The Art of Persuasive Communication

Have you ever wished you could share information in a way that really motivates the listener to act, to buy or to use you and your services? It’s not secret. It’s just The Art of Persuasion.

The Art of Persuasive Communication

There are volumes written on the subject, but let’s break it down to 3 basic components.

First, what is your unique proposition or point you are trying to get across? Want a travel agent to carry your package or use your service? You need to prepare some valid reasons why your service, product, package AND why YOU are worth more or will bring a higher return. Do NOT tell the people listening to you all the details or all the facts. EVERY travel supplier will do that and you will just another lump of ‘something’ in the rojak.  Instead, focus on what the listener will get out of using your services or how much more they can make with you; how much easier it will be to resell your product or service. For example:

What can you do that no others can do?

What have other travel buyers loved about what you are offering? Who is paying more for similar offers in the industry but getting less?

How will the listener end up with more money, time, power, love, praise, joy, satisfaction or recognition by listening to you and buying what you are offering?

For example, we worked with Cragun’s Resort and Conference Centre in the USA. Their #1 complaint from travel agents was that they had no golf course while their top 5 competitors each owned a course. We got them thinking and in we determined that guests staying at one of their competitors needed 5 to 10 minutes to drive to the golf club from their lodging. For Cragun’s, it took them 5 minutes to 18 minutes to drive to ANY of their competitor’s club houses.  In an instant, they went from not having a golf course to offering 5 of the best courses at a discount. Their growth was exponential. They now bought out a competitor and built two more Trent Jones golf courses on that site.
Spending a few minutes to several hours thinking about what you have to offer and coming up with tangible answers will help you form a better and more unique proposition. If you can’t think of a unique proposition, you will never be able to persuade an intelligent buyer.

The second point is that communication is about both listening and presenting. Talking too fast, too slow or too much, can ruin a presentation. Likewise, emphasizing the wrong points or not emphasizing the key points can be disasterous. If you want to persuade others to use your service, work with you, support your team or follow your lead, think SET: Show – Emotion – Tell.

SHOW what you want to get across visually. PowerPoint®, posters, pictures, props, brochures, video. ANYTHING visual. 35% of the population are visual learners and will be persuaded if you can show them visually what you want them to agree to.

Then TELL the listener the reasons why it makes sense. Explaining every slide, graph, prop in detail, but not minutia. 25 % of population are persuaded in auditory terms.

Connect the SHOWING and TELLING with EMOTIONAL stories or reasons to trigger a response. “The last person I shared this with ended up with a nice ang bao to bring home to his family because…” Catch the drift on emphasizing some personal profit someone else received and if visuals and the words support the EMOTION, you have a pretty good chance of persuading the listener.

The third point, in ‘sales terminology’ is simply to, “ask for the order.” Never say, `What do you think?` That is cerebral. You want them to act. Best: “Then, with your approval, I will go forward with this so we can begin making you money; improving your selection; helping you win market-share; improve team morale as soon as possible.” It is assumptive and closes the communication.

Caution: Do not accept, “Let me think about it.” or “I will take it under consideration.” These are the same as NO! If someone wants to think about it, say, “Wouldn’t it be better to think about it while I am here so if you have any questions, I can share the reasons why you should…?”  or, from my friend Jeff Thull, “In other words, NO!” It is usually as hard for someone to say `no` as it is to say `yes`. If they say `no`, always ask `why` and push for specifics. If they have a valid reason, at least you know why. If not, it gives you another reason to push again for their agreement.

Learn the secrets of argumentation and persuasion to ensure results.

Grow Your Business, Grow Your Career

Whether you work for big organisation or are self employed, the steps to growing your business or your career are often the same. Here are 3 `Growth Hormones` for growing your career or growing your business.

Growth Hormone # 1: Loyalty. Loyalty to your customer will make them more loyal to you. Frequent flyer points for free trips are expensive ways to buy loyalty. Instead, giving your regular customers a better deal, more then what they asked for or special treatment including recognising their names, one to one attention or a free gift is more effective and demonstrates loyalty. This works in business and in careers.

