How to Be Persuasive As An Introvert And Get People to Like You

When I was a child, I hated the idea of engaging in conversations because that meant I had to express my thoughts and conduct pointless small talk with people I didn’t care about. However, before I considered the easy route of ignoring people, my brother taught me a very important rule about communication.

When you spend 70% of your time listening, and the remaining 30% asking questions specifically trying to understand your target’s point of view, you make them addicted to you.

Originally, I had no clue what he meant by that. The idea of remaining quiet during a conversation confused me because I automatically assume that you need TWO people to talk at an equal ratio about topics.

However, there was a situation where I was stuck listening to a monotone adult at school. I had no interest speaking to the gentleman and simply listened to what he had to say. When a brief of silence roamed between us, I asked him about a topic he previously mentioned and he would enthusiastically answer me. By the time he had finished his life story, he considered me a friend although I was about a decade younger than him.

But that was one of the first moments I discovered how much people want to talk, but couldn’t because they are used to being interrupted by someone else. We have a lot of ideas and thoughts we want to get out of our heads, but don’t because of the fear that no one really cares about them.

We want people to ask us questions about our hobbies and be truly interested in them. Although listening to someone else can be amusing, most people want to talk about themselves and not be judged for it.

Think about the people you like. There has to be a reason why you enjoy their company. Perhaps they’re funny, interesting, or they let you speak more than other people you interact with.

Let me tell you another story. There was a guy who I worked with who I immediately liked. His name was Oneil. Why did I like him? Because unlike most of the other people I spoke to, he was cool, funny, and didn’t take life so seriously. He just wanted to have a good time. He spoke to everyone and had a confidence that I wanted. So I hung around him because I felt like I could be myself.

This brings up the importance of persuasion. One of the skills worth acknowledging and exercising throughout your introverted life. It doesn’t matter if you’re trying to get a job, make a new friend, or find a date.

Our ability to persuade people are what makes a big difference in our life. There are several tactics, formats or ideas that can be successfully applied to master the art of persuasion and here are just a few of them:

Keep Your Focus TOTALLY on Them

When I first met Oneil, one of the first things I noticed about him was his ability to keep great eye contact. He was 100% there with you when you spoke to him and he listened to you entirely. He related to me based on things that I said and gave me a small sense of admiration as if he could learn something from me.

This may have been a small gesture to his eyes, but it made my world at the thought of someone admiring me like that. It made me feel important that someone gave a hoot about me.

We also related to the type of women we enjoyed dating and the different type of video games we played. He made a great first impression by keeping his focus on me during our first interaction and that was the great indicator he used to gain my trust.

When you meet someone, avoid the temptations of looking at your watch, your phone, or someone else when speaking to someone.

Make them your priority and treat them like the most important person in the world. Be genuinely interested in what they have to say and make yourself appear in a way as if you’re learning from them. Everyone wants to be admired in some way or another.

Understand Your Target

Like Oneil, you want to get into the habit of meeting and approaching different people. Make a habit of speaking to strangers about small events taking place. And most importantly, put in an effort to understand where they’re coming from.

You don’t have to believe in the same thing someone else does to understand them. You don’t even have to be in the same situation as someone else to truly understand where they’re coming from.

Our imaginations are powerful tools because it gives us the ability to connect with our emotions. You don’t have to go to prison to understand that it sucks there because you’ve seen enough movies and television shows to see that for yourself.

So if you imagine yourself being in that rotten environment, you can gain an idea of the horrors that might be there. You may not understand it the same way as someone who actually been to prison, but you won’t be a blind duck either. You would know not to assume that it’s an easy walk in the park and that it can scar someone for life.

Whether you’re a rich person communicating with someone poor, or an ugly person speaking to a supermodel, you can relate to anyone once you understand where they’re coming from.

This is known as the understanding approach, which is one of the best ways to put the other person’s mind at ease immediately. It’s when you attempt to feel what they’re feeling whether it be excitement, bitterness, or anger.

Being seen as relating to their predicament helps build a platform of comfortable acceptance and openness. Reflect some of their characteristics to build trust and give them a sense that you really understand them.

