I once did what I thought was a very thorough pitch. Forty minutes. Covered everything. Features, benefits, process, timelines, the research behind the approach. The person I was pitching wasn't an expert — they'd told me as much early in the call. But I kept going anyway because it felt professional, felt thorough. They said they'd get back to me. They didn't. What I know now is that I gave a features presentation to someone who needed me to just be credible, clear, and likeable — and then stop talking. I buried the yes under information they had no framework to evaluate.
In the 2000 US presidential election, one state's ballot design gave one candidate a measurable advantage. In counties where his name appeared first on the ballot, he received roughly 9% more votes than in counties where his name appeared lower down.
That translates to somewhere around 300,000 votes. In a race decided by a few hundred in one state, ballot position — a peripheral cue with no connection to policy, character, or competence — was potentially decisive.
This isn't an anomaly. It's a pattern. And it reveals something that most people in sales and persuasion never fully reckon with: people are not primarily evaluating your message. They are responding to cues around it.
What this means for you, practically, is this: the information you give, and how much of it you give, needs to match how the person in front of you is actually processing. Get that match wrong, and the best argument in the world won't save you.
Two Ways a Brain Processes Anything
When someone receives a persuasive message — a pitch, a proposal, an ad, a request — they are processing it one of two ways.
The first is central processing: genuine analysis. They're weighing your argument, comparing it to what they already know, evaluating the logic and the details. They're actually thinking. This is the wine drinker studying the list, the car enthusiast reading the spec sheet, the industry expert reviewing your methodology.
The second is peripheral processing: they're not evaluating the message itself — they're responding to cues around it. How you look. How credible you seem. Whether they like you. Whether your company seems reputable. Whether the offer was listed first. These cues have nothing to do with the actual quality of what you're selling, but they drive the decision anyway.
Almost everyone defaults to peripheral processing when they don't have the expertise to do otherwise. If you know nothing about concrete, you're not going to evaluate the chemical composition of the mix. You're going to decide based on whether the contractor seems trustworthy, whether the price feels right, and whether you like him.
Here's the rule that follows from this: the more expertise someone has, the more they need features and detail. The less expertise, the more they respond to benefits and peripheral cues. Guess wrong about which one you're dealing with, and you either bore the expert into switching off or you overwhelm the non-expert into doubt.
Knowing When to Stop
The most common mistake in persuasion is giving too much information to someone who isn't processing centrally.
Picture this: you're a homeowner. Someone knocks on your door and offers to concrete your driveway. You know nothing about concrete — you know you can walk on it and drive on it, and that's the extent of your expertise. Now the contractor starts explaining the chemical properties of the mix, the compression ratios, the aggregate composition.
Your brain fuzzes out. Not because you're unintelligent — because you don't have the mental scaffolding to make sense of the information. And once your central processing shuts down, you're back to peripheral cues: does he look honest? Is the price reasonable? Do I like him?
All that extra information didn't help. It created friction.
Now reverse it. You are an expert — say, in body language. Someone tries to sell you a body language course by listing benefits: 'Learn to read people! Understand non-verbal communication! Gain an edge in any conversation!' You've been studying this for years. You already know all of that. What you want to know is: does this cover microexpressions? What's the methodology? Has the research been validated?
If they can't answer those questions — if they keep selling you benefits you already understand — you conclude they don't know their subject. And you walk away.
Non-experts need benefits. Experts need features. And non-experts respond to peripheral cues; experts mostly don't.
Message Repetition: The Peripheral Shortcut
There's a study where researchers had college students read a short paragraph about fast, athletic people — track stars, football players, sprinters. Then they walked to another classroom. Students who read the fast-people paragraph walked measurably faster than the control group. Another group read about an elderly man with a walker moving slowly. That group walked measurably slower.
They had no idea this was happening. The last thing in their mind shaped their behaviour without any conscious decision being made.
This is why message repetition works. Not because people think about your message more carefully each time they hear it — but because it primes them. It lodges in the brain. And when decision time comes, the familiar thing wins.
Think about a beer commercial with three frogs in a swamp, croaking one syllable each. No product benefits. No features. No argument. Just a brand name, broken into three sounds, repeated endlessly. You can't buy beer based on that. There's nothing to evaluate. But you remember the name, you associate it with a feeling, and at the bar you say the name.
