How Small Commitments Lead to Bigger Sales
Every sales funnel Dave Wood has ever built runs on one idea: get someone to make a small commitment first, and the big one gets easier to close. In this episode he pulls that principle straight out of Robert Cialdini’s book Influence, then traces it back to the funnel he built when he launched Empower Network on October 31, 2011, after seven straight years of a network marketing strategy that wasn’t working. He also shares what his brother William told him at a mastermind in Dallas about why most people never follow through on the commitments they make to themselves. Here’s the episode.
When you make any kind of public commitment, it activates an automatic unconscious response to stay consistent with that commitment. Robert Cialdini puts it this way on page 57 of Influence: once we’ve made a choice or taken a stand, we’ll encounter personal and interpersonal pressure to behave consistently with that commitment. And that pressure causes us to respond in ways that justify our earlier decision. Creating agreement and commitment with an audience is one of the most powerful ways to move a group of people from where they are right now to where you’re leading them, whether that’s making a decision to buy, rallying around a cause, or believing something that isn’t even good for them. It can work for positive or negative ends.
The Process: How Small Yeses Build Into Big Ones
In our world, making money online, it’s a well known principle that the ability to sell a higher priced product depends on the commitments a prospect has already made. When I first launched my company, Empower Network, on October 31, 2011, the entire structure of our sales funnel operated on this principle, because of something I’d learned when I started affiliate marketing in 2009. And it completely changed my life. I wasn’t always in a position to create sales on demand. I started in network marketing in 2002. And when I got into the profession I failed for seven straight years trying every traditional strategy you’ve probably heard of: prospecting family and friends, home meetings, prospecting strangers, calling leads, all of it. None of it worked, not because I lacked the ability to create big or fast results. But because I wasn’t following the right social psychology in the actions I was taking.
What changed things for me was learning in 2009 how to run a business through sales funnels on the internet. I could bring people into the process with small commitments that escalated into larger ones as they made decisions. First we create engaging content that gives real value to people who are intelligent, like reading and learning, and want more out of their lives, whether that’s more money, a better lifestyle, or both, people just like you. Then we ask for a small commitment, maybe clicking a button, entering an email address, leaving a comment, in exchange for bonus material related to what they’re already reading or watching. The purpose of that step is to create reciprocity, a responsive relationship, and to deliver on the value we promised, which begins the process of forming the kind of communication that leads to results.
To picture why this matters, think of it like dating. If a guy sees an attractive woman in a bar and walks up with a memorized line, hey, you’re hot, let’s get married, what happens? Maybe he gets slapped. But think about selling the way you’d think about dating, or getting married. You use some kind of social approach that creates attraction. And you offset resistance by being a little different, which is called a pattern interrupt. First you capture attention. Then you create rapport. Then you pace people through a series of small commitments that lead to bigger ones. In other words, I hope you’ve fallen in love, but you test the waters a little before deciding to get married.
Write It Down: The Amway Trick and the Letters to Yourself
This commitment and consistency principle creates an unconscious pull in other people to comply with a commitment they’ve already made. And it isn’t just for selling or dating. If you want to help people get results, or walk any kind of path, there’s a series of escalating commitments that lead the way. And understanding that matters if you want to maximize your influence. Cialdini talks about the Amway Corporation, which I know firsthand because I was in it, and how they walk people through making written commitments. Because there’s something almost magical about writing things down. On page 79 he quotes a popular Amway training audio: set a goal and write it down, whatever the goal, the important thing is that you’ve got something to aim for and that you write it down. When you reach that goal, set another one and write that down too. And you’ll be off and running.
Why does the most successful direct sales company in the world tell every distributor to write goals down and build out detailed plans? Partly it’s the clarity and focused action I’ve talked about in other posts. But there’s also the power of commitment Cialdini describes, the unconscious drive to follow through on the things we’ve committed to. At an event in Miami in January of 2014, just before the birth of my son Gabriel, we had everyone write out a story of their future one year from that day, then self-address and stamp the letter to themselves. A year later we mailed out 2,000 of those letters, each one in the person’s own handwriting, holding their own commitment back up to them. When you make a written commitment, you’re more likely to follow through on it than if you never wrote it down at all.
On a personal level, when I want to force some kind of change in myself, I make a public declaration or a personal commitment to that change, because I’ve found that when I tell the world, I find the motivation to actually follow through on what I said I’d do. I was in a mastermind in Dallas, Texas, at our Rise event in July of 2016, with my brother William Wood and a small group of people who wanted to ask questions about doing things better. One of the common questions was, how do I follow through on the commitments I make to myself and others? My brother is a transformational coach, and his answer wasn’t what I expected. He said the problem isn’t failing to follow through on the big commitments, it’s a pattern that comes from not following through on any commitments, and it damages your self image everywhere in your life. His advice: don’t make a big commitment you’re supposed to follow through on, make a tiny one that’s so easy it’s almost ridiculous, because that forces you to do one small thing consistently, and following through on small commitments reprograms your unconscious mind to follow through on everything else.
