Instead, after his standard presentation and just before declaring his ($75,000) fee, he joked, “As you can tell, I’m not going to be able to charge you a million dollars for this.” The client looked up from the written proposal he’d been studying and said, “Well, I can agree to that!” (Location 135)
It’s important here to take note of my choice of the word likelihood, which reflects an inescapable reality of operating in the realm of human behavior—claims of certainties in that province are laughable. (Location 154)
Before beginning his sales effort, he established an aura of trust with the family. (Location 167)
He did it by pretending to be a bit of a screwup. (Location 170)
“Think, Bob: Who do you let walk in and out of your house on their own? Only somebody you trust, right? I want to be associated with trust in those families’ minds.” (Location 180)
Because of what he had just done for me, there was no socially acceptable alternative to saying yes. (I can only be glad he didn’t need a kidney.) (Location 285)
accuracy of my depictions of their traits. “That’s right!” they’d say. “How could you possibly see that?” I learned to feign an all-knowing smile to evade the question because, frankly, I was amazed too. (Location 365)
the second involves decidedly normal processes that can be commissioned by anyone. (Location 367)
Curious about my palmistry successes, I put elements of the system to the test, sometimes reading someone’s heart line as if it were the head line—that sort of thing. (Location 378)
they typically responded with the same guilty nod. (Location 381)
After each of the opposing depictions, he thought for a second and admitted that I was absolutely right about who he really was. (Location 386)
will have focused you on the trait of stubbornness, sending you down a single psychological chute constructed unfairly to confirm my judgment. (Location 396)
when you’d acted stubbornly—only for those times—and you’d almost certainly come upon a ready instance, as mulishness under pressure is a frequent personal failing. (Location 398)
“quite a flexible individual, someone who, after getting new information, is willing to take it into account and adjust your position.” (Location 401)
Its obtuse scientific name is “positive test strategy.” But it comes down to this: in deciding whether a possibility is correct, people typically look for hits rather than misses; (Location 405)
I inquired whether you were unhappy in, let’s say, the social arena, your natural tendency to hunt for confirmations rather than for disconfirmations of the possibility would lead you to find more proof of discontent (Location 416)
Cult recruiters often begin the process of seducing new prospects by asking if they are unhappy (rather than happy). (Location 428)
also a recruiting device that stacks the deck by focusing people, unduly, on their dissatisfactions. (The (Location 431)
the cult’s moment maker is trained to strike: “Well, if you’re unhappy, you’d want to change that, right?”10 (Location 434)
if you wish to change another’s behavior, you must first change some existing feature of that person so that it fits with the behavior. If you want to convince people to purchase something unfamiliar—let’s say a new soft drink—you should act to transform their beliefs or attitudes or experiences in ways that make them want to buy the product. (Location 461)
people if they considered themselves helpful. (Location 472)
Then, while timing his reintroduction of the crucial insight to coincide with the worst of the noise, he would lower his voice. (Location 531)
his answer is neatly summarized in the essay’s title: “Nothing in life is as important as you think it is while you are thinking about it.”18 (Location 581)
Recognition/recall, a widely used index of success for all other forms of ads, might greatly underestimate the effectiveness of banner ads. (Location 681)