SOP 277 — Give one action and many reasons to take it

1. The rule

Do not ask people to do ten things with one reason each. Ask for one thing, and back it with ten reasons. The reverse, too many actions and too few reasons, is counted here as probably one of the larger mistakes in content.

The ten is far less important than the idea behind it. Six reasons would not be bad; ten was picked because it sits neatly beside the one. What matters is many reasons behind a single action.

It applies to webinars, to copy and to every other attempt to get someone to act. It also applies inside the business. One rule of thumb here: if you can teach, you are able to sell as well. If you think you make no content, look at what you tell your team each day: that is content too, made for an internal audience. The rule holds for your internal and your external audiences alike.

2. Why one action: teaching means changing behavior

Entertainment exists to be consumed. Education exists to change what people do. If your content is meant to teach, judge it by whether behavior changes; the same test is the opening of SOP 193 — Treat hard as a skill you lack and chunk it down.

Influence comes from what happens next. When someone does what you said and something good follows, that is a reinforcing event, and they become more likely to follow your next instruction. When they act and nothing happens, they stop, and you lose influence: their habit of listening to you dies out. So the aim is to get people doing things with a high chance of working. The same loop, instruction, good result, more willingness next time, is called power on SOP 211 — Build status, power, credibility and likeness through content, section 3.

A crowded piece works against that aim. Half an hour of instructions can hand someone what could be months of work. If you can spend the same half hour on one action, the odds that they take it go up; if they take even that one and it pays off, you rise in their estimation.

Breaking the work up. In one example, an owner split a long workshop into short weekly sessions, each carrying one idea and, where possible, a tool to act on it, to raise the chance that people would act. The reasoning: most people do nothing, so remove as many barriers as you can.

3. Why some people need more reasons

For some people, the instruction alone is enough. That might be because they already have a history with you: you told them to do things before, they did them, and the things worked, so they are likely to act again. A cold audience has no such history. For them you supply reasons that make the action more wanted: in the short term, shrink the bad things they link with acting, and grow the good things that come from it.

Picture each person as a locked vault, each with a code of a different length. One person opens on a single good reason. Another trusts you less, or was punished in the past for acting on advice, and needs more reasons before moving. Each reason you add makes it more likely that the whole audience acts.

The same holds for proof. Some people step forward once one person has gone first and come to no harm; others wait until they have watched a hundred go. People who start quickly were rewarded in the past for acting on little proof. People who hang back acted, were punished for it, and decided to wait. So a cold audience, or anyone burned before, needs more reasons.

4. Fill the four boxes

Draw a grid of four boxes and fill every one with reasons.

What happens	If they take the action	If they do not
Good things	More good things happen	Fewer good things happen
Bad things	Fewer bad things happen	More bad things happen

The first column is the promise; the second is the pain. Cover both: what they gain and avoid by acting, and what they keep suffering and keep missing by not acting. The pain side can name what they have struggled with, or tried over and over without result.

5. Back each reason with proof

Each reason needs something behind it. Three kinds come first.

A story. Tell of someone who took the action and what followed. A story works as a testimonial. Where you can, pick someone the audience looks up to, someone who has what they want, or someone like them; the listener uses that person as a stand-in. One claim here is that a made-up example persuades almost as well as a true story. No evidence is given for it.
A number. A statistic that backs the reason. Look up real ones. A second call to action is held here to cut the chance that people take either one. This page gives no figure for how much.
An explanation. A cause-and-effect link between taking the action and the outcome. Some people might call it logic.

Other routes count too. Almost every reason turns out to be proof of some kind: proof by analogy, by narrative, by numbers, by a third party, by example. An analogy works only on people who know what it refers to: a comparison from one field sport lands with the people who follow that sport, and for an audience elsewhere you would probably pick one from the game they play. Which kinds of proof persuade more than others, in person over remote, live over recorded, people like the viewer over people unlike them, newer over older, is set out on SOP 109, the page that ranks kinds of proof.

6. Flavor each reason with the value levers

Wrap each reason in one of four levers: it is faster, it is easier, it carries less risk, and, where you sell to businesses, it costs less. Apply them to the person acting and, where it fits, to you.

Worked on this page's own rule:

Faster. One action per piece is faster for you to make, since there is one thing to explain, and faster for them to act on, since there is one thing to do.
Less risk. If you can make several pieces from what would have been one, one of them is more likely to outperform.
Cheaper. Making more pieces will probably cost you almost the same, because more content does not cost much more money to make.
Easier. You no longer have to come up with a long list of action items for each piece.

Run the levers backward for the pain side: the way they do it now is slow, hard, risky and costly. The levers line up with the value elements, written as carrots and sticks, in section 3 of SOP 39 — Write what an ad says, who says it, and when.

Lean on rules the audience already holds. Someone who already believes people are more likely to act when things are faster needs no case for speed; you only show that your action is faster. Where the audience does not hold that rule, you would have to sell the rule first.