You may have not suffered the same way that other person did, but if you can imagine the type of pain or happiness they’re feeling based on your own personal experience, it takes you to an central place of understanding them.

When I first met Oneil, I told him about a woman who I had a great relationship with. However, due to unwanted circumstances with a long-distance relationship, we broke up and we went our separate ways.

Although Oneil wasn’t in the same type of relationship I was in, he has been in enough relationships to understand how it feels to deal with drama and a nasty breakup. It was his body language that showed although he never experienced a long distance relationship, he can feel my pain, which automatically made me feel like he really understood what I did at the time.

It’s normally assumed that people want solutions to their problems or issues when in reality they really want someone who could relate to them on some level as to what they’re feeling.

As humans, we can often solve our own problems because we know the solution to fix them. But it’s that strange sense of needing someone to confirm that what we’re feeling is normal before we can jump over that hoop. I know after a nasty breakup, the logical thing to do is to pick myself up and talk to more women.

But sometimes I need someone to confirm that after a breakup, it’s normal to feel betrayed, confused, and depressed. That way, it gives my brain proof that other people do deal with this problem too, but they eventually move on and live happily with their lives.

Choose Your Battles Wisely

We all know that one person who you can never argue with because they never admit to their own mistakes. Most of the time it’s either a relative, friend, or your boss. But despite how much you want to prove someone wrong, it’s still a losing battle if they won’t subdue.

It’s like trying to put out fire with gasoline. You’ll only get yourself into more trouble than you started with. You ruin relationships and give yourself more problems you have to correct.

Take a guy named Jordan for example. He’s a pretty cool guy. But his girlfriend doesn’t like to admit when she’s wrong about anything. Seriously, you can say the sun is round and she’ll still argue that the sun is square if she believes it.

One day, they get into a small argument about whether Netflix or Hulu was better. Granted, they had both subscriptions, they each preferred their own preference to watch television. And this simple disagreement about which was better caused a THREE hour argument that ended up damaging the relationship.

Don’t ask me how it lasted for THREE hours. You don’t want to know the details.

Occasionally, you’re going to have to make a conscious effort to take a step back and examine the need to address every battle and understand that it is not always wise or necessary to get involved, and that walking away may just be a better solution.

Learning to wisely discern which battle to fight is usually aided by a little thing known as Patience:

Understand the Art of Patience

Patience is a virtue most people are unable to master. Although Jordan could have simply accepted his girlfriend’s beliefs that Hulu was better, he decided to prove her wrong by showing Netflix popularity statistics.

Although it has been popularly noted that older or more experienced people can exercise this virtue better when it comes to choosing their battles, it really comes to the theory of willpower. It’s knowing why it’s important to not give yourself bigger problems in the future by simply avoiding unnecessary conflicts.

If someone says they don’t like a movie you LOVE, it’s tempting to call them out on it and perhaps make fun of their opinion. But if that results in a giant argument taking place, you’ve done nothing more but damaged a relationship simply because your feelings were hurt.

When patience is exercised, things can be worked out without actually having to participate in any “battle”. Learning to be more accepting and letting go of rigid mindsets gives you a freedom of not having to be judgmental and easily provoked.

Some arguments are not worth the possibility of damaging a good relationship simply because you want to be right. Because of this more accommodating mindset, some battles are easier to overlook and thus reducing the constant need to control everything.

Avoid getting involved in matters that either doesn’t concern you or where your knowledge is limited. Getting involved when ill equipped only brings about confusion and problems that eventually make an originally small matter become something that is blown out of proportion.

Weight all possible repercussions and consequences before taking on any battle. Will your disagreement cause the other person to get angry? Is the argument worth the idea you want to convey? Is there a better way to express your own beliefs?

Without doing this simple yet extremely important and beneficial exercise, you may find that the battle is all consuming and damaging both mentally and physically and may be even financially unsound.

Questioning the intention and merits of getting involved in the battle is also advised before actually embarking on what may well be a useless waste of time and effort.

Get Rejected on Purpose

When persuading people, there’s a concept that Ben Franklin went by:

To get someone to like you, make them do a favor for you.

