Prior to writing his groundbreaking book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, the author, Robert Cialdini went undercover to understand why people say “yes”, and what techniques can increase compliance (getting to yes) with others. His book uncovered six principles of influence. Social Proof one of them.

Social Proof is that people follow the lead of others that are similar to them.

An easy way to understand social proof:

Imagine you are looking for a place to eat out. You discover two identical restaurants next to each other. One is full with a line outside and the other is open, but empty. Which do you choose?

Most people will choose the crowded restaurant. We a comfortable when others make the decisions for us.

In the same way, companies like to buy from the most popular.

Here are three examples of how we can leverage Social Proof to increase our influence:

1. Tell Stories. The stories need to be about companies similar to the ones that you are meeting. They will be attracted in your business through similar companies that have chosen you.

2. Find a way to show you are the category leader. For example you could say, when it comes to selecting accounting packages for schools, [INSERT COMPANY] is the most popular in this state.

3. Host User Conferences for your customers and highlight the images on social media. Look at how popular we are! If you don’t have a large customer base, find a way partner with the big companies in your industry. If you are into technology maybe think about Amazon, Microsoft, Apple etc to gain social proof by association.