Use the steel man technique to persuade people who disagree with you

If your visitors have objections, you need to present counterobjections. However, it’s not enough to present the counterobjections straight.

A man in armor. — To *steel man* is to create a version of your opponent’s argument that’s even stronger than their own.

The solution comes from two (similar) approaches:

Approach 1: Steel manning

The philosopher Daniel Dennett outlines an effective process for arguing with someone who has opposing views:

Attempt to re-express the other person’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that they say, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.”
List any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).
Mention anything you have learned from your target.
Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.

The first step of Dennett’s approach has been called steel manning. It’s the opposite of strawmanning, in which you misrepresent the other person’s position or argument so you can easily defeat it. In contrast to a straw man, a steel man is an improved form of the other person’s views—one that’s harder to defeat.

Approach 2: Feel–felt–found

Dennett’s approach overlaps with the “feel–felt–found” technique that is taught in many customer-support call centers:

Demonstrate that you understand how the other person feels.
Then, describe how you (or someone else) once felt the same as the other person does.
Finally, describe how your mind (or someone else’s) was changed, and what you instead found to be true.

Why these approaches work

Steel manning isn’t just good manners. It’s the strongest form of something persuasion researchers have measured for decades—the two-sided argument.

When you think about it, there are three ways to deal with an objection:

Don’t mention it.
Mention it, but move on without addressing it.
Mention it and address it.

Separate studies by Mike Allen (1991) and Daniel J. O’Keefe (1999) both landed on the same finding. If you raise your customer’s objection and then answer it, you persuade more people than if you had never raised it.

The evidence was slightly murkier for advertisers. Raising objections in ads didn’t reliably increase conversion, but it did build credibility and trust.

In marketing, you don’t need to follow Dennett’s four steps literally. The goal is to show that you understand your prospect’s objection so well that they feel properly understood before you answer it.

Steel manning in action: Domino’s cardboard pizza

In 2010, Domino’s put its own customer research on television. Real customer posts, on camera, saying what they actually felt. Comments included:

“Domino’s tastes like cardboard.”

“Mass produced, boring, bland pizza.”

As the video shows, Domino’s didn’t just acknowledge criticism; they presented it more candidly than anyone expected. By giving voice to the strongest version of their customers’ objections before answering them, they made their response far more credible and gave customers a new reason to choose it.

Objection. Counter-objection.

US same-store sales rose 14.3% in the first quarter of 2010. At the time, that was the largest quarterly same-store gain in quick-service restaurant history.

How to apply the above approaches to conversion

The approaches above may sound subtle, but they are powerful.

In both of them, you don’t just present your counterobjection straight. (You don’t just say, “You’re wrong. Here’s the right answer.”)

Instead, you first demonstrate that you understand the other person’s objection, you demonstrate that it’s valid, and then you explain why your counterobjection is a level of thinking deeper, not shallower, than the other person’s. (You effectively say, “I understand what you think, and why, but if you think further…”) This approach allows the other person to save face and not have to backtrack their thinking (which no one likes to do). At no point are they proven wrong; they just arrive at your verdict through extended thinking.

(Note that you’d get nowhere trying to strawman your visitors’ views. Your visitors would simply think, “You don’t understand me.” Strawmanning only works by misrepresenting a third party’s position. You could, of course, do that with your competitor’s arguments. But that’s not defensible, and the best persuasion is defensible.)

So, if your visitors have objections, don’t just contradict them. And certainly don’t ignore them. Address the elephant in the room. Explain why their current thinking is valid. Empathize with why they were reasonable in arriving at those conclusions. And then show them the additional thinking that leads from their conclusions to yours.

When steel manning backfires

If you have read this far and thought this sounds risky, you are asking the right question. So let us put your objection more strongly than you did.

Every argument above is an argument for handing your visitor a reason to leave. You are being asked to print your worst review in your own advertising. Domino’s only got away with it by changing the recipe first. Most companies can’t do that, and the ones that try will simply have reminded a wavering buyer exactly why they were wavering. The safe play is to sell your strengths and stay quiet about the rest.

That is the strongest version of the objection, and two parts of it are right.

If you can’t win the objection, don’t raise it. If the strongest version of your visitor’s objection is one you can’t honestly beat, voicing it just hands them a reason to leave. Focus instead on fixing your product.
Don’t plant an objection your visitor never had. Steel manning works on the objection already in the reader’s head. Raise one that never occurred to them, and you’ve introduced doubt for free. This is why customer research comes first. You need to know which objections are real and common, not which ones are theoretically available.

Notice what those two limits have in common. Neither is an argument against steel manning. Both are arguments for knowing which objection you are facing before you open your mouth, which is the same discipline, done earlier.

What about the idea that simply raising a common objection will entrench it in your prospect’s mind? If you’ve done your research, you’ll already know what’s there. Your silence won’t remove an objection; it will just rob you of a chance to counter it.

The challenge steel manning sets is whether our customer hears our answers to their fears, or write their own.

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