Bafflingly Simple, Yet Exactly
How Top Marketers Get Ongoing Results
THE ONE-SENTENCE SECRET TO
LASTING INFLUENCE
Nirav Mehta
Quick Read, Highly Practical
Try this in your next email, blog or sales page for instant impact!
THE ONE-SENTENCE SECRET TO
LASTING INFLUENCE
It's Bafflingly Simple, Yet Exactly
How Top Marketers Get Ongoing Results!
Nirav Mehta
!2
I'm on your side...
Hi!
People call me a perfectionist, storyteller,
mentor, funny, impossible, inspirational, difficult
and "generally a nice guy, but sometimes a tough
nut". I call myself an entrepreneur geek 😉
My first successful business venture was at
the age of 13. I kept pursuing new ideas,
working hard, failing and persisting. I launched India’s first electronic
magazine, a thriving web agency that went bust, made a heroic recovery,
and then a string of six and seven figure software businesses. I'm a
published author and speak at various tech and business events.
If you're into studying human behavior, creating things that transform
lives, staying healthy and fit - we have more things in common than you
imagined!
But hey, what’s most important for me is - YOU! I've been in your
situation. I've seen the struggle. So what follows is my way of saying "I'm
on your side, buddy!"
All my businesses are focused on expediting your success...
‣ Putler - https://www.putler.com - sensible analytics for online
sellers
‣ Icegram - https://www.icegram.com - WordPress plugins to
engage and convert your visitors
!3
‣ Store Apps - https://www.storeapps.org - Best selling
WooCommerce plugins to sell more and stay sane with a growing
business
So my dear friend, all that follows is for you, about you. And
remember, taking baby steps in the right direction is more important than
perfection. I can vouch for that as a perfectionist myself!
So keep moving forward!
Best regards,
Nirav.
!4
Preamble
I'm so excited to share with you the ultimate secret to charisma,
influence and impact.
We are all in the game of persuasion. Almost everything we do writing blog posts and emails, creating products and websites, fine tuning
our sales pitches, answering customer support... Everything has one
goal - to persuade someone.
I'm a lifelong student of persuasion, behavior and copywriting. And
my brain fried with excitement when I stumbled upon this 27 word
sentence. A sentence that elegantly sums up all wisdom about marketing,
sales, charisma, influence, power and impact.
Let me be clear... It's not my invention. But when I found it, it just
made so much sense. I could clearly see that every top marketer, every
top selling product, every successful business was using this exact
strategy.
!5
Tell me if you agree with this...
You and I can spend a lifetime mastering the art of persuasive
communication. But even the most powerful persuasion strategies are
useless if you can't remember them when you need them.
You and I are already juggling with so many challenges that we don't
want another course that promises big results and doesn't deliver. Rather
increases our overwhelm and frustration.
Agree?
Yes? I felt the same.
On the other hand, it has never been easier to be powerfully
persuasive. Never.
It doesn’t require good looks, a silver tongue or infallible logic. It
doesn’t require confidence, charm or a magnetic personality. Persuasion is
really simple when one cuts through all the smoke. Cutting through the
smoke is the hard part.
In fact, if you have yet to develop your persuasive powers to the level
you want, it likely has nothing to do with you.
Really.
Persuasion's got nothing to do with you. You will soon see why.
So let's find out the one-sentence secret to lasting influence...
!6
The Discovery
So there I was... Buying Kindle books on Amazon. And I noticed Blair
Warren's "The One Sentence Persuasion Course". It had good reviews and
promised to be a short read.
More than anything else, the promise of 27 words to make the world
do your bidding really pulled me in!
I started reading the book the very next minute.
Half an hour later, I felt like Aladdin, with a magic lamp in my hands!
So let me give you the one sentence secret right away.
People will do anything for those who encourage their
dreams, justify their failures, allay their fears, confirm their
suspicions, and help them throw rock at their enemies.
!7
That sums up the five best insights Mr. Blair Warren collected in his
lifetime of studying and applying the principles of persuasion.
