Social Engineering - Christopher Hadnagy [142]
Assuming that what you want will occur is a strong point, too, because it affects your mental outlook. You must have the mental outlook that you are getting what you came for; that belief system will create a new body language and facial expressions that will feed your pretext.
If you go in expecting failure you will fail or at best it will affect your body language and facial expressions. If you have the mental outlook that this deal is done, the same will occur. A word of caution, though—don’t take this step so far you become arrogant.
For example, going in thinking, “Of course I have this in the bag because I am amazing and the best,” can affect the way you come off and turn off the target quickly.
Try Different Opening Lines
Starting a conversation with the standard why/what/when is common but try a different approach and see what happens. The research group that runs a popular dating site (www.okcupid.com) compiled data that shows the value of starting out with non-traditional openers.
Remember the discussion about compliments? Well, the OkCupid guys found that starting off with too “big” of a compliment had the reverse effect than what one would think. Words like sexy, beautiful, and hot had terrible effects on people, whereas words like cool, awesome, and fascinating had a better effect.
In usual greetings these guys found that saying things like “hi,” “hey,” and “hello” left the target feeling blah and unmotivated, whereas “How’s it going?,” “What’s up?,” “howdy,” and “hola” were strong openers to use.
Of course, these stats are about dating, but the point to be learned is that people react better to nontraditional greetings.
Similarly, in a social engineering situation, vary your approach and you may notice an increase in the way the target reacts to the message.
Use Past Tense
When you want to address anything negative that you do not want the target to repeat, put it in past tense. This technique puts the negative attitudes and actions in the past in his mind, presenting him with the new and improved “clean slate” on which to do good things for you. For example:
“When you said I couldn’t get in to meet with Mr. Smith…”
as opposed to: “When you say I can’t get in to meet Mr. Smith….
Only verb tense changed, but the effect is very important. It gives the impression that the negative statement is so far in the past, let’s move on to something new and improved. It also makes the target feel that you feel it is in the past.
Seek and Destroy
Identify, map, and plan how you will handle any disruptive or negative attitudes and actions. Imagine if your pretext is to be a tech support guy who will gain access to the server room. In your previous calls you knew that every day at 10 am a large group goes out for a smoke break. You decide this is a good time as people are shuffling in and out. You go all prepared, but as you enter the building the receptionist has just received some bad news and is an emotional mess. You should have a plan for handling this disruption.
If you wait to think about how you will handle potential conversation stoppers, or disruptive influences, until the first time you hear them you will most likely fail to handle them. That presents an interesting thought then. You have to sit back and think like the target: what objections would he raise? When a person he does not know calls or approaches him, what might he say? What objections might he raise? What attitudes would he portray? Thinking through these things can help you to make a game plan for these potential problems.
Write down your thoughts and the target’s potential objections and then role play. Have your spouse or friend play the mean gatekeeper or security guard. Of course, he or she cannot imitate elements such as facial expressions and so on. But you can give him or her a small list of conversation stoppers to choose from to test your comeback.
Practice until you feel comfortable, but not scripted. Remember the comeback is not to be structured