Social Engineering - Christopher Hadnagy [101]
True influence is elegant and smooth and most of the time undetectable to those being influenced. When you learn the methods you will start to notice them in commercials, on billboards, and when used by salespeople. You will start to get irritated at the shoddy attempts of marketing people and if you are like me, you will begin to rant and rave at terrible commercials and billboards while driving (which does not make my wife very happy).
Before getting into how social engineers will use in influence and persuasion, the chapter begins with a short tour of some of the key elements of persuasion and influence that I have compiled and used. This chapter will discuss things like reciprocation, manipulation, and the power of setting goals, just to name a few of these key elements.
Influence and persuasion can be broken down into five important aspects, as discussed in the following sections.
The Five Fundamentals of Influence and Persuasion
The five fundamentals of persuasion are crucial in obtaining any type of successful influence upon a target:
Setting clear goals
Building rapport
Being observant of your surroundings
Being flexible
Getting in touch with yourself
The whole goal of social engineering is to influence the target to take an action that may or may not be in their best interest. Yet they will not only take the action, but want to take the action and maybe even thank you for it at the end. This type of influence is powerful and can make a social engineer who possesses these skills legendary.
World-renowned NLP trainer Jamie Smart once said, “The map is not the territory.” I love that quote because it blends perfectly with these five fundamentals. None of them are the whole sum on their own, but individually they are like points on a map that show you the whole territory of what you want to accomplish. The following section delves deep into the first fundamental: why setting clear goals is very important.
Have a Clear Goal in Mind
Not only should you have a clear goal in mind, you should even go so far as to write it down. Ask yourself, “What do I want out of this engagement or interaction?”
As I discussed in Chapter 5, especially in relation to NLP, a human’s internal systems are affected by his thoughts and goals. If you focus on something, you may be more likely to become it or get it. This doesn’t mean that if you focus on the thought of getting one million dollars, you will get it. In fact, it is unlikely. However, if you had a goal of making one million dollars and focused on the steps needed to make that money, your goals, education, and actions would increase the likelihood of you achieving that goal. The same is true with persuasion. What is your goal? Is it to change someone’s beliefs? To get him to take an action? Suppose a dear friend is doing something terribly unhealthy and you want to try and persuade her to stop. What is the goal? Maybe the end goal is to persuade her to stop, but maybe little goals exist along the way. Outlining all of these goals can make the path to influencing that person clearer.
After setting the goal, you must ask yourself, “How will I know when I have gotten it?” I once listened to a training program offered by Jamie Smart, one of the world leaders on NLP, and he asked each person in the classroom these two questions:
What do you want?
How will you know when you have it?
At this point, I paused the CD for the first question and answered for myself out loud what I wanted from this course. Then I pressed Play again and when he asked that second question, “How will you know you have gotten it?” I paused the CD again and was lost. It was clear to me that I didn’t have a roadmap. I knew what I wanted out of that course, but I didn’t know how to gauge when I had gotten it.
Knowing what you want out of your engagements is an important aspect of influence and persuasion tactics. When you approach a target knowing what your goals are