Master the Key to Motivation and Persuasion

OK.

You’ve isolated in one sentence what it is you want that person or those people you’re communicating with to do.

You’ve got it right in front of you.

Now what I want you to do is to brainstorm every possible message you have that might motivate them to do what you want to do.

Now this could apply to a marriage proposal solicitation for a financial investment in a startup.

A request for a raise for approval of a budget or trying to get your child to clean his or her room.

It could apply to anything but the important part is you kind of step out of your set ideas and all the things you want and you look at it through the lens of what’s going to motivate the people I’m actually communicating with to do what I want them to do because what motivates them is different than what is motivating you.

So you’ve kind of look at it from the perspective of the people you’re communicating with.

My recommendation brainstorm on every possible message.

And sometimes it might be simple if it’s getting your kid to clean the room.

The only motivation may be you can’t leave the house go play with your friends until you do it.

Sometimes it may be that specific.

But let’s face it most of the time in life when we’re trying to communicate with customers clients colleagues co-workers bosses government officials others we don’t have that coercive relationship or that position of authority that we might with a small child or a little older child either.

So we have to be more persuasive and speak in a more motivating way.

So you’ve got to isolate every possible motivating message and idea that you could use to convince the person you’re speaking with.

But here’s the thing here’s the tricky part.

Here’s where people get hung up.

You can’t tell them everything.

You can’t overwhelm people with a hundred and eighty nine ideas of why your vacation plans are better or why your plans for this new branding logo better than theirs.

You’ve got to narrow it down.

So much of being a good communicator has nothing to do with your eye contact your hand gestures the quality of your voice.

It’s about judgment and really figuring out what not to say to that friend or family member or colleague or investor figuring out what is not essential.

Instead you have to focus on what is essential.

Now the rule of thumb I give all of my clients who are coming to me to help with their speeches and their presentations is no more than five ideas.

Even if you have an hour to speak if you’re talking to a colleague down the hall and you’re trying to get one quick decision on one relatively small issue you may want to focus on just one idea whatever the most motivating message that is and then spend maybe just two minutes on that as you’re walking down the hall.

So there’s a judgment call you’ve got to really narrow it down.

Many times it’s just going to be one message.

If you’re talking to the news media and it’s a full fledged interview three messages a big speech presentation no more than five messages.

Are there times when you want to go into more detail.

Sure.

Let’s say you’re trying to talk to a spouse about a huge life decision of moving to another continent or the other side of the country and uprooting your life.

That may be something that you talk about over a period of months.

So maybe there are dozens if not hundreds of messages you have to figure out how much time do I have to communicate with this person.

How can I make the most of it.

So what I want you to do now in this exercise is look at what you’re trying to get an audience member to do was or I don’t want to make it sound like it’s all about public speaking.

It could be a family member a friend a colleague what is it you want this person to do.

Now brainstorm on every possible message that can make them want to do it.

And for the purposes of this exercise narrow it down to the top three not three big themes with seven sub points just three ideas.

And I want you to write that down in the Q and A section so that you’ve got focus and I know what you’re trying to do.