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People never outgrow their need to be persuasive. Salespeople have to persuade customers to buy. Customers have to persuade salespeople that their time invested in servicing their account will pay off over the years. The entry-level employee hopes to convince the manager to approve a raise. The manager wants to be persuasive with new ideas and proposals to the CEO. The CEO has to persuade employees to be loyal, customers to buy, and the public to invest. |
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The challenge of persuasion faces all of us. These guidelines will take you beyond the typical "hoping for the best" attitude to awareness of what works best and how to prepare for your biggest opportunities. |
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Tip 261: Establish credibility. |
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People believe people they like, people who are similar to them, people who are trustworthy, and people who have demonstrated expertise. Work on one or all of these to build your credibility with any given group. (Use Chapter 1 in this book as your bible.) The higher your credibility, the greater impact your message will have. Aristotle summed it up this way: "Persuasion is achieved by the speaker's personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible. We believe good men more fully and more readily than others; this is true generally whatever the question is, and absolutely true where exact certainty is impossible and opinions are divided." |
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Tip 262: Understand the three dynamics of persuasion: Logic, character, emotion. |
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Back to Aristotle. He says there are three means of being persuasive: ". . . (1) to reason logically, (2) to understand human character and goodness in their various forms, and (3) to understand the emotionsthat is, to name and describe them, to know their causes and the way in which they are excited." |
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In short, after your boss thinks you're trustworthy, you must make him or her angry at the unfairness of "the system" so as to change it. And then you'll have to give proof of that unfairness. |
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You'll have to excite the customer about the status he or she will enjoy with the new product, and then you'll have to convince that customer it's the best of its kind on the market. Finally, the buyer will need to believe you're an honest salesperson who tells the complete truth. |
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You'll have to make donors feel compassion for the homeless, show them exactly where and how their money will help, and then demonstrate your own integrity and concern in the process of your fund-raising. |
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Most of us in the business world hate being labeled "emotional"; instead we want to be known as rational, logical thinkers. But emotions do underlie |
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