Persuasion Scripts Blog

Melanie and I like good food. One of the great delights of my life and marriage is the continuing conversation we have over white linen or chipped formica as we wolf down haut cuisine or Al’s beefs.

What’s this got to do with persuasion scripts? Quite a bit, actually.

Last night I accompanied Melanie on a business dinner. Her department is interviewing candidates for a professor position and she took the current candidate out to dinner last night. She also dragged me along as the chaffeur and tag-along go-fer. (The candidate was a fine guy who’s got a great career ahead of him. My best wishes to you, Josh, in your search!)

We ate at a new place in Morgantown, Sargasso’s. (Real quick: good food, attractive room, good prices, but weak, poorly trained service. More on that later.) Inevitably, when I’m in a restaurant, I evaluate the place because I really like food and good eats. One place that Melanie and I both enjoy is Emeril’s in New Orleans. Not only is the food great and the room beautiful and the service outstanding, but the entire dining experience is clearly designed, planned, and choreographed to produce delight in the customer. Part of that planning is based in persuasion scripts.

One time, many years ago, Melanie and I made reservations at Emeril’s (at the Food Bar - you’ve got to do that if you really like food). We made the reservations for the first seating, 5:30pm, I think. And, because we’re always hungry, we arrived early. Somebody let us in even though the place was not officially open. As we stood in the bar area just outside of the main dining room and Food Bar, we could see and hear the staff finishing up a meeting. The person running the staff meeting had either read the Primer or else trained by somebody who’d read it. The leader ran a spirited, energetic presentation that described the evening’s specials with a focus on key terms to be used when offering the dish. The key terms were not simply a list of ingredients with jazzy modifiers, but rather were aimed at making the listener happy and interested. The key terms including “what’s new and different” and “why you would like this” ideas. Through it all the leader maintained that high energy and encouraged a similar feeling in the staff. The leader then concluded the meeting with what must be the Emeril’s cheer. (I couldn’t make it out because I’d just gotten my Martini at the bar - I just heard the staff roar during my first sip and knew that dinner was on.)

For the remainder of the evening I was struck by the repetition of key terms and energy from that meeting with the various servers and staff people that worked the room. I could overhear snippets from the servers as they described various dishes with those “new and different” and “why you’ll like it” suggestions. I could see the controlled bustle of every staff person whether out front serving or in the kitchen preparing (the Food Bar sits right on the kitchen and has an open view of the space).

And every time we’ve gone back to Emeril’s in New Orleans, we’ve had that same kind of experience even though we haven’t caught the staff rah-rah meeting that precedes service.

My claim is that the staff meeting is based in part on a persuasion script orientation. All of the staff completes a serious training session at a place like Emeril’s where the basics of the ingredients, preparation, and service are drilled. But, Emeril goes a step farther and also focuses upon the customer response to the experience and builds in ways of enhancing pleasure and satifisfaction. That’s where the script comes in. The staff meeting that precedes the evening provides some structure and a lot of content for everyone’s script that night. I suspect that if there have been problems with past specials (too spicy, too rich, too small, too large), the new script includes tactics to address those problems in a positive manner.

Now, back to my experience at Sargasso’s in Morgantown. There’s no reason why everyone in the restaurant business cannot deliver an experience similar to Emeril’s. Sure, Emeril has a particular and unique genius that is his alone, but that genius is not the key point here. His genius plus persuasion scripts (and other elements that go past our interest here) make for his success. Why can’t all servers be well trained in the basics of the business and also have persuasion scripts that enhance customer pleasure and satisfaction?

Our server last night clearly knew the business of serving at a good restaurant (although she was shaky on some of the techniques and styles of food and cooking). But she was only perfunctory, providing a bare bones attention to the most basic elements of service (what do you want, here it is, is it okay, anything else, here’s the check). As I scanned the room and listened to other staff people, the same kind of bare bones behavior was evident. Nice folks doing their minimum (for minimum wages?). No energy. No fun. No new thing. No excitement.

Persuasion scripts allow you to design communication that should produce desired outcomes in clients. With scripts you can change the way they think, feel, and act. And with scripts you get all the advantages that planning, control, and structure bring. You can train to criterion. You can measure. You can provide great, accurate feedback with a minimum need for punishment. You can see what works and what doesn’t, have a sense of why the success or failure occurred, and make specific, targeted changes. That’s the beauty of planning, control, and structure.

This is shooting fish in a barrel. You can do this. It’s easy. You’ll have fun doing it. More people will like what you do.

Write your own persuasion script!