My challenge to you today is to pay attention to the commitment patterns already running in your life, your job, your marketing, your self image, and ask what commitment you can create to make your life a little better today. Learning how to use escalating commitment patterns to build toward bigger results has been powerful and transformative for me, and for everyone I’ve watched do it.
Full episode transcript
Lightly edited from the original recording — fillers removed, nothing added. Income disclaimer.
To welcome you again to The Daily Shortcut, I was thinking about the power of influence and how it ultimately attracts the things that you want to get in your life. In fact, today I'm actually going to show you. Today's episode is titled, Influence Through Commitment, Consistency, and the Hobgoblins of the Mind. See, when you make any form of public commitment, it activates an automatic unconscious response to be consistent with that commitment that you made. Robert Cialdini says it best on page 57 of the book that I'm currently reading, which is called Influence.
He says this, once we've made a choice or taken a stand, we will encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commitment. Those pressures will cause us to respond in ways that justify our earlier decision. Creating agreement and also commitment with an audience is one of the most powerful ways to pace a group of people from where they are right now to where you're leading them to be. Whether that place is to make a decision to buy, rally around a social cause, or even believe in or do something that's not right for them. So it can work for positive or negative, right?
From a perspective of relatability to us, which is to making money online, it's a well-known practice. It's a well-known practice. It's a well-known principle that the ability to sell a higher-priced product is actually dependent on the previous commitments made by a prospect or by a customer. See, when I first launched my company, Empower Network, on October 31st, 2011, the entire structure of our sales funnel operated under this principle because of something that I learned when I started affiliate marketing in 2009. And this completely changed my life.
It revolutionized my ability to sell. Today, I'm going to teach. I'm going to teach that to you. See, I wasn't always blessed enough to be in a position where I can create sales on demand effortlessly in my business. I started my company, Empower Network, in the network marketing profession, which I've been in since 2002.
And when I started in that profession, I originally failed for seven years while attempting every traditional strategy that you've probably heard of that's taught by billion-dollar home business companies, which include prospecting. Your family and friends, home meetings, prospecting strangers, calling leads, and more. None of these strategies worked because I wasn't following the right social psychology in the action path that I was taking. It wasn't because I didn't have the ability to create results big or quickly. See, one of the things that changed that for me forever was in 2009, I learned how to successfully operate my business with sales funnels on the internet that actually brought me to the market.
I was able to get people into the process with small commitments that actually escalated to larger commitments as time went by and they made decisions. For example, in our current process, we first create engaging content that gives value to a market of people who are intelligent, they like reading, they like learning, and they want something more in their lives, whether it's to make more money, create a better lifestyle, or both. People, in other words, that are just like you. The second part of our process is in exchange for a better lifestyle. I'm going to show you how to do that.
A small commitment, such as maybe clicking on a button, entering your email address, making a comment, filling in a form that we give you for bonus materials that are related to the content that's congruent with what you're reading or watching so you want it for sure. The purpose of this step is actually to create reciprocity with you, which is a responsive relationship, and deliver on the promised value, beginning the process of forming responsive communication that can lead to success. The next part of our process is actually making a low-cost offer that has a congruent product offering that helps people that are in our target market to get the results that they're looking for. Then after this low-cost offer, we call the total shortcut system, we actually move people through a process called the acceleration training, which shows them how to get results before we offer any more products or services. Why do we do that?
We want everything that we do to over-deliver and be congruent. What transformed my ability to sell is learning that before somebody makes a significant purchase or commitment, they have to go through a series of smaller commitments beforehand or it's not going to work. To illustrate this, let's use a metaphor from popular culture. If a guy sees a smoking hot, attractive girl in a bar, and he walks up to her with a memorized line, mesmerized, saying, hey, you're hot. Let's get married.
What do you think is going to happen to that guy? Maybe he'll get slapped. Who knows? But think about selling like dating or getting married. You walk up using some sort of social construct or real social experience that creates attraction with the other party, and you offset resistance by being a little bit different.
That's called a pattern interrupt. The first step is to capture attention. Then you want to create rapport. Then you want to pace people. Through a series of small commitments that actually lead to larger and bigger commitments.
In other words, I hope that you have fallen in love and maybe you test the waters a little bit before making a decision to get married, especially today. So in that metaphor I gave you, this content that you're experiencing now is designed and constructed for the purpose of helping you get better results in a way that you would experience an increased income and lifestyle. Which is probably what you're looking for, right? See this commitment and consistency principle creates automatic unconscious results in other people of getting them to desire to comply with a current commitment that you've already made. It's not just for selling stuff.
It's not just for getting married and attracting the opposite sex. If you want to help people get results or walk down a path of any kind, they need to walk through. There are a series of steps that lead to escalating commitments based on previous commitments if you really want to maximize your influence and maximize your ability to get results. Robert Cialdini talks about the Amway Corporation, which I'm familiar with because I was in it, and how they walk people through the process of making written commitments because they've found that there's something magical in writing something down. In page 79 of his book, he quotes training from a popular Amway audio, which I've actually heard that says something along these lines.
