Blog · Influence
How to become an effective persuader
There is only one rule, and it fits in six words: influence through attraction, not through pushing. It's simple to say and hard to do, because it requires giving up something we all care about.
Published 11 November 2021 · revised 16 August 2026
The rule
Attraction, not pushing
No one buys something because you need to sell it, and no one does you a favour for your own benefit. A person buys only if they believe what you're offering is useful to them, or that doing it is better than not doing it.
It follows that forcing a negotiation doesn't work: it's a behaviour closer to manipulation than to persuasion, and it produces signatures people regret. It's true in sales, and it's true inside an organisation.
How you attract
By making clear that what you're offering can improve something for the person listening to you. It isn't rhetoric: it's the definition of that trade.
The art of selling, when done well, consists precisely of helping someone do the right thing for themselves.
The hard part
Set your pride aside
Everyone likes being right: it makes us feel competent and it makes us feel good. And it's precisely the thing we need to learn to give up.
Giving up being right doesn't mean not preparing, or accepting you're wrong when you're not. It means giving up needing to be right at all costs: letting go of the emotional attachment to that outcome.
When you do, you start learning something beyond your own perspective — which is as limited as anyone else's.
And there's a secondary effect worth more than the first: people trust someone who can admit a mistake. It shows you're not trying to be right at their expense, and that attitude is so rare it's memorable.
Be wary of anyone who would do anything to say "I'm right." It isn't strength: it's the same thing as pushing, applied to a conversation.
One word at a time
Attraction is the Second Law, said another way
Why pushing doesn't work
Because between two people sizing each other up, pushing breaks the balance the wrong way: it puts the other person on the defensive. And if no one pushes, nothing moves — mutual waiting is the system's equilibrium state (First Law).
So how do you get out of it
By tipping the balance first by design, not by hope: giving something before asking. It's the Second Law, the Law of the Dispari, and the position has an author's name — Dispari — that doesn't translate even into English.
"Attract instead of push" is the same thing said without the laws: whoever tips the balance first isn't pushing anyone, they're creating the condition for the other person to move.
Pushing moves a person by a metre. Tipping the balance first sets a system in motion.
The first step
Where your company stands, as a number
AIRA-SCAN© measures the relational capital your company already has: ten questions, three minutes, no registration. Your browser calculates the score and it shows immediately, with the areas where you lose the most points.
The extended report then arrives by email, and within one working day a person calls you: you look at the result together and assess whether the Stoic Analysis AIRA-DX© makes sense for your company. It is free and limited to twelve a week, so it is not owed to whoever does the check-up: it is decided by both of you.
Prefer just talking about it? The number is 0549 888808.