Ever wonder how some people are able to negotiate their way into or out of anything?

What separates great negotiators from the rest of us, he found, is the ability to set the stage before making their case.

“The best persuaders become the best through pre-suasion — the process of arranging for recipients to be receptive to a message before they encounter it,” Cialdini writes.

Highly persuasive people use language that opens a person up to an idea before they even mention it — that’s what he calls “pre-suasion.”

“We convince others by using language that manages their mental associations,” Cialdini writes. “Their thoughts, perceptions and emotional reactions merely proceed from those associations.”