7. Show the action paying off for many kinds of people

Picture someone shooting baskets with an ordinary ball and missing, then with a special ball and scoring. One person proves little. Add a second and a third: each misses without the special ball and scores with it. Add someone the viewer knows, or who looks just like them. Add a strong player who sinks three of five with the ordinary ball and five of five with the special one. With each case the special ball becomes more wanted.

So show the action working in as many ways and situations, and for as many kinds of people, as you can: newcomers and experts, and above all people who resemble the viewer, falling short without it and getting there with it. When you speak to one person, make every example as close to that person as you can. More proof beating less, and people like the viewer beating people unlike them, are among the comparisons on SOP 109.

8. Say it plainly

To persuade the largest share of an audience, pitch to the lowest common denominator. There are conditions an audience has to meet before it can be persuaded at all: at the extreme, a message in a language nobody listening speaks changes nothing, whatever it says. One practice here aims at a fifth-grade level in writing and in speech. Writing that plainly forces you to be clear: you cannot hide behind jargon, and you have to dig further into the real reasons someone should act. The grade to aim for is set at third grade and flagged against fifth on SOP 31 — Write at the right reading level.

9. Split a crowded piece into single-action pieces

In one example, an investor spent four hours making a single piece on buying a first multi-unit rental property. It had 17 steps, and it got no views: too much, too hard to digest, nothing to act on. The advice was to make 17 pieces instead, each on one step, finding deals for instance, with that step's own reasons.

A second reason it persuades better: a piece on one step talks about the thing rather than walking through every move. The view here is that, when you sell, the teaching should explain how things work rather than set out how to do each step, because most people will not act today anyway. Teach about it, change what they believe, and when the time and place are right they act on what they remember.

You also end up with more output. You learn which parts matter most to your audience, and you take more shots at it for less time each.

Flag: all the steps in one piece, or a piece for each. SOP 23 — Retain with lists, steps and stories, section 3, calls a long step count an asset, provided the first step is clear and worth something on its own. This section breaks a piece of 17 steps into 17 separate pieces, one action each. This page does not settle which reading is right.

Flag: how things work, or what to do. SOP 211, section 3.4, explains why such effort goes into building in the actual steps to take. This section's view is that the teaching in selling should explain the workings rather than the moves. This page does not settle which reading is right.

10. Repeat the one action with fresh reasons

Keep coming back to the same action with more reasons, more stories and more examples. You will tire of your message long before your audience does, and people need reminding more than they need teaching (SOP 26 — Set posting cadence and the message routine, section 4). A daily reminder renews the tie between doing the right thing and the good result it brings. That matters especially for actions that pay off only later, saving money among them: in one example, a long-running money show repeats one instruction, spend less than you earn, and people keep watching because it reminds them every day. An audience tires of you when it stops believing you.

11. For instructions to a team, name what you could see

"Be confident" gives nobody anything to do. Break it into behavior you could watch: speak louder; look people in the eye; on a stage, do not pace, but walk across, stop, and hold that spot for a count of ten before crossing back, talking to one side of the crowd, then the other. Louder alone just sounds like shouting, so it takes several behaviors together, and the list might run to sixteen. The hard part of communicating is being specific. It is hard: it takes effort, and most people have not worked out what they really want; trying to spell it out shows you that you never knew what you were asking for. Behaviors that can be observed are the base layer of culture on SOP 258 — Build culture in layers from behaviors up, then audit it, section 3.

12. A worked example of stacking reasons

Say you want someone to learn one written character of a new language. Reason one: no character in the language is used more. Two: if you visit, it is the one you are most likely to hear. Three: if you can get around with it, you can reach a restroom, a restaurant, a car, a building or a landmark. Four: it is how a conversation starts. One action, reason after reason. The example is made up to show the stacking; which character it would be does not matter.

13. What this page does not decide for you

All the steps in one piece or a piece for each, and how things work or what to do. The flags in section 9 stand.
How many reasons a given audience needs. Ten is a round number and six is called fine. This page gives no figure for how many reasons a cold audience needs.

14. The checklist

Step	What to do
1	Pick the single behavior you want changed in this audience or team
2	If a piece asks for several actions, split it: one action per piece
3	Fill all four boxes: more good and less bad if they act, more bad and less good if they do not
4	Back each reason with a story, a number and an explanation; add analogy, third-party proof and examples
5	Flavor each reason as faster, easier, less risky and, for business buyers, cheaper, for them and for you
6	Show it paying off for many people, above all people who resemble the viewer
7	Add reasons for cold audiences and for anyone burned before
8	Say it plainly, at the level the largest share of the audience understands
9	Ask for actions likely to work when followed
10	Repeat the same action over time with fresh reasons
11	For staff, describe the behavior as things someone could be seen doing

15. What this page does not cover

The content unit is SOP 20, and the structures that hold attention are on SOP 23. A single call to action per platform, one front door, is section 4 of SOP 215 — Put calls to action on every platform; one idea per email is section 6 of SOP 254 — Nurture by email and book the next meeting months out. Personality, identity and worldview are not covered on this page.