Stop trying to convince them

A study, published in Science in 2016, showed that a 10-minute conversation produced attitude change that lasted three months.

The same study also found that pamphlets, ads and direct argumentation produced almost zero effect. Same topic, same population, two different approaches. One worked. The other didn’t even register.

We walk into meetings believing we must convince

As I researched this article I was reminded of the countless times I’ve heard teams say “we must convince them of why our treatment is the most cost-effective choice” or something to that effect. It is VERY often about what WE want to see happen.

The downstream effect: KAMs and MSLs armed to the teeth with arguments. The arguments are aimed at a person who has not asked to be persuaded.

Then we wonder why HCP engagement scores keep falling.

The research is clear

Across six decades of work, the evidence on persuasion has converged on something that contradicts the belief that you can persuade or convince anyone of anything by providing arguments alone.

Brehm’s reactance theory, replicated for sixty years, shows that pressure on a position triggers defence of that position. The harder we push, the more they push back.

Kunda’s work on motivated reasoning, and Nyhan and Reifler’s later studies on the backfire effect, show that contradicting facts often strengthen rather than weaken the original belief. We don’t update toward the data; we update away from the threat.

Motivational Interviewing’s clinical literature, with more than 200 randomised trials behind it, shows that conversational, autonomy-supportive approaches produce behaviour change in roughly 75% of cases. Traditional advice-giving sits closer to 50%.

And then the deep canvassing finding I started with: one conversation, three months of measurable change, while pamphlets sat at zero.

There is no serious research tradition that supports the “we must convince them” reflex. There never was.

How minds actually change

The process looks nothing like a pitch. It has six steps, and they happen in this order.

It starts with safety. Without psychological safety, the brain stays in evaluation mode, scanning for threat. New information gets filtered out before it lands.

Then being heard. Carl Rogers established this in the 1950s: people become open to a new perspective only after they feel their existing perspective has been understood. Being heard is the precondition for change.

Then self-reflection, usually triggered by a question rather than a statement. The brain processes a question differently than it processes a claim. One opens up; the other closes down.

Then self-generated argument. This is the core of the change. We are convinced by what we hear ourselves say, not by what others say to us. When the HCP articulates the consequences of inaction in their own words, that sentence carries fifty times the weight of the same sentence coming from us.

Then time. Minds rarely change in the room. They shift afterwards, on the drive home, in the quiet moment after the door closes.

And underneath all of it sits identity. We change our minds in ways that protect how we see ourselves.

What this means for the meeting

The implications are straightforward.

We cannot convince anyone of anything. We can only create the conditions in which they update their own thinking.

That means the primary tool is not the argument; it’s the question. The value is not data delivery; it’s attentive listening that the stakeholder can feel.

It also means the meeting we have been training reps to run is structurally wrong. We optimised for control. The research says control is the failure mode.

A different kind of preparation

Imagine walking into the next stakeholder meeting with no pitch. No objections to overcome. No agenda to push.

Three things prepared instead.

A position we have done our homework on and want their perspective on. Not a claim. A conversational starting point.

A set of questions designed to surface what is already true for them. Their concerns. Their priorities. Their definition of success in their own words.

And the willingness to leave the meeting without a close, because the close is not what produces the outcome we want.

This is the difference between trying to move a stakeholder and trying to understand whether they want to move themselves.

A frame for the field force

We don’t need braver KAMs or MSLs. We don’t need more compelling pitches. We don’t need better objection-handling.

We need conversations the science would actually predict to work.

We need to equip our field teams with a new capability built on solid ground: the ability to conduct truly engaging conversations about things that matter as much to the stakeholder as they do to us.

The permission

If we have spent years training our teams to convince, the data says we have been training them in an approach that doesn’t work.

That is not a failure. It is a chance to start over, with the science on our side.

The next stakeholder meeting does not need to be won. It needs to be heard.