•
Encourage their dreams
•
Justify their failures
•
Allay their fears
•
Confirm their suspicions
•
Help them throw rocks at their enemies
Think about it again. These tenets are simple, instantly applicable and
dangerously powerful. These are principles for anyone who needs to
connect with others, and make those connections pay off.
But before I continue, let me narrate a situation from the book.
An incident about magic. Because magic and persuasion have quite a
few things in common!
Imagine you are in a magic shop. The owner shows you a few tricks.
After a while, you buy a kit that baffles you the most.
You can't contain your curiosity anymore, so you run to your car, tear
away the shrink wrap and start reading instructions.
If you do that, I can predict with 99.9% accuracy what will happen.
You will be disappointed.
The “secrets” behind many magic tricks, even some of those that
seem like miracles, are often so mundane that one cannot help but
feel disappointed upon their discovery.
!8
Your next thought will be: "This is ridiculously simple.. It can't
possibly fool anyone.."
And at this time, if you are like most people, you will write off your
$20 investment and put away the trick box.
But if you persist a little bit, you will get another thought.
“Wait a minute. It must not be that ridiculous if it fooled ME.”
Spot on.
That one thought raised you to a level of honesty and understanding
that few people ever experience. You've discovered that most magical
things in life - on and off a stage - are often the result of correct
application of the most basic principles imaginable.
Now this may sound like too much of simplification, and I don't deny
that there are things that are complex, but I've experienced that the most
important things in life are generally the simplest.
We have a fancy towards complex, intellectual stuff. So we scoff at
simple ideas.
Think about it this way...
History has seen so many leaders and influencers. Many great
successes. And they didn't have the cutting edge tools you and I have.
They didn't have the latest strategies.
While the latest tools and strategies can help, they aren't necessary for
persuasion - like many other things - to work.
!9
What is necessary is a fundamental understanding of human nature.
Similar to how magicians perform miracles, powerful persuaders shape
the world in using mundane principles.
So basics...
Knowledge is the process of piling up facts;
wisdom lies in their simplification.
- Martin H. Fischer
!10
The Deep Dive
Let's read the sentence again, and look at each of its parts.
People will do anything for those who
encourage their dreams, justify their failures,
allay their fears, confirm their suspicions, and
help them throw rock at their enemies.
Encourage their dreams
Parents often encourage their children’s dreams for “their own good”
and attempt to steer them towards more “reasonable” goal. And children
often accept this as normal, until others come along who believe in them
!11
and encourage their dreams. When this happens, who do you think has
more power? Parent? Or Strangers?
Similarly, notice how top marketers use aspiration and dreams in their
communication. Apple, Tesla - or even Coke - there is a level of
encouragement for dreams and positive outcomes in all their marketing.
Justify their failures
We do not like to take responsibility for our failures. We want to
blame it on circumstances and other people. It is true that taking
responsibility (no matter how bad it feels initially), gives one power over
their actions. The opposite is equally true - assuring others that they
are not responsible for their failures, gives you the influence over
them. This is clearly visible in politics - as leaders influence voters by
blaming others for whatever is not working.
In marketing, you will often see messaging that softens the burden of
failure. Justifying the failure as the logical / practical thing or the only
option you had at the time. Or telling you that you are trying your best,
but things are not just working out.
Allay their fears
Fear stops us from taking action. It's nearly impossible to focus on
anything else when you are afraid. Telling someone not to be afraid,
doesn't work. We prefer to be with people who empathize and work with
us until our fear subsides. They present evidence, they offer support, they
tell us stories, but they do not tell us how to feel.
Have you noticed this in marketing? Everything that claims to make
things easier, quicker and better - is playing on taking away your fear!
!12
Confirm their suspicions
When someone else confirms something that we suspect, we not only
feel a surge of superiority, we feel attracted to the one who helped us
make that surge come about. Hitler ‘confirmed’ the suspicions of many
Germans about the cause of their troubles and drew them further into his
power by doing so.
Whether we're worrying about losing weight, get a date or achieving
our goals, top marketers tell us that what we suspect may very well be
true, and that we need to buy their offering to get past it.
Help them throw rocks at their enemies
This one is easy right? Nothing bonds like having a common enemy.
