How to Change Minds: The Art of Influence without Manipulation

We all know people who need to make a change. You know what they need to do, and you tell them what the ramifications are if they don’t do it, and still, nothing happens. Rob Jolles knows this scenario all too well—as a salesman, father, friend, and colleague, he’s seen it repeatedly in business and in life.

In this book, he draws on his highly successful sales background to lay out a simple, repeatable, measurable process for changing someone’s mind. It begins with understanding how people make decisions—what Jolles calls the decision cycle. Once you understand how to identify where others are in their decision cycle, he explains how to establish genuine trust and then move to the most difficult aspect of influence: establishing a sense of urgency for change.

This is not done by telling people what you think they should do, however well-intentioned—people resist being pushed, even in the right direction. Instead, you skillfully ask a series of specific types of questions that lead others to discover for themselves the long-term impact of not changing and to fully embrace the changes they need to make. People feel they have come to their own conclusion, not yours.

Ethics are central to Jolles’s method—you must truly believe you are influencing people’s lives for the better, not manipulating them into making changes for some arbitrary or selfish reason. The book is filled with sometimes funny, sometimes moving stories illustrating how challenging changing minds can be and the frequent gray line between influence and manipulation. Following Rob Jolles’s wise advice will ensure that changing someone’s mind is never an act of coercion but rather always one of caring and compassion.

About the Author

Rob Jolles is president of Jolles Associates, Inc., an international training consulting corporation, was a record-setting salesperson and sales trainer for New York Life and Xerox, and draws on more than thirty years of experience changing people’s minds. He is the author of four previous books, including Customer Centered Selling.