The Little Book of Yes: How to Win Friends, Boost Your Confidence and Persuade Others

ON LOSING

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Think about the things someone you want to persuade will gain
if they say ‘Yes’ to your request. Now state those as things they
could lose if they don’t carefully consider your offer.
Use competition to increase your persuasiveness. If people
come to know that your availability or services are in demand
by others then these things become more attractive.
Value your time so that others will too. Don’t say ‘I’m free all
day, you choose a time.’ Instead say: ‘I can meet on Saturday,
either at four or seven.’

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21
ENDING
If you want to have impact, and for people to remember you,
make sure that you end on a high
Have you noticed how pop stars and other performers typically play their
most popular songs or perform their best-loved acts at the end of their
concerts, rather than at the beginning or during the middle? There is a
reason. They know that their fans will go home feeling much happier as a
result. Don’t get us wrong, first impressions matter. Of course they do. But
what happens at the end of an experience is usually much more important
and certainly much more memorable.
As an example, imagine that one day you are asked to take part in an
experiment about pain. For the first part of the experiment you are asked to
place your hand in an ice-cold bucket of water for sixty seconds. It is an
uncomfortable experience but you manage to endure it. Now comes the
second part of the experiment. You are asked to place your other hand in the
ice-cold bucket of water, again for sixty seconds. However, after the one
minute has elapsed you are asked to keep your hand in the bucket for a
further thirty seconds during which time the temperature of the water is
increased by one degree centigrade. You are then asked which of these two
experiences you would like to repeat. Would you like to endure sixty
seconds of pain? Or sixty seconds of pain together with thirty seconds of
additional, although slightly less extreme, pain?
Would you be surprised to learn that most people choose the latter? They
actually choose to experience more pain. This makes no sense at all until
you begin to consider that there are quite large differences between our
actual experiences and what we remember about them. When we reflect on
our experiences we seldom recall their entirety and instead focus on specific
moments. And, when it comes to remembering our experiences, one

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moment in particular matters a lot more than the others: the ending. The
water experiment is a nice demonstration of how we can endure quite a lot
of discomfort and still look back favourably on an experience providing that
things ended well. What it also demonstrates is how we tend to pay less
attention to how long an uncomfortable experience lasts and, on some
occasions, disregard its duration entirely. That probably explains why
people in the ‘ice bucket’ experiment were willing to endure an extra 50 per
cent of discomfort. As they reflected on their experience they disregarded
the amount of time they were in pain and instead remembered that the
second experience ended better than the first.
Examples aren’t just limited to pop stars and their songs, or psychologists
with their buckets of cold water. You can find them everywhere. The
presentation at work that was going so well until someone split a jug of
water on the laptop. An otherwise wonderful date that was marred because
the waiter was rude at the end of the evening. A relaxing weekend away
with a loved one spoiled by a delayed return journey or cancelled flight.
Notice that these unfortunate endings do nothing to impact on the
experience itself. Until the waiter was rude or the airline cancelled the
flight, you were having a perfectly wonderful time. What is impacted is
your memory of those experiences. With that in mind, making subtle
changes to the way experiences end is important when it comes to engaging
others.
If you want to have fabulous memories of your next vacation, rather than
spreading your budget thinly by booking lots of small excursions and day
trips, you’ll be much better off spending a bigger chunk of your budget on
one or two amazing experiences that you should schedule towards the end
of your holiday. And if you are going to treat yourself by upgrading to a
nicer seat, remember that you’ll probably have much happier memories if
you travel back in style instead of upgrading on the flight out.
The same is true when it comes to the conversations and interactions you
have with others. How they end can have a significant influence on how
happy others feel about us. So if you need to have a difficult conversation
with a friend or family member, have the tough chat early and then arrange
for something more pleasant to be talked about or an activity that can be
shared and enjoyed together at the end.
As your favourite aunt would advise, never go to bed on an argument.

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