It says, one final tip before you get started. Set a goal and write it down. Whatever the goal, the important thing is that you set it so you've got something for which to aim and that you write that goal down. There's something magical about writing things down. So set a goal and write it down.
When you reach that goal, go ahead and set another goal and write that down and you're going to be off and running getting results. So why does the most successful direct sales company? I mean the whole world tell all their distributors to write goals down and create intricate plans. Well, it's really simple. Well, there's a creation principle of clarity and focused action at work I've talked about in previous blog posts and videos.
There's also another principle at work that Cialdini discusses, which is the power of commitment and the unconscious drive to be consistent, to follow through with the commitments that we make. In an event in Miami we held in January of 2014, just before the birth of my son, Gabriel, we had everyone write out a story of their future one year from that day and then self-address that letter and stamp it to themselves. A year later we mailed out 2,000 letters to people that had in their own handwriting their own personal commitment that they made to themselves. See when you make a written commitment that you're just more likely to follow through on it than if you don't write it down. Knowing this is a powerful tool.
It's a powerful psychological driver to both motivate teams of people and also create your own internal source of motivation to get the things done that you want to get done and also make commitments that you're actually going to follow through on if that makes sense. One of the things that I do on a personal level is when I want to force myself to make some kind of change, I create some sort of public declaration or personal public commitment to a change. With that particular thing, because I found on a personal level when I'm having a difficult time getting myself to do something that's maybe difficult or maybe out of my pattern, if I just tell the world I always find the motivational sources in order to make sure that I get done what I said publicly that I do. From a marketing and also a sales strategy standpoint, how can you apply this in your business in order to create better and more powerful results in all of your processes? That's my question for you today.
Well, a good process is to run everything you create through influence filters and ask some questions before you put them live. Ask yourself, does this page, does this video, does this process create some kind of escalating commitment that leads to my core offer? So you want to start small and then work yourself into a larger pattern of yes, get people saying yes, yes, yes. And I want you to remember that commitment is not the exact same psychological pattern as agreement is. They actually can work together though.
When small commitments are created in your sales funnels, in your relationships with your employees and your family, you can lead those to larger commitments and decisions over time. I was in an interesting mastermind the other week in Dallas, Texas. It was at our Rise event in July of 2016. Brother William Wood and a small group of people that wanted to take personal time to ask questions about how to do things better. One of the common questions that people had was, how do I follow through on commitments that I make to myself and others?
It's a good question, right? A lot of us struggle with the same things and don't like to talk about them because it makes us feel weak. But these are just problems that everybody has from time to time. See my brother is a transformational coach and his answer was interesting. His answer was specifically not.
What I actually thought he would say, so I wanted to share that answer with you now for free. His words were something along these lines. He said, see this is a common problem and the problem is actually not following through on large commitments. It's a pattern that originates from lack of follow through on all commitments and produces negative consequences in your self image everywhere in your life. Don't make a big commitment that you follow through on, make a tiny commitment that's so easy to complete.
It's ridiculous but it forces you to do one small thing on a consistent basis and just following through on your commitments will reprogram your commitment mechanism in your unconscious mind to aim towards follow through on what you actually say you're going to do. My challenge to you today is to commit to yourself that you're going to pay attention to the commitment processes in your life, pay attention to the commitments in your job, your marketing, your self image. sales everywhere and ask yourself what commitments can I create to make my life just a little bit better today can you do that learning how to leverage escalating commitment patterns to create large commitments and results has been powerful and transformative for me and everyone who's done it I want you to leave me your thoughts in the comments remember you can win prizes if you do you can read the details below this video in order to get those prizes and details and I want to know specifically what your biggest learning was today your biggest aha moment the best comment every day wins our comment contest so be detailed and thoughtful when you're writing things down and I just want to tell you that I want to help you create a better business and make a change with me in the market I've prepared three powerful bonus shortcuts to help you attract wealth and make a change in your business faster while giving more value with me in the marketplace and your first daily shortcut you're gonna get a free PDF workbook you can print that will help you think through the planning and the tracking processes in your whole business and improve them drastically you're also gonna get a transcription of today's episode so you can read it and you can actually internalize these ideas over and over again and your second daily shortcut you're gonna get a free offer to help you create a better business and make a change in your business audio download you can listen to again and again to absorb these ideas into your unconscious mind you'll become more powerful because you're learning powerful principles that create trust by being worthy of trust and your third and most important daily shortcut I'm gonna give you my entire business which is called the total shortcut system as you're watching these daily episodes you can earn money and create simultaneous lifestyle if that's what you want to do simply click the link in the description below and I'll see you in the next video simply fill in your name and best email then click the button that says give me the total shortcut and you'll be immediately taken to download your free powerful bonuses I'm gonna see you in the next episode and I wanted to tell you that you're awesome and you can do incredible things just pay attention each day and let's make the world a better place
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