That’s because when you do a favor for someone, despite how you might feel about them, your brain is still saying, “If I’m doing this favor for them, I have to like them to some degree.”

Although this works a majority of the time whether you’re asking to borrow someone’s stuff or asking for a favor, a even greater persuasive tactic is to make them reject you. If you’re like anyone reading this, you’re probably raising an eyebrow.

Stay with me. When someone rejects you, you create a guilt in them. As humans, we hate feeling guilty.

Think of a time when you rejected giving money to a homeless person. Although you said no, there was a small piece inside you that said, “Why didn’t I give him a dollar?” Which makes you give a dollar to the next homeless guy you see asking you for change.

This is why we often do things that we never intentionally planned. It’s why people who are persistent get what they want in the end because people feel bad about rejecting them so often.

But don’t think of being persistent as being needy or desperate. Think of it as getting what you want. The best type of persuaders are people who ask for BIG requests, only to change it to something small.

An employee asks his boss for a 10K raise only to compromise it to a 1K raise when the first offer is declined. This makes it easier for the boss to settle and not feel like the bad guy. Someone can ask for a 50K loan but after being rejected, settles for only $5K. This makes it easier to go with that alternative.

This means if you want to ask someone out on a date, first tell them you want to take them on a weekend camping trip or something you know they won’t agree to. Then when they say no, come back and simply ask if they want to go out for coffee instead. Psychologically, it seems like you’re compromising and being more reasonable. This makes it likely that they’ll fulfill your request and go out with you.

Want to get Someone’s Contact Information?

Instead of asking for her number first, either ask her out on an instant date or to go somewhere later on. If she declines, make the attempt to ask for her number so she feels more inclined to do that instead.

However, if you went ahead and asked for the number first, assume she’ll say no so you can prepare to ask for a social media contact instead. I prefer asking women for their Snapchat. But you might choose Facebook or Instagram.

Escape the mindset that you can only contact a woman with her phone number because there’s many platforms you can communicate to her with. I specifically recommend Snapchat when speaking to women because it’s fun and easy. Not to mention they LOVE IT in case you didn’t know.

Let’s say you’re on a date

If you go for the kiss but she rejects you, this makes holding her hand a lot easier because in her mind, it’s an easy compromise to make. This then gives you the chance to initiate human contact and get her trust from there, thus making it easier to kiss her later on in the evening.

Always make the assumption that your first attempt will end with rejection because this relieves your mind from the worst case scenario. This makes it easier to accept the downturn of events because you already have a plan B or C for it.

When I approach a woman, I don’t go in with the mindset that she will accept my instant date although that will be the first attempt I make. I go in with the attempt to get the date, but my true intention is to get her Snapchat so I could speak to her later on.

It usually doesn’t resort to the Snapchat level because most females agree to go on an instant date or meet later on, but here is the mindset I usually think when approaching someone:

Plan A: Go out on a date with her in the first five minutes

Plan B: Go out on a date with her later on that evening

Plan C: Get her number so I could speak to her later

Plan D: Get her Snapchat so I could have more friends on there

As you see, my goal is to get rejected three times before I get what I truly want. This makes her mind mentally exhausted from saying No to me and then makes her more willing to go out with me in the future. There’s a concept known as

“it’s better to escalate too much rather than too little”

You can always apologize for making an advanced move such as a kiss or handhold, but you can’t apologize for not making those moves at all. I’ve been on enough dates to know that too little escalation could lead to a no 2nd date. Your date views you as either not really interested in her or a coward who is afraid to take action.

Gradually escalate until she gives resistance. Then withdraw, wait a while, and try again when she becomes more comfortable with you. Escalate at the start of the date and go slowly from there. Test how far you can go until she gives a firm definitive NO.

Whatever you do, don’t reject yourself. Place your hand over her leg, sit close to her. Don’t be afraid to make the bold move.

This is the strategy you see salesmen and business executives make all the time. They show you their most expensive product most people wouldn’t buy and then lower the value until they present something reasonable for you to purchase.

For more like these, check out: