Persuasion can be defined as the ability of one party to cause another party to do something through reasoning or argument. In relation to sales management, persuasion is an act that seeks to influence or convince somebody to do something against or partially against his wish through negotiation, manipulation or argument.
Artful Persuasion: How to Command Attention, Change Minds and Influence People by Harry Mills seeks to open ways by which professional persuaders as well as marketers and professional sales people can go about influencing people and increase their customer base.
In the book, persuasion has been defined as “the process of changing or refining attitudes, beliefs or behaviours”.
We tend to respond to persuasion in 2 ways; thoughtfully – which weighs the pros and cons of each argument before acceptance or not, and mindless in which we take a mental shortcut and rely on our instincts to provide us with clues as to how to respond.
There are also 2 routes to persuasion; central in which the receiver is rational, active and logical in drawing conclusions, and peripheral in which the receiver spends little time in processing the content. The organization of this book has been built around these 2 routes.
In persuasion, there are 4 conversation patterns that make up the persuasion effect, these are:
The persuasion effect – one side successfully persuades the other to adopt or agree to their position
The negotiation effect – where negotiation takes place and compromise is reached
The fixation effect – where both sides are adamant and refuse to budge regardless of what the other side says
The polarization effect – where the gap increases the more you talk. This may be as a result of misunderstanding or attacks by either side.
A professional persuader knows to avoid polarization and win the hostile side.
As there are persuasion effects, so are there 3 types of influencers; the foxes, bloodhound and donkeys.
Foxes are win-lose persuaders and exploit opportunities to deceive and manipulate often focussing on the short term, bloodhounds take advantage of opportunities as they try to build mutually beneficial relationship win-win relationship, while donkeys are stubborn and unwilling to learn as they typically destroy presentations and meetings.
Intensive training and/or in ‘character transplant’ is needed to transform foxes to bloodhounds and education and training is needed to transform donkeys to bloodhounds.
Persuasion starts with credibility and it is here that the credibility formula (trust + expertise = credibility) comes to play. When persuaders lack integrity, they discount everything they say. We can be referred to the Munich deceit where Adolf Hitler deceived the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain into believing he wanted peace with Czechoslovakia only for him to turn around and attack them including Poland which led to World War II.
Marketing gurus Al Ries and Jack Trout were also cited to believe truth is such a powerful persuasive weapon in advertising that they call it Law of Condor.
It is believed that academic titles confer expertise and status and experts typically establish their authority by displaying their credentials. These include doctors, lawyers, dentists, engineers, professors and other professionals.
There are 3 levels of credibility which include; Personal credibility – Ideas credibility and – organizational credibility.
A good persuader should master the art of image management with illustrations from past American presidents as Nixon, John F Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln.
It also discussed the research by Professor Albert McHuabian of UCLA where he said non-verbal communication accounts for 93% of the impact of a message, while verbal components account for just 7%. Past leaders who have used image management to improve their public rating and popularity include Margaret Thatcher, Australian PM John Howard, and Hilary Clinton. The use of body language gives a checklist of body language gestures. A professional persuader also dresses well for success; speed reads another person and gives a very good vocal delivery as well as produce a confident and commanding voice.
A persuader who portrays a deceitful and lying attitude is very likely to lose his persuasiveness and there are 3 steps to lie detection process.
In persuasion, visuals play an important role as it increases persuasiveness. In a test conducted, it was revealed that 75% of persuasiveness comes to us visually, 13% via hearing and 12% via smell, taste and touch.
The prime purpose of a visual persuasion is to communicate a persuasive message, as the mind finds it easier to process and store symbols, than to decode text, visuals grab our attention far better than words.
In delivering visual persuasions, the following key rules are advised to be followed; think KISS (Keep It Short and Simple) – stick to one thought concept – contents should be organized into 3 – 5 main points – visual overkill should be avoided – keep text brief, simple and readable.
In persuasion, skilled negotiators ask more than twice as many answers as average negotiators. They do this to exploit the self-persuasion in those they want to influence.
They do this because of the belief that questions elicit answers and keep the persuader in control, as well as actually persuade.
There are 5 types of questions all of which aid persuasion as follows:
Open questions – closed questions – disturbing questions – leading questions, and – rhetorical questions
After every question, there is the feedback, which is the art of giving replies to the questions or responding either positively or negatively to the questions.
In self-persuasion, group discussions and role plays are best used to persuade. It is also advised to be an active listener so as to be able to provide the right response.
In persuasion, there are different groups and these different groups have different messages to be targeted at them.
A good persuader tailors his strategy to the audience. As there are 6 audience types, all audiences will have to be approached differently. The 6 audience types are as follows:
Hostile audience – neutral audience – uninterested audience – uninformed audience – supportive audience – and mixed audience.
It is imperative to analyze the audience before beginning. Professional persuaders don’t promise all things to people as they lose credibility, they use the red, yellow and green zones to quickly gauge the attitude of an individual to achieve a major change and plan a series of step-by-step changes.
Outthink and outwit your audience is a persuader’s strong point. Using the intensify/downplay schema, persuaders can use 2 broad strategies to achieve their actions.
By intensifying or highlighting particular features of what they want to promote or downplay the points they want to make.
There are 3 identified intensification tactics vis-a-vis repetition – composition – and association, as well as 3 downplaying tactics vis-à-vis omission – diversion – and confusion.
A professional persuader intensifies his selling point and opponent’s weakness and downplays his own weakness and opponent’s strengths.
It has also been discovered that minds are programmed to mindlessly say yes or no to many persuasive requests almost as if on auto respond.
There are 7 persuasion triggers that stimulate the minds to mindlessly respond to these requests.
Professional persuaders take advantage of us when we are in a state of mindlessness using these triggers/. They include:
Contrast – reciprocation – commitment and consistency – authority – scarcity – social proof and – liking
In contrast, judgement is relative. This principle shapes our perception in all sorts of different ways. We automatically look for a benchmark to base our decision, judge the value of an offer or the fairness of a request. Judgement is relative not absolute.
Reciprocation is the law of give-and-take. With reciprocation, we are expected to return any kind gestures or moves offered to us. The rule is also powerful as it can make us accept requests from people we dislike.
The rule is also most often used in negotiation by the use of the concession-and-wait rule. There is also the use the rejection-then-retreat strategy by asking for more than one expects to receive.
Persuasion trigger 3 is commitment and consistency. With this technique, having agreed to a small request we always feel obliged to commit to a larger one because slam initial commitments can lead to a larger one. This is so because having made small commitments, people often get caught in the entrapment trap.
For using the influence of position to persuade, one may act on authority which is trigger 4. Though it is advised to challenge an authority when it is used arbitrarily or dangerously. Also reinforce the authority that comes from position with credentials based on expertise and competence in order to be respected.
Scarcity rules says we value what is scarce because we believe it must be valuable. Scarcity principle can also be used by creating phantom alternatives. Though to create scarcity, one must emphasize the unique features of the scarce commodity.
Conformity is the 6th persuasion trigger. It simply means to follow the crowd or being one of a group. People always choose to go with what they believe is the popular view. It is imperative to note that a professional persuader should stress the popularity and trends of his product/service.
Finally trigger 7 ‘liking’. It is believed that likeable communicators are more persuasive because we tend to please the people we like and find attractive. Physical attractiveness also increases likeness. This is because of the image sent and the information the persuader has on people. In exploiting attractiveness, it is believed that best referrals are usually friends of the person being persuaded.
A powerful and professional persuader can make waves in his chosen field, be it marketing, strategy, human resource and other facets of management. Artful persuasion is therefore ‘Bible’ for the would be professional sales representative and manager.
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