Article from
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Inception might have been unethical, but once you get around it...here are some relevant learnings, specifically for folks running around trying to sell their own brand, a product or anything else for that matter
Reverse psychology has become an enormous cliché. I think this peaked in 1995 with the release of the film
Jumanji.
(If you've seen it and remember it, you know what I'm talking about.)
The problem is that most people look at reverse psychology in a very
simple way. For example, you'd say "I don't care if you want to go risk
your life jumping out of a plane" to try and convince someone not to go
skydiving. This isn't reverse psychology—it's passive-aggressive. So
let's leave that all behind and start from scratch.
If you're
going to use logic reversals in your favor, you need to be subtle. Let's
say you want your roommate to do the dishes because it's his or her
turn. There's always this approach:
"Hey, would you mind doing the dishes? It's your turn."
But in this
example we're assuming your roommate is lazy and the nice approach
isn't going to get the job done. So what do you do? Something like this:
"Hey, I've decided I don't want to do the dishes anymore and am just
going to start buying disposable stuff. Is that cool with you? If you
want to give me some money, I can pick up extras for you, too."
What this
does is present the crappy alternative to not doing the dishes without
placing any blame. Rather than being preoccupied with an accusation,
your roommate is left to only consider the alternative. This is how
reverse psychology can be effective, so long as you say it like you mean
it.
Never Talk About the Idea — Talk Around It
Underselling is probably one of the easiest and most effective ways to
plant an idea in someone's mind. This is another version of reverse
psychology but at a less aggressive level. Let's say you're trying to
sell someone a hard drive. They could buy a 250GB, 500GB, or 1TB hard
drive. You want to sell the largest hard drive possible because those
cost more and mean more money for you. Your buyer is coming in with the
idea that they want to spend the least money possible. You're not going
to get very far by telling them they should spend more money when you
know they don't want to. Instead, you need to cater to what they want:
the cheap option. Here's a sample dialogue:
Buyer: Can you tell me about this 250GB hard drive? I want to make sure it will work for me.
You: What kind of computer do you have and what do you want to use it for?
Buyer: I have a 2-year old Windows laptop and I need it to store my photos. I have about 30GB of photos.
You:
250GB is definitely more than enough for just storing your photos, so
as long as you don't have many more files you might want to put onto the
drive it should be just fine for your needs.
This last
sentence instills doubt in the buyer. You could even add "you'd only
need a larger drive if you wanted to be absolutely sure you'll have
enough space in the future" but that might be pushing it a little bit.
The point is, if you appear to have their best interests at heart it can
be easy to make them think they want to buy more from you.
Again, I'd
like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that planting ideas in
the minds of others is not necessarily a nice thing to do. Use this
information to detect when someone's doing it to you and not necessarily
as a guide to do it to somebody else.
