Increment the Count of People Recommending You

Whether in purchases, politics, public health, or a plethora of other realms, some people are especially persuasive. Researchers at University of Connecticut, Indiana University, California State University-San Marcos, and Florida State University say a cardinal characteristic shared by these successful influence agents is that they view themselves as influential.
     This characteristic feeds on itself. People who are able to persuade others come to view themselves as influential, and those who view themselves as influential are motivated to persuade others. It’s what you’d expect. The researchers’ insight beyond the expected is how an organization can encourage a self-image of influence to emerge within people who don’t view themselves as persuasive. The benefit to you in using this is the increase in the count of people who will be recommending your brand and brands to others.
     The strategy begins by building people’s expertise about the topics in which you’d like them to be persuasive. You then provide opportunities for the people to interact with consumers who would be interested in those topics. Because of their expertise, these people will get positive feedback from the others. What emerges from this is a self-image of a confident persuasion agent.
     Many think successful influence agents need certain lifelong stable personality characteristics, principally extraversion. This is an “entity theory” which views influence as an inborn skill rather than as one which can emerge given the right circumstances. The research favors an “incremental theory,” which views consumers as open to development and motivated to improve influence abilities.
     The truth is a combination of the two theories. This is seen in the studies of a type of consumer called the market maven. Rather than considering themselves expert advisors on only certain retail products and services, market mavens counsel others about the whole shopping experience and go on to recommend specific stores.
     According to studies at University of Southern Mississippi and Florida State University, market mavens enjoy suggesting novel stores, brands, and item types to others, but they don’t want to propose ideas which conflict with the existing norms of their audiences. Although they enjoy spending more time and money at retail than the average shopper does, market mavens score high on assessments of frugality, since they continually strive to get maximum value for what they do spend.
     Some of these characteristics, such as social sensitivity, are likely inborn, but all of them can be developed through experience.

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