouldn't necessarily be the person that was in the corner trying to share everything to everyone and telling them how they're doing it wrong. But sharing one piece of useful advice that someone has kind of raised a question about to begin with is really seems quite valuable and might start a conversation afterwards.

Stuart: It really does fantastic today.

Guest: So I think as you say, the main thing that people should really take away is that the titles focused on the benefits of the titles because that leads into the. The rest of the conversation. It sets people think. It sets people thinking on the right path towards. I've identified myself because I'm engaged in this particular subject and then leading towards the. The outcome leading towards the here's what to do next is the information that backs that up in a useful way that starts the relationship but the title is the thing that catches the attention in the first place.

Stuart: That's it. I love it.

Guest: Fantastic.

Stuart: I can't wait to hear to see what people come up with title wise. I think the spurs like that maybe makes that all click together that people have an understanding of what the. You know, the actual role of the title of their book in setting the stage for the grander, you know, the grander experience or journey that we're going to have with somebody.

Guest: Yeah, it's in the rest of the book I think there's a comment section on the website so head over to 90minutebooks.com podcast and this is episode 17 so feel free to leave some comments in there. We'll feed back or if anyone wants to reach out to us and ask more specific questions then just shoot to support at 90 Minute Books and we'll more than happy to feedback on people's ideas and exciting to see what comes next.

Stuart: Love it.

Guest: Okay, thanks Dean.

Stuart: Catch you next time. Thanks dude. Yep.