Glossary
Things feel more valuable when they’re limited. Only use it when it’s true.
A researcher who spent years inside sales and fundraising organisations worked out why people say yes. The principles (reciprocity, commitment and consistency, social proof, liking, authority, scarcity, and later unity) show up in most asks that work. The point of learning them is not to manipulate. It is to stop making asks that ignore how people actually decide.
The practical version: give before you ask (reciprocity). Get a small yes before the big one (consistency). Show that people like them are already doing it (social proof). Be likeable, which mostly means warm (liking). Show why you are credible, briefly (authority). Be honest about what is limited (scarcity). And where it is true, frame it as “us” (unity).
Examples from the course that use it.
“We’ve got two onboarding slots left this quarter. That’s just true.” The buyer who was going to decide “next month” decides this week.
“Your renewal lands in June. I’m asking you to pick a start date on Friday. You get the onboarding slot before the end-of-quarter rush. Can we lock the fourteenth?” Scarcity, in sentence three, because the slots really are going.
The onboarding slots really are going. You say so once, in sentence three, and leave it. The buyer picks a date that day. If the slots were not going, you would have left the sentence out and found a different one.