Hello and welcome back to the Skills 360 podcast. I’m your host, Tim Simmons, and today we’re going to continue our look at how to develop a persuasive approach in business.
Facts and credibility are important if you want to persuade. But people aren’t robots, and decision-making isn’t purely rational. That’s why the most persuasive businesspeople know how to connect with people, how to work with them emotionally. After all, you’re working with humans, not algorithms.
Connecting with people could simply mean being warm and friendly. That softens people up, not just emotionally but intellectually. Being cold and unfriendly may make them less receptive to whatever you have to say. Investing a bit of time in personal connection will really pay off.
Now some of you may be thinking that “warm and friendly” may be effective, but it’s just not your style. Well, being friendly doesn’t mean you have to go to extremes. At minimum, it’s about empathy and interest. I mean, if you can show you are able to consider things from the other person’s perspective, they’ll be more open. And you don’t have to have the gift of the gab to show interest in the other person, simply asking questions about them will do the trick.
Besides making people more open, showing interest will give you valuable information. The salesperson who thinks that one approach or strategy will work for every type of buyer is deluded. You need to be adaptable. Your approach will change depending on how someone thinks or what motivates them. And you can uncover these things by asking them questions.
If you get a peek inside their minds and hearts, then you can more effectively appeal to people’s emotions. And there are many emotions to tap into. You might activate fear by saying something like this: “if we don’t do this, there’s a real risk that sales will continue to drop.” Or you might leverage hope by saying “with this plan, none of us will have to work a weekend again!” Or you can inspire pride by saying “if we do this right, it’ll put us on the map as leaders in the field.”
One particularly powerful feeling that everyone seeks is a sense of belonging. That is, people want a shared identity and connection. They want to feel a part of a team, or a group, or something even bigger. And that’s why it’s useful to say things like this: “This isn’t just my idea; the entire industry is moving this way.” Or something like this: “Do you want to join the innovators? Or do you want to lag behind as a follower?”
This example of “innovators” and “followers” highlights a useful little technique we call contrasting. Basically, you set up two sides, or two opposing ideas. One of them includes the idea you believe in, and the other is quite clearly unappealing. For example, you might say “sure, we can cut corners today and see what happens, or we can make an investment in the long-term.”
Now, could it be a bit too simplistic to say that there are just two options like this? Isn’t it exaggerating the different approaches? For sure. But it works because people respond to a technique called hyperbole. This is something that many popular politicians use. Hyperbole is just a fancy word for exaggeration, or making things seem more extreme than they really are.
Say you’re advocating for a particular marketing approach, and you say, “with a campaign like this, we’ll reach every single household in the region.” Will you really reach every household? No, of course not. But the statement is impactful, whether or not it is literally true. Or think about something like: “This partnership could be the single most important decision in our company’s history.” Whose ears wouldn’t perk up at a statement like that?
I hope you can see now how persuasion isn’t purely an exercise in logic. It’s not just people’s minds that you need to consider, but also their hearts. That’s why we try to make a connection with them emotionally, or personally. We try to learn about them so we can adapt our approach. We appeal to a broad range of their emotions. And we use techniques like contrast and hyperbole to ramp up the impact of our ideas.
That’s all for today. So long. And see you again soon!
