The 5 Key Messages for Your Persuasion Success

As we’ve discussed in earlier lectures most people give way too much data.

Way too many facts messages.

Talking points when they are trying to persuade somebody in the workplace.

My recommendation is get stare at that one sentence of what you’re trying to get people to do and then before you write out a PowerPoint slide deck or a whole speech or a long memo just sit back get comfortable put your feet on the desk if that works for you and brainstorm on every possible message you have that could in fact motivate the person you’re speaking to to do what you want.

You’re looking at it through that screen not every single interesting fact.

Obviously not the process.

Obviously you’re trying to isolate messages that will in fact motivate your person you’re speaking to to do what you want to persuade them to do what you want and you may come up with 50 100 200 messages.

Don’t limit it.

But here’s the catch I want you to narrow your messages down to your top five why do I say that I work with business executives.

United Nations officials government officials in their workplaces all over the world.

And I always ask them when someone’s giving you some pitch a presentation trying to persuade you on something.

They get the best speaker you’ve seen in your office in your industry at a convention in the last year plus five years maybe ever.

Now don’t tell me what you like about their presentation that they were funny or they moved around or I don’t care about that.

I want to know what do you actually remember about their presentation their talk the way they tried to persuade you.

What do you remember of the actual messages the substance.

Now in all the years I’ve asked people that quite often the response is well teach everybody in our field is boring.

I don’t remember anything.

Sometimes it’s one message occasionally it’s two sometimes three messages every three four months someone will say how.

Yeah T.J. there was this fantastic speaker at our annual convention who persuaded us and then they’ll tell me maybe four points every six months or so.

I’ll have someone who says yes T.J. I remember the best speaker I’ve ever seen in my life.

And they remembered five points.

Now I’ve asked more than 10000 people that question over the last 30 years I have never yet had anyone remember more than five key messages five key ideas from any presentation in the workplace from any sales pitch or any other form of a pitch.

So that’s why I say to you narrow it down less is more.

You’ve heard that cliche again some cliches are true.

We don’t like to follow it but it is true.

So if you want to be persuasive a lot of it has nothing to do with a silver tongue or a nice smile on your face or whether you get someone free tickets to the professional sporting event.

Those things might help but so much of what will really determine whether you are successful when you persuade is just do you have the willingness and ability to sit back maybe close your eyes really think and really narrow down to your top five messages.

Of course they should be important messages to you but if they’re not important messages relevant interesting messages to the person you’re speaking to get rid of it throw it in the trash can.

Maybe you come up with 10 messages that are important to you that you think might motivate the person you’re speaking to.

That’s still too much.

You’ve got to put them in priority from least important to most important and then get rid of anything that doesn’t make your Top five.