The art of persuasion is a highly useful skill. In business, it is what you can use to get a promotion, to make a sale or to encourage a particular business decision. At home, it is what you can use to watch what you want on television, or to encourage your partner to move to another part of the country.
In short, we are forced to work with people all the time and if you don’t want to be constantly making compromises, then it can be highly useful to learn how to persuade.
Here we will look at a few tips that can help you to more effectively accomplish this:
Be Personal
If you are making a sale to someone that you don’t know, then making it personal can help a great deal. Introduce yourself and then make sure to keep saying that person’s name so that they feel like they don’t want to ‘let you down’.
Make Them Obligated
The urge to reciprocate is an incredibly powerful aspect of human behavior. In other words, if someone does something nice for you then you will be overcome with the desire to do something nice back. In fact, studies show that when you give someone money, they will almost always give you back significantly more just to feel equal again.
To use this in a business context, you might decide to give someone a freebie or to offer them a cup of tea when they come into your store. In your personal life, you can really get creative!
Appeal to Authorities
People trust authority figures and if you can appeal to statistics, studies or authorities then it will lend weight to your argument. So don’t tell someone your product is great – tell them it is great according to studies. Likewise building on established facts is also a good strategy. Find something you can both agree on and then showing how that belief supports your argument is a strategy that often works well.
Stay Quiet
Just as people have an urge to reciprocate, they also have an urge to fill silences. If you can make your point or your offer and then remain quiet, you’ll find that the other person often feels compelled to say something – and to break the tension they will often say what you want to hear. In any standoff, the person to speak first is usually the person who loses!
