by Chip and Dan Heath
9/10
Key Ideas:
Avoid the curse of knowledge – never assume the other person knows anything.
Use simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional stories.
Use analogies your audience recognizes.
Other interesting notes:
Simple: SouthWest airlines is ‘THE low-fare airline’ – effective guide to any decision; ‘Hollywood Pitch’ – Alien; it’s Jaws on a spaceship.
When there’s too much ambiguity or too many options, people get stuck with decision paralysis.
Unexpected: not about randomness but about creating a ‘huh?’ moment and then an ‘a ha!’ moment.
Open up gaps in your audience’s understanding of the world and they will stick until the end to know what you have to say.
Concrete: Don’t sell with statistics, sell with examples. Avoid abstractions, numbers and jargon.
Credible: Associate your idea with an authority figure like an expert.
Alternatively, you can try anti-authority (smokers dying), concrete details (“used a 1965 parker pen”), statistics (“this year’s budget deficit is enough to buy every adult a Rolex”), testable credentials (“test it or money back guaranteed”).
Emotional: For people to take action, they have to care. Benefits over features. You can appeal to self-identity.
Stories: they encourage you to relive them in your mind, and are easy to remember
3 story types: overcome challenge, connecting, mental breakthrough.
Thoughts on the book:
Near the top of the “every one should read this” list. Can be applied to everything in life involving other people.
Longer summary/notes: AS, DS, Sivers
If you like this, you’ll probably like: Influence, Storyworthy, books
Leo :) 