If you are loyal to your boss, your team, your company, speaking well of them, building them up and standing up for them. This pays off in increased loyalty towards you. A good career move.

Growth Hormone # 2: Perpetual marketing. Do you think this newsletter just happens by itself? Writing, e-mailing and posting it to our Web site  is a major commitment. So are the 2000+ e-mails we send out to reconnect with past clients and prospective clients. Hundreds of postcards, journal articles, writing books and more are all part of our perpetual marketing.

Does all this effort pay off. No way! In reality, very little does. Most people are too busy to respond or to care. Why do it?  Two out of one hundred DO respond and forward this newsletter to someone who hires us or they call us in for work.

In your career, if you expect every little thing you do will get noticed, you are deluded. Most of what we do is what we were hired to do. It is consistency and more importantly, the innovative things we do that get us noticed; another good career move.

Growth Hormone # 3: Think IN the box. Instead of trying to think outside of the box, think IN the box. That is, think of current procedures and how to refine them. How can you make them run on automatic so you can focus your attention on something that will bring you a better return on your investment of time?

Work your systems to get them to run on automatic. Coach your people instead of telling them what to do so they learn to solve problems on their own. Look into your box so it runs so well, you can live most of your life completely outside the box.

In a career, if your team can run autonomously of you, think of the ways you can exert your effort and ideas to transform the organisation you work in and propel your career.

Loyalty, perpetual marketing and thinking IN the box are just 3 tools out of thousands we cover in our workshops, speeches and seminars to help you grow your career or grow your business. The next time you hear of someone looking for a speaker, trainer or facilitator, how about passing on our contact details to them and THEIR contact information back to us? I will gladly send you a FREE e-book for your effort. See… I practice what I preach.

Someone once said, `They don’t care how much you know until the know how much you care.` I believe that is true so here are 8 ways to tell people that matter to you at work and at home, how much you care about them.

1. Active listening is probably the single most important way to say you care about someone. As they share, do not just nod your head. Repeat a bit of what they say and ask questions.

2.  Write a personal note. Putting a written note (not an email) on someone’s desk for them to find later is a powerful motivator and easy way to show care and concern. Simply stating, `I just wanted to say I appreciate what you did for me. Thank you so much. It is a joy to work with you.`

3.  Remember what that person likes and give it to them. If they like a special brand of chocolates, when you see them, buy a bar or box and present it at an opportune time.

4.  Say it with flowers. If someone does a favour for you, send them a small potted plant. Everytime they water it, they will remember that you cared enough to say `thanks`.

5.  Perform a favour. I can still remember the day in 1978 when I had a ton of orders to write up and my supervisor Karl Bjornson was leaving the office at 6 PM, saw me doing all that paperwork and put his bag down, grabbed some of the work and stayed an extra hour to help me.

6.  Laugh at their jokes. My father would always laugh at a customers joke, even if it was one he knew very well. Why? The reason for a joke is to make people feel good. Laughing at their jokes makes the teller feel good. Ever had someone say at the end of a joke you told, `I’ve heard that one before.` or `I don`t get it.`?

7.  Ask them to help you or to do you a favour. This may fly in the face of logic initially, but trust me, it works. Soliciting help in the right way endears people to you. `You know so much about this…`or `It is a lot to ask I know. Would you be willing to.` or simply, `I really need your help and expertise on something.` You stroke their ego and have more opportunities to thank them and bond with them along the way.

8.  Pray for them or better yet, with them. When my wife an I kneel and pray together as husband and wife at the end of the day and she hears me thanking the Lord for her in my life or when it is her turn and she thanks God for me, well, I just love her all the more.

Saying `I care about you.` takes a little thinking and a little work, but it can literally mean the difference between breaking even or exceeding targets; between surviving a relationship and thriving in it. Start letting people know how much YOU care, today!