Inspiring Workplaces 
The Way Work Ought to Be!

#1,057 - Feb. 5, 2025

Everyone is in sales. Everyone. 

Even if you aren't directly selling to your customers, everyone needs to sell their ideas on a regular basis - whether it's convincing your toddler to eat her carrots, your spouse to go on a trip to Bora Bora, or your boss on the merits of letting you bring your pet wombat to work. 

Since February 8th is official Laugh and Get Rich Day, I want to remind you that humor can help make your sales pitches more effective. Using humor - especially self-deprecating humor - builds trust and makes you more approachable and more likeable. Humor also helps reduce counterarguments that people naturally tend to form when being presented with a new idea. 

Humor also helps your ideas stand out from the herd and studies show that people retain messages containing humor longer, so if you want to get better compliance rates with your safety regulations or stop people from singing rap in the lunchroom, try some humor! (I love the example of someone who wrote "Do not eat my lunch! I have 7 shrimp and 4,639 rice" on their lunch container in a communal work fridge.) 

As referenced in my action-packed, pine-scented book, The Humor Advantage: Why Some Businesses Are Laughing All the Way to the Bank, a study looking into how humor can influence negotiations found that when negotiating the sale of a $6,000 piece of artwork, would-be buyers were far more willing to pay the full price when the seller offered to throw in a pet frog!  

Salespeople who use humor in their email subject line get anywhere from 15-30% greater response rates. Dr. Paul McGhee found that when salespeople use humor buyers were willing to pay a higher price. And as cited in the book, Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be More Persuasive, simply sending a funny, inoffensive cartoon to someone you are negotiating with generated higher levels of trust and led to 15% larger profits.   

So don't be afraid to add a dash or a splash of humor the next time you need to sell an idea or a vacuum!