Persuade More By talking Less

The most persuasive people in many offices are often the people who speak the least who talk the least when they are trying to persuade people.

What do I mean by that if you’re not pitching How do you persuade anyone.

What I mean is you’ve got to really listen to the person you’re trying to persuade.

Now whether it’s an outside client prospect or someone internally it’s always good to first ask people about their needs.

What are they looking for.

What’s the source of problem irritation pain and what do you have.

What solutions do you have whether it’s a product a service an idea a budget concept.

What is it you have that you now want to persuade them to do that you think will solve that.

The more you can find out about what their actual source of conflict is of pain of need then you can tailor your pitch to them.

Big problem so many people have is they’ve got some products some service some idea they’re so excited about it they’re so confident in all their abilities they have a chance to pitch to someone and they just start talking and talking and talking it’s one sided and if they had just listened to what the person was saying they could completely tailor their pitch presentation in a different way and it could be 100 percent responsive.

So one of the first things you should do whether it’s a client prospect or customer prospect or someone within your company is ask a bunch of questions.

Find out what is it they are looking for.

If they specifically are looking for a service you offer.

Ask them what is the deciding factor in their decision process going to be.

Believe it or not people actually tell you quite often.

People tell me this all the time I ask them and if they say and they’re based on the other side of the country they say our number one factor is is the person local and there is zero transportation cost.

I know this is not a good prospect for me and I’ll maybe try to get them to do an online training but beyond that I simply know it’s not a good fit.

On the other hand if they say well we really want someone who is experienced and has gray hair because the CEO is very arrogant and is more than 60 and he only wants to deal with some then I’ll mention a Hey I got gray hair and I’ve been doing this for thirty five years.

So you’ve got to really listen to the people to find out what is going to be their decision process what’s going to motivate them and then you can tailor your messages in a way that’s even more specific.

So always ask they might not tell you they may give you something General if you’re trying to persuade somebody to hire your ad agency and they’ve cast a wide net and they are a ketchup company they’re going to say well we are going to hire the advertising agency that has the most creative approach to sell more ketchup.

It may be obvious but it might not be.

You can still ask them what’s wrong with the incumbent firm What are you looking for that your current agency isn’t doing.

What’s going to be your decision process in the deciding factor.

So always ask and because of that you have to realize when you’re trying to persuade someone you can’t walk into this with a sensible here’s my deck and I’m gonna go through the duct.

So.

No it’s not your PowerPoint presentation it’s not your deck it’s not your speech it’s not your presentation it’s the other person’s presentation it’s all about them.

So you’ve got to listen be in the moment be present and then put out messages that are the most relevant to your prospects.

That’s the way you’ll be much more persuadable.