THINKER'S ALMANAC - September 16

How can opening a sales pitch with one of your product’s weaknesses be a smart strategy?

Subject:  Rhetoric - Stealing Thunder

Event:  Birthday of English critic and dramatist John Dennis, 1657

Imagine you are selling your car.  A prospective buyer has arrived for a test drive.  As you both get in the car, you point out a small dent in the passenger door, a den so small that the prospective buyer might not have noticed it.  

Why would you do this?  Wouldn’t it be smarter to open with the strengths of the car, like its great gas mileage or crack-free windows?  The counterintuitive truth is that starting with a weakness or drawback is an effective strategy because it builds the trust of your audience.

In a courtroom study conducted by social psychologist Kip Williams, lawyers who stated a weakness in their own case before it was mentioned by the opposing attorney, were judged more trustworthy and honest by jurors.  A second study showed that prosecution witnesses who volunteered weaknesses in their testimony, before defense attorneys pointed them out, were on the winning side of cases 65% of the time.  In contrast, if the weakness was brought up by the defense, the prosecution won the case only 45% of the time (1).

Image by sethink from Pixabay

The method to this seeming madness of arguing against your own self-interest is called stealing thunder.  The name comes from the English dramatist John Dennis, who was born on this day in 1657. In his play Appius and Virginia, Dennis created an innovative method for simulating thunder sound effects.  Unfortunately for Dennis, his play was unsuccessful and had only a short run.  Not long after his plays closed, however, another play opened -- Shakespeare’s Macbeth -- using Dennis’ thunder effects.  This did not make Dennis very happy.  Cursing the theater owners, he exclaimed, “Damn them! They will not let my play run, but they steal my thunder!” (2).

The brilliance of the stealing thunder strategy is its alchemy, transforming weakness into strength.  Aristotle -- who invented rhetoric -- knew that true persuasion was about more than just logic (logos). The relationship between the speaker and the audience is paramount; therefore, it’s vital to consider the ways that your audience perceives you; he called this ethos.  You can have the most logical, airtight case in history, but if your audience perceives weaknesses in your character, your argument might not win the day.  Therefore, you must think about how to build credibility and trust with your audience.  

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What is Stealing Thunder, and how was its effectiveness shown in the study that contrasted lawyers who used it with those who did not?

Challenge - Counterintuitive Sales Strategy:  The stealing thunder strategy, where you open with a weakness rather than a strength, is a counterintuitive strategy.  It goes against what seems logical or what seems like common sense. Do some research on other counterintuitive strategies for selling or persuasion.  Identify one, explain how it works, and explain how it makes us question our assumptions about successful persuasion.

Also on This Day:

September 16, 1919:  Today is the birthday of Laurence J. Peter (1919-1990), the author of the book The Peter Principle (1969).  The book is full of case histories that illustrate why organizations fail to achieve maximum productivity and profit. His explanation relates to the corporate mentality that promotes productive workers upward until they achieve positions beyond their ability to perform competently.  Peter's insights into the organizational structures of businesses were so well-received that The Peter Principle has gone well beyond just the title of a popular book; it has entered the language as an adage, immortalizing its creator. The American Heritage Dictionary records the following definition of the Peter Principle:

 

The theory that employees within an organization will advance to their highest level of competence and then be promoted to and remain at a level at which they are incompetent (3).

Sources:

1-Goldstein, Noah J., Steve J. Martin, and Robert B. Cialdini.  Yes:  50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive. New York:  Free Press, 2008.

2.  Oxford University Press Blog.  “Stealing thunder… OK? The origins of everyday words and phrases.” 3 July 2008.

3 - American Heritage Dictionary