Whether it is another individual, a condition, an organization or group,
an illness, an upset, a rival, or what have you, when one is engaged in a
struggle, one is looking for others to join him. Those who do become
more than friends; they become partners.
This always works in marketing. Sometimes the enemy is a situation,
sometimes a person. But slaying the demon together always does the
trick!
These principles are all around you...
Look at how your favorite expert or company sells their products and
services. Look at their website / advertisement / email / sales page...
Can you spot any of these five principles?
Truly successful businesses and marketing campaigns use one or
more of these five insights. Most use more than one.
!13
Try finding one that doesn't...
Then when you give up on that, try finding a deep, satisfying
relationship that isn't build upon one or more of these five insights.
Simply look for people in your life who you have a great chemistry
with. Then check: do they encourage your dreams? Do they allay your
fears?
For every one example of success that does not follow these
principles, there would be hundreds that follow them.
Which is exactly the reason why I felt like Aladdin with a magic lamp
after reading Blair Warren's book. The 27 word sentence, is literally the
secret of persuasion. It's a one sentence master course in influence,
charisma, marketing, sales, leadership, parenting, marriage... Any
situation where you're dealing with people! 😃
!14
The Missing Piece
Our one sentence secret of persuasion is missing something that is
very important in the persuasion process.
Go back and read the sentence again...
Can you spot what's missing?
It's "You"!
Persuasion is all about the other person.
There isn’t a word about your wants, your needs, your hopes or your
concerns. There isn’t a word about your offer or proposal. There isn’t a
word about what you think. It is all about the other person.
Can you imagine how much energy you will free up if you stop
focusing on yourself and put your attention on other people? Can you
even imagine how much more charismatic you will become when you
!15
come to be seen as the one who can fulfill some of their most basic
emotional needs?
Think of it like this:
Imagine you are sitting down with someone you hope to influence.
Your proposal makes sense. Your arguments are solid. The conversation is
even pleasant. But the entire time you are looking off to the side of the
person and focusing on the wall behind them.
Now, how much of a connection do you think you are going to make
with that person?
Remember, everything is perfect with the exception of your focus.
Your message shines. Your confidence is solid. Your proposal is a nobrainer. And yet, none of this makes the slightest bit of difference when
you are looking past the other person.
This is exactly what happens in a conversation when your focus is on
your own goals. You are looking past the person. If you look past
everything that is most important to them, then you have little hope of
ever being able to establish a deep, meaningful connection.
Still not convinced? Then notice what else our sentence doesn’t
say. It does not say people will do anything for those who educate them,
do what’s best for them, or even treat them fairly. It does not say people
will do anything for those who are eloquent, well-dressed and pleasant.
Nor those who make the best case for their proposals, who are reasonable
and come across as intelligent.
Like it or not, the duration of our relationship is nothing compared to
the depth of our relationships. And depth is based on the fulfillment of
our deepest needs, not on the duration of dialog.
!16
I'm not saying to ignore your wants. But that we should focus on the
other person.
The time to focus on your own hopes, dreams and desires is when
you’re alone. This is when you should get clear on what you hope to
accomplish, on what you would like to occur, in any given encounter.
But once you get this state of clarity and find yourself face to face
with another, place your attention where it can have the greatest impact.
Place it on the other person.
!17
Conclusion
Time to put this to practice, shall we?
Think about your niche, market segment or avatar...
Then answer these five questions.
1. What are their dreams? How will you encourage their dreams?
2. What are their failures? In what ways can you justify their
failures?
!18
3. What do they fear the most? How can you put their fears to
rest?
4. What worries them? How would you confirm their suspicions?
5. Who are their enemies? How will you help them throw rocks at
their enemies?
Once you've done that work, see how you can apply the lessons to
your next email, blog post, sales page, meeting or presentation. Think
about how you can establish a deeper connection with your audience
using these five principles.
BTW, feel free to share this book with your everyone who you
think will benefit from it.
Don't forget to checkout our solutions to start building, growing and
influencing your tribe at www.icegram.com, to scale your WooCommerce
business with peace using our plugins at www.storeapps.org, and to build
a bigger, better business with sensible analytics using www.putler.com.
Thank you! And keep moving forward!
!19