The Unique Advantage of Persuasion in the Business World

The good news about persuasion in business and business communication is at some level it’s a thousand times easier than persuasion.

In other aspects of life it my 5 year old daughter tries to persuade me to buy her a motorcycle.

She can use every trick in the book.

It’s not going to work.

So many aspects of life were trying to convince a family member a friend to do something they absolutely do not want to do.

Do not believe in and you could promise anything you could say anything good offer bribes.

You’re not going to persuade them.

So a lot of what makes successful people in business successful persuaders is they only try to focus on people who are in fact persuadable people who are in their target market.

So if you want to be persuadable a lot of what you’ve got to do is find the people who actually want what you’re trying to either sell or do or improve.

And don’t waste time trying to persuade people who are not persuadable.

Now this sounds like obvious advice at this point you may be looking around.

Where’s that button for the refund for this course here on Udemy.

Bear with me.

Obviously if you have a new steakhouse you don’t want to spend your time going to meet ups for vegetarians.

It’s not going to matter how good you are how charming you are how persuasive you are in general you’re not going to persuade a bunch of vegetarians to start coming to your steak house that often if you are trying to persuade people to fund your startup company you aren’t going to be very successful if you only target people who’ve never invested in anything other than mutual funds and they want something that’s very conservative staid traditional liquid.

They’re not going to invest in something highly risky like a startup.

You in fact need to focus your energies on pitching people who invest in startups.

If you’re looking for angel funding you need to pitch.

Angels don’t go after the large gigantic venture capital firms that want to see a company that’s already up and running and has a lot of things in place.

You need to focus on people who actually do the things you want to do normally are headed in that direction.

Me give you an example.

I’ve been doing presentation training and media training for more than 30 years and I like to think I’m a pretty good presenter good at persuading every so often I’ll have someone call me up and say Well T.J. this boss of mine or this colleague really needs presentation training.

I want to get a conference call together and I want you to persuade this person to do it because he doesn’t want to do it or she doesn’t want to do it.

And I always say no thanks and they look at me like What are you talking about.

You have your own business of course you want to be pitching your wares all the time and say well now because I’ve actually never once in my entire career persuaded somebody to hire me for public speaking training persuasion training if they didn’t already want it I’ve never convince someone to do this.

If they didn’t want to do it first.

So I am remarkably unpersuasive in convincing people to do public speaking training or media training.

But here’s what I’m good at.

If somebody has already decided that they want public speaking training they want to improve their presentation skills and persuasion skills.

They want to do it by a set time because they have some new initiative.

A big speech coming up a media interview and it’s so important to them.

They’ve allocated money or they’ve come up with a budget and they’ve decided they’re definitely going to not just use somebody local or their PR person but they want a professional.

Give me someone like that and I am remarkably persuasive that that person should hire me because they fit my screen.

They’re actually a good prospect.

I don’t waste time cold calling I don’t waste time trying to convince anyone to buy my services or to hire me.

I focus on people who already have any have already decided they’re going to hire me and that’s who I talk to and I close a very high rate of those.

Now you might not be trying to sell your own services as an independent contractor or freelancer or professional you may be a part of a larger organization.

You’re still selling something you’re selling your idea you still have to have people ready to buy in and so you’ve got to figure out who in your company who in your organization is actually interested in this.

If you come up with a new plan to save money.

Focus on pitching that to the people who care most about saving money.

Figure out what is driving the people in your organization or if it’s your prospects or clients.

What is really motivating them what do they want already.

And what is it you’re trying to convince them to do that helps them go where they’re going anyway.

That’s so much of persuasion is trying to figure out what’s the overlap between what you want and what this other person out there in your organization or someone dealing with your organization.

Where are they trying to go.

Let’s figure that out so it can in fact be a win win.

Back to that steakhouse.

If you convince somebody as a vegetarian to come to your steak house and eat all your steak that may be a short term win for you.

But it’s not helping that person because that person is a vegetarian.

You trick them into eating the steak because you were so persuasive.

Oh well that’s just all made of soy.

It’s no problem.

And they eat it.

They’re likely to get sick.

That doesn’t help them.

It doesn’t help you.

And if you’re not really helping the person and they get disappointed that’s going to hurt you in the long run.

So the rule here there is you’ve got to have focus and try to persuade people who are in fact persuadable.

If there’s somebody in your organization and you know that no matter what anyone says no matter how good the idea is their first response is always.

No that’s a horrible idea.

Don’t spend your time bitching that person first Don’t try to persuade that person first persuade the person who’s likely to benefit the most from your idea who’s likely to champion it who’s likely to try to help persuade other people.

That’s where you focus.