Post: #1

http://www.amazon.com/Influence-Psycholo...006124189X

Looks pretty interesting.

Post: #2

Interesting... and this is in the hopes of influencing women I gather? Does this make you a Psycho? Kidding. it does look interesting.

Post: #3

(08-14-2008 12:22 PM)dollen Wrote:  Interesting... and this is in the hopes of influencing women I gather? Does this make you a Psycho? Kidding. it does look interesting.

Women, sales prospects, the bartender for giving me strong drinks, whatever. I've always been fascinated by the power of persuasion.

Post: #4

You won't be disappointed. Lots of information you read is derivative of this work.

Post: #5

I borrowed that book from a friend, and it's a great read. My favorite principle listed is what Cialdini calls "Reciprocity" and it aided the Hare Krishna's. You'll see what I mean when you read the book.

Post: #6

How was it?

Post: #7

Everybody has thought about bumping this thread......right?

Post: #8

Tyler Cowen recommended this book to me (he runs the brilliant marginalrevolution.com blog). But I have yet to get round to reading it.

Post: #9

Two thumbs up for this book. I read this along with "How to win Friends and Influence People" back in college, and together they changed my life. Before I read them I was an absolute asshole who got by because I was too valuable at my job to be replaced. After them people actually started to like me! I haven't been in sales for years, but at my small company they still call me in to do major negotiations because of the things I've learned from those two books.

Post: #10

Every 'game' book is derived off of this text. Essential reading.

Post: #11

If you've read any books on game, reading this is very anti-climatic.

Reading/Listening to Tony Roberts is the same way. You'll suddenly hear all of these buzzwords that other people use all the time, but probably don't know the source of.

WIA

Post: #12

Rare video of the author giving a talk

Stanford Breakfast Briefings

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/se...=firefox-a

Post: #13

It's a solid read. As others have indicated, a lot of what you've already read is a derivative of this work, but it's nice to go back to the well, so to speak.

One of my favorite bits involved a simple con, wherein a suit salesman tricks a prospective customer. It goes something like this:

Harry and Dick are two brothers running a suit shop. Harry has a customer try on a suit, customer asks how much it costs. Harry yells to his brother, "How much for this suit?"

"Forty dollars," comes his brother's reply.

"How much?" Harry asks again, pretending to have a hearing problem.

"Forty dollars."

Harry turns to the customer and says, "The suit is thirty dollars."

Customer thinks he's getting a great deal taking advantage of the salesman 'hearing problem' and promptly buys the suit.

Post: #14

Read the book years ago and still have my copy. The real challenge is to apply what the author has observed. I can say from my experience in sales that it does help if the customer percieves he or she has gotten something extra out of the deal. Some ethnic groups in the US, always want to seal the deal that way. I had to drop a rate slightly just to pick up an Italian customer this week before he would agree to using our company. The amount was absurdly small, but I could tell there was no other way to do it.