That's peripheral processing at work. Repetition is a peripheral cue. It has nothing to do with the quality of what's being sold — but it drives purchasing behaviour because it creates familiarity, and familiarity feels like trust.
This works specifically for products and ideas that don't require central processing. Beer, soft drinks, clothing, brands that people choose based on feeling. It does not work for wine, for complex services, for anything where the person needs to actually think before deciding.
A useful principle: your message needs to be easy to repeat and pass along. What's the one sentence someone says to their partner, their boss, their colleague, when they describe what you do? If you can't answer that, you don't have a message — you have a presentation.
Self-Referencing: Put Them in the Picture
One of the most reliable ways to improve your odds with a non-expert is to paint them into the scene. Not 'here's what this product does' — but 'here's what your life looks like with this in it.'
Research is consistent: the more a person imagines themselves using your product or service, the more likely they are to buy and the more likely they are to remember you later. This is self-referencing, and it's a powerful peripheral cue.
The beer commercial that was meant to use this principle managed to get it exactly backwards. Two attractive women wrestle in mud. Very memorable commercial. Nobody remembers the brand, because neither woman ever touches a beer. There's no connection between the imagery and the product. The viewer might have a great feeling watching — but there's no pathway from that feeling to purchasing a specific beer.
Contrast this with a soft drink campaign where a pop star dances with a can in hand, passes one to a friend, drinks from it on screen. Now there's a loop: you see the product being consumed, enjoyed, shared. Your brain sketches in yourself doing the same. That's self-referencing, and it moves units.
A more striking example: a jeans brand ran deliberately provocative ads featuring teenagers — images that caused enormous controversy. Parents objected. News programmes ran the commercials while reporting on the controversy. The result was that the exact audience the brand was targeting — teenagers who wanted to rebel against parental authority — saw themselves wearing those jeans. Massive self-referencing for the intended buyer. Massive, free amplification from the controversy. Sales were extraordinary.
The lesson isn't about controversy. It's about alignment: your message must create a mental picture where the target audience sees themselves using, owning, or experiencing what you're offering. Without that link, the imagery doesn't sell.
Authority: It Works Differently Than You Think
We know authority matters. A credible source is more persuasive. That's not new.
What is less known is that authority works very differently depending on who's in the room.
With a non-expert audience, your credibility does most of the work. If they know you are the expert on this subject, they will accept what you say without needing you to prove it. They don't have the knowledge to evaluate your evidence anyway — so the evidence isn't what moves them. You are. Your reputation, your title, your track record. Say it with confidence, stop early, and let the peripheral cue do its job.
With an expert audience, your authority creates a different dynamic. They are experts too. If anything, your expertise positions you as a competitor for the correct answer, not a trusted guide. They need to see the evidence, the methodology, the details — because they can evaluate it, and they will. Arriving with credentials and light on substance doesn't impress them; it puts them on alert.
Same lever, opposite effect. Know which audience you're talking to.
The Checklist Advantage
Open a hotel booking comparison page. Open a credit card brochure. Open almost any direct-response ad from a company that knows what it's doing. You'll find a checklist.
On the left: the offer being made, with seventeen of eighteen possible features ticked. On the right: the competitor, with seven ticked.
This works because comparison is how people decide under uncertainty. When someone doesn't have the expertise to evaluate what you're saying on its merits, they default to comparison: who has more? Who covers more? Who left fewer boxes empty?
You don't need a literal table with ticks. You can build a checklist into a conversation: 'Most people in this space do A, B, and C. We do A, B, C, plus D, E, and F — and we also cover G, which most people miss entirely.' You've just created a mental checklist without ever drawing one.
The goal is the same: give the person a clear, simple, decisive way to compare. When the comparison is obvious, the decision is obvious. And when the decision is obvious, they say yes.
The mistake most people make is trying to be too different. 'We're completely unique, unlike anything else in the market.' That's a risk signal. The person doesn't know what to compare you to. They can't evaluate whether 'completely different' is good or bad. You want to be recognisably familiar — and then clearly, specifically better in a way they can count.
What are your seven checkmarks? What do you do that the alternatives don't? Get clear on this before the next conversation. Not because you'll necessarily say it all — but because having it clear means you can drop the most relevant points naturally, and let the comparison do the work.
More next time. Jonny