Increasing your Persuasive power
All communication is persuasive: whether we are negotiating a raise, making a presentation, or even getting our partner to take out the trash. For some, persuasion is second nature, they are skilled at understanding how to craft a message, engage their audience, and get individuals to say yes! For most of us, we have to work to understand how to be persuasive.
Why is being persuasive so important?
There is a common misconception that facts will stand for themselves and if we present them, others will follow along. Consider an executive I worked with who had a project they wanted to propose to the C-suite members of their company. In preparation, they talked me through their presentation, and while it was full of facts and logically thought throughout, it wasn’t persuasive. They made a number of key mistakes when trying to persuade: they didn’t consider the audience nor did they consider their message.
The audience
Your audience will have varying levels of ability, effort, and motivation to process your message. They may be highly motivated and will want you to provide logical arguments and reasons in your persuasive message OR they may be less motivated or have less time and will be persuaded by emotional or superficial cues. You should be prepared to engage with both levels of motivation, and target your message differently to each group.
Part of a persuasive message is demonstrating to the audience why they should care. But this should not be done without knowing your audience. Prior to crafting a persuasive message learn what you can about your audience, what are they interested in, what are their priorities, and what they care about. By doing this type of homework, you will be able to incorporate their interests and priorities into the message. The executive I worked with missed this opportunity at first, but as we worked together, they were able to incorporate company values and goals into their message. The message became more persuasive the more they learn and knew about their audience.
In addition to paying attention to the motivations and priorities of your audience, it is also important to create a connection with them. Human connection and relationships build trust, and we will be more likely to be persuasive.
Tips for building connections:
Use "we" language, and avoid “I” or “you” language.
Build trust, minimize self-interest, focus the message on group or collective interests
Use personal examples
The message
Your message is the second piece of the puzzle, and it should be crafted with the 4 C’s in mind: Consistency, Clarity, Compelling, and Certainty.
Consistency is critical to a persuasive message since variation in your message could foster doubt in your audience. Your presentation or message should be cohesive and stay on message, the use of consistent colors, text, and repetition of a key phrase are ways to be consistent.
You also want to be clear. State your request in unambiguous terms, ambiguity also leads to doubt and is not persuasive. But you also want to be compelling, so try to use a storytelling style when persuading. Building a convincing story will help with your persuasive message. To build a story into your persuasive message, begin with where you are now, where you want to go, how you will get there, and what is the end result.
Finally, remove doubt by providing certainty. Use facts, graphs, and data to craft your message, and to help your audience remove any doubts. Also use the power of human connection, by stating how many people already agree with the persuasive message or how many are satisfied with the decision or have made a similar choice in the past. Repetition also helps to remove doubt and uncertainty.
Top tips for building a persuasive presentation:
Care about the design of a slide deck
Use fewer words
Use visuals instead of words
Practice the 4 C's
Do your homework and personalize your message to your audience’s priorities
Use "we" language
Tell them why they should care, don’t leave it up to them to decide
Be direct and clear, ambiguity isn’t persuasive.
Remove uncertainty by using repetition and discussing how others are in agreement with the message
Use evidence or data to help state your case
