Cold Persuasion — Ben Franklin Style
In yesterday’s article (part one of this series) I wrote about warm persuasion. That’s my strategy for writing to prospects who already believe what you preach. Today, we focus on cold persuasion. In the sales and marketing world cold persuasion offers little bang for the buck. If we’re selling body building supplements we want to target body builders. It makes little sense to market to seniors with arthritis.
Sometimes, however, we may want to expand our market to people on the outside. Or, we may want to sway people to our way of thinking, as in political discussions. That’s where cold persuasion comes in. Think of cold persuasion as persuading someone who is cold to your beliefs.
Cold persuasion presents us with a greater challenge. Both require skill. Both require an understanding of what makes humans tick. The strategies overlap to some degree. Cold persuasion requires one additional skill. Your high school and college writing teachers never taught you this. Maybe that explains why nobody embraces it. Some sales and marketing guru’s talk about the importance of it. I was lucky enough to have a mentor who taught me this.
Anyone can acquire this skill. In fact, you don’t even have to practice. You can acquire it instantly. One of our heroes from early American history, Ben Franklin made this skill part of his regular practice.
The skill I’m talking about is restraint.
Let me explain.
Our natural inclination is to beat someone over the head with facts, proof and arguments until they submit to our whims. That never works. Nowhere is this a bigger problem than in political writing.
Why Nobody Wins Political Arguments
Look at any political article on Facebook. It’s one side versus the other and nobody ever persuades anyone to change their thinking. Each side will quote facts or data (or at least their version of it) to prove to their opponent the insanity of their belief. Sometimes they don’t even bother to do that. They just post a link to a website that shills to their point of view. They expect their opponent to click, read and and reason:
“Gee, thanks for setting me straight. I no longer support that silly view”
Of course that never works. The one who posted the link probably knew in the back of his mind it wouldn’t work. Yet, when we’re caught up in the emotional frenzy of an argument, reason often falls by the wayside.
Even professional political writers fall into this trap. Almost every political article I read appeals only to those who already support the view. Sometimes that’s intentional. Far left and far right sites play to their base. They know their audience and what their audience responds to. The more they can excite their audience, the more views they get and thus more advertising dollars.
These articles often start off with a hard line assertion in the headline and then lists reasons to support their position. The person already on board looks at it and says
“You’re speaking my language buddy”
While the opposition looks at it and says
“Could you be anymore biased?”
Proof Is Overrated
For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don’t believe, no proof is possible — Stuart Chase
If you’ve ever tried and failed to win an argument you know how true those words are… and not just in sales and marketing.
Instead of laying on the mounds of proof, we need restraint. Show some subtlety. Understand that you don’t have a monopoly on the truth. Poke holes in the arguments of your opposition. Don’t punch holes.
The Ben Franklin “Restraint” Technique
Benjamin Franklin cultivated an interesting practice to his writing. It might be equally useful, even two-hundred-fifty years later. When he wrote a letter to someone he would let loose all his emotions. Then he would throw the letter and start fresh. He understood the importance of restraint. He just needed to unload his emotions first.
You can start practicing restraint by holding back just a little. Avoid being so direct to the point you tell people what to believe, think or how to behave. Let them draw the conclusion on their own. It takes time. Make your case through stories and not just hard facts. Your audience, unconsciously, turns to assimilation bias and confirmation bias to reject any threat to their beliefs. It takes time, patience and of course restraint. There’s no magic wand.
Sounds like a 180 degree shift from warm persuasion, right? You’re not far off. Writing to your own followers, tribe and believers lowers the hurdle. You can do all those feel good attacks with all the proof you love. In fact, any good copywriter knows that the fastest path to success is to find a crowd who already believes in what you are selling. Then you only need to convince them that you are the best one to provide it to them.
So here’s my final advice as we wrap up this series. Sell, persuade and influence those already on your team. Stick to warm persuasion. Avoid cold persuasion if you can, but use it if you must.
