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Thursday, August 4, 2011

Do You Want To Be More Persuasive as a Person? Try to Follow This 10 Proven Ways and Win Your Case!

Everyone has a message.  Everyone wants to be more persuasive.  Whether you are an employee working for someone else, an owner of your own business, a student, etc. you need to be heard.  In that sense we are all marketers.  The world is drowning in information and when you speak you need to make sure your message gets results. Persuasion is a skill that can always be enhanced. Learn from what works, but also, pay attention to human psychology. By understanding what makes people tick, you can find a way to get them to see your point of view. There are numerous ways on how to be more persuasive. Some of them require nothing more than a change in demeanor, while others require you to change your entire approach. Some of these persuasion techniques you might already know, while others might be untested waters for you.

The following are 10 ways to be more persuasive.  They are all proven effective in controlled experiments and many are taken from: Noah Goldstein’s, Steve Martin’s and Robert Cialdini’s : Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive, is a pop psych book, where a bunch of research in psychology is distilled into one readable volume. Of course, these tips aren’t a silver bullet. You still might fail to persuade or other person might have better arguments. However, following these suggestions may increase your chances of success.


1.       Be the first to give. Studies show that we are persuaded more by people who have done something for us first. We give bigger tips to servers who give us a mint with the check. We’re more likely to help work colleagues with their projects if they have helped us with ours. Requests that are personalized are most persuasive of all. When researchers randomly sent out surveys they were able to double responses if they personalized the request by placing a handwritten post-it note on the survey.   

2.  Smiles are powerful influencers. People like people whos smile. But your smile needs to be authentic. Humans have a remarkable ability to detect false smiles (it’s all in the eyes). So find something in the other person that you can authentically appreciate and then smile about it. In general, just practice looking in the bright side of things and being happy. You will naturally smile more and thus be more influential.

3.    Don’t offer too many choices. Whether it’s the number of products you offer or the number of plans you allow your employees to choose from, too many choices often frustrate people. Companies offering a small number of retirement plans have far greater enrollment than companies that offer a large number of plans.

4.    Losses are more persuasive than gains. Instead of telling your audience what they stand to gain from taking your advice or buying your product, research shows that people are often more persuaded if you tell them what they stand to lose out on if they don’t take your advice or buy your product. In 2003, the Oldsmobile far exceeded it sales projections despite the company reducing its advertising and product development budgets. Why? General Motors decided to discontinue the car because of slow sales. As a result the car became something people would be losing out on even though before the news few people wanted one.

5.       Argue against self-interest. Trust is a critical component to persuasion. The surest way to be perceived as honest is to admit to a small weakness in your argument, product or business immediately prior to communicating the strongest positive argument for your product or service.

6.     Admitting you’re wrong makes people trust you more. Company A published an investors relations report, contributing slump in sales to overall economic climate. Company B said slump was relevant to a few bad decisions by top management. Net result? Investors viewed company B more positively. You’d think that they’d be viewed as a bunch of screw-ups, but admission of a mistake made investors got they uneasy feeling of the ship floating in the waters with captain losing control.

7.  Negative examples are memorized better than positive examples. When one group of firefighters went through the list of real-life mistakes other firefighters have made, and another group just went through the list of positive things to do, the first group demonstrate better judgment when faced real-life tests. Our brain seems to discount the best practices, but single out bad examples of someone else making a mistake.

8.   Devils advocate example works with large organization. Leaders who consistently seek out dissenting opinions earn more respect, and generally have better agreement with people in the room than those who rule by laying down the law and persecuting dissenters.

9.  Make people feel as if they’ve already made progress toward a goal. Closely tied to the previous point is the idea of setting expectations on the part of those you’re trying to convince. What issues are involved if they agree with your course of action? The worst thing you can do is lead someone to believe everything will go smoothly, only to encounter problems later. What risks are involved and what can you do to minimize them? Just as you acknowledge weakness, acknowledge these potential problems and risks. Doing so gives you greater credibility.                                                                                           

10.   Don’t Sound Desperate. One powerful way on how to be more persuasive is to act like you don’t have to work too hard at persuading your target. If, for example, you’re trying to get people to donate to a charity cause, don’t badger everyone around you for donations saying that it’s for a good cause and so on and so forth. Instead, be happy and cheerful with your approach. Give them a short overview on how amazingly successful the campaign has been. Avoid talking too rapidly either. Instead, be cool and composed. Ask them if they want to make a donation afterward. If they say that they can’t contribute at the moment, give them a card or tell them your website, and let that be the end of that. The next time they see your campaign, they’ll remember how pleasant you’ve been and might give their contribution then.
Some people have the ability to capture an audience’s attention, convince the undecided and convert non-customers into customers. Some do not, but there’s good news from social science. Persuasion is not just a skill gifted to a chosen few. Learning how to be more persuasive can be quite tricky. However, as long as you have a basic understanding of your target person or audience, you won’t have a problem persuading people or swaying points of view. Persuading people need not to be a difficult task. Knowing people’s objectives, having answers to their objections, and considering their point of view increases your chances of being persuasive. It’s a science and researchers who study it have formulated a series of rules for moving people in your direction. Learning about these rules can make you a more effective and ethical influencer.

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