The Power of Persuasion

The ability to persuade others is an essential tool in your business arsenal.
Our native persuasion skills derive from “natural” survival skills, so there is, in us all, a sturdy basis upon which to refine persuasion technique.
For most of us, on a daily basis, we seek to convince someone to see our side of an argument, have someone who does not really know us to do a courteous favor, or hope to sell a product or service to a potential customer with whom we are not yet familiar. All these involve reflexive yet particular persuasion skills.

How do you define persuasion? In what situations can you measure and improve your persuasive effectiveness?
When you try to influence a transactional outcome
When you want to impact opinions, conclusions or behaviors
When you are appealing to subjective (ill)logic, emotional intelligence, misaligned personal interests.

Persuasiveness is a scalable affectation, and is amenable to “automation”, that allows you to adjust your resource allocation for matters big and small.
Persuasive Effectiveness is contingent on consistency, accountability and continuous process improvement. It is a commitment to your personal brand and your professional esteem. Breakdowns in your persuasion method can be very costly in time and effort spent to recover your persuasive power either in a situation at hand or more systemically, across your varied initiatives.

• Know your audiences & Understand what they want (of you).

  “Understanding” your audience is not a static exercise. Needs, wants and desires are dynamic, amidst of pool of often times conflicting priorities that may result inertia and indecision or miscalculation. Think your persuasiveness matters in these circumstances. Time for your role as SuperHero to step in! Inventory, score, be ready to modify logic in a moment’s notice. What do they value? What motivates them? How will you separate a “need” from “want” from a a “desire” to assure expectations are reasonable.

• Setting “common ground” between you and your customers is an immediacy of the engagement.

  Consider it a “communication facilitation pathway” that when the interactions get tough, all parties can revert to, to be a “eye on the prize” orienting point. Practicing the art of building common ground. If the persuasion effort loosing momentum because of your idea itself or mis-interpretation of your idea, you may be seen as a “taker” not a “giver”. Check yourself for “agenda bias”- your perception of yourself as advocate y not be the consumers.

• Build rapport.

  Comfort with your counsel is the result of consistent, dependable and overt competency, backed by data and proofs, Being an expert listener, with an unbiased, unpresumptive method is a key skill in building rapport.
  With rapport then comes the opt-in opportunity to influence.

• Know the science of persuasion.

  Including knowledge of human psychology in decision making is useful in crafting your persuasive argument. Every process step carries a “checking” function, spoken or unspoken, conscious or unconscious. In aggregate this “checks” feeds the relationship management method for vendor and consumer alike.

• Being confident of your message and value.

Your confidence, based on real capability, can be contagious. If you’re not naturally confident, don’t worry – it’s something that can be learned. The theory of being confident does not require you practice the teachings of mass marketers who practice “toxic positivity”. Be yourself (best self)!

• Be convincing without being pushy or phony.

Pushing too hard may be unconscious to you but painfully evident to your audience. “Fake it till you make it” does not work, and may undermine your persuasion.
Strike a balance between being confident and being humble. Get comfortable with your self in the role at hand and the place you are in within your career development.. Of course, be your best self, but don’t posture to be what you are not (yet). And reach out to other colleagues, willingly collaborate to elevate competencies.

• Refine your “advisory attitude”.

By nature, people resist being told what to do/ Learning how to persuade others by building their inquisitiveness, without you being overly forceful. is an exercise in “balance”. Use logic and reason, be respectful of the privilege of conversation, and allow your audience to set the rhythm and the agenda. Be patient, kind, and willing to take a “long run approach”, even if your need is for a “quick result”.

• Use positively aligned language.

  Customer centric filters apply to your approach.
  – What they think. What you think they think
  – What they think of what you think
  – What they think as a result of your input
  Being positive means being solutions based. Every “problem” is your “opportunity to optimize”.
  Staying calm and embracing challenge as a philosophy can help pull you back from life experience driven reflexes to “go negative” when challenged or disappointed.

• Appeal to emotion without manipulating the issues at hand.

  Stories are powerful venues for validating emotional intelligence without challenging the ownership of faulty logic or unrealistic expectations. When your audience feels they know the issues faced by and the personalties of the characters in your story, they’re much more likely to be persuaded by what you have to say. You will have taken the stressful or disputable issue out of the first person, out of conflict, and buffered the stress by a fictionalized surrogate.

• Minimize the ego or relation risk of pressing for agreement with your viewpoint.

  It’s easy when you are seen as the expert, and your customer values your expertise. But it’s not always so, when ego or control is part of the equation. We all know comedy in which the worker has the genius, and the boss takes the credit. Skill in helping consumers on a “journey of discovery” are basic necessities.
  It’s important to make it easy for your customer to agree with your fact driven advice. Here’s an example of minimizing decision-making risk. For example, you know your customer’s preferred restaurant for your meeting was just cited by the public health department for deficiencies. They insist because they know the owner. So, in trying to redirect, to persuade them to try a new restaurant with you, you might offer to “celebrate our good fortune in working together on this important project” and offer to treat them to their meal at your favorite place. By doing this, you’re taking on the majority of the risk, and your audience is more likely to say yes.

• Be direct in asking for what you want.

Be specific, and presuming your ask is rational, win:win, unselfish, then be confident. If you’ve addressed the needs of the other parties, and have been respectful. Then you can fully believe that you deserve what you’re asking for. Of course, be polite, and always ask your audience opinion of what you propose.

• Incentivizing Consensus.

  Always within legal boundaries and best business practices, offer some value to your audience coming to agree with you. This is especially valuable when the agreement is just a piece of a bigger picture, that the process at hand has many conflicting participants or time value is of the essence.

• Self interest is not selfishness.

  Often times, folks need to feel they are “getting something” for their positive participation. While you may know their agreement is in their own interest, explaining how they benefit “now” may help their “incremental” insistence of “always winning”. The something could be affirmation attestation of their contribution to others in the process. Material and physical rewards are not the only “relationship currency” in your toolset.

• Provide decision making choices, with a pro/con framework that support a sense of control.

  Empowerment by choice is a great persuasive technique. Your audience will be more likely to be open to being persuaded. Let the person you are attempting to persuade feel like they are making the decision, with your insightful support. This is stronger than you saying “I recommend you do this or that, or in my opinion you’’ll be better off my way”
  The consumer really is always right, even when they’re completely wrong. You’ll be much more successful helping them be right, by enriching their sense of being in control! And the more subtle your competent gentle hand, the more right they will feel comfortable being…because of YOU!

• Use flattery with restraint and purpose.

  Be genuine. Excessive flattery will make you seem insincere or suggest that you are compensating for an insufficiency or holding back other critical information.

The consumer really is always right, even when they’re completely wrong. You’ll be much more successful helping them be right, by enriching their sense of being in control! And the more subtle your competent gentle hand, the more right they will feel comfortable being…because of YOU!