Substituting in Influencing Human Behavior

Substituting in Influencing Human Behavior

By Kevin Hogan

Internationally best-selling author of The Psychology of Persuasion

Students of Influence and Persuasion, who are influencing human behavior, whether it is rapid social influence or business and sales influence would do well to consider their non-verbal communication and learn how they can subtly influence. Indeed, when your influence is more covert, it can have a tremendous impact, in your relationships and in increasing sales, even double your sales.

Consider the Non-Verbal communication category of Substituting. This is when you specifically do not want to use verbal communication. You want to avoid putting your message into words. But how then do you influence and persuade? With your non-verbal signals and communication. Sometime the words you would want to utter are just too hard or harsh to say aloud, or saying them could potentially create a conflict or confrontation. In this kind of situation, your substituting non-verbal behavior to communicate instead of the words can convey the message in a way that is acceptable, palatable, and more comfortable.

Remember when you ran into a chatty acquaintance in the grocery store? Someone who starts talking... and then keeps talking? What do you do? Typically, you first seek to extract yourself from the conversation leveraging the social influence of non-verbal communication - your body.

You could start by glancing away from the other person. Did that work? Was that sufficient to influence them and achieve your desired result? No? Then perhaps you turn your body away a bit combined with taking a step or two away. If the other person does not receive your message, then you will probably have to resort to saying “I have to go now” or something similar. However, for social influence and influencing human behavior, you would have preferred not to have had to do that.. You would rather substitute non-verbal communication to end the conversation and refrain from appearing overtly rude.

1. How will you leverage that to increase your sales?
2. How will you use that for rapid influence in person?
3. How can you use Substituting to double your sales?

For the Complete Science of Influence Library Home Study Influence and Persuasion Mastery Course