When last did you get someone to easily do something or cause an event to happen for you simply by influence?
Do you think you have what it takes to make a person willingly agree to your idea without you being overbearing?
When we think about persuasion, we might first think about the advertising messages that urge viewers to buy a particular product, or the annoying traders in the market pulling you by the hand to patronize them, or maybe the political candidates with incentives that coerce people to throw in votes for them. While this may be part of it, persuasion is not forcing.
Persuasion is a symbolic process in which communicators try to convince other people to change their attitudes or behaviours regarding an issue through the transmission of a message in an atmosphere of free choice.
According to Brian Tracy, persuasion is influence and influencing others can make you one of the most important people in your society. And, all successful people with personal power are persuasion experts.
An employee with strong persuasion skills can influence others to perform well and succeed. A persuasive employee is also able to expedite and facilitate group decision-making. When used well, persuasion is a valuable soft skill that can have a significant impact in any workplace and life generally.
In 1955, Ella Fitzgerald had been singing professionally for almost 20 years. She was a critically acclaimed Jazz singer, yet barely known by the public because she was black at a time when racial segregation in the US was still rampant.
It was difficult for Ella to get bookings in venues that appealed to mostly-white audiences. Despite the odds against her, she set her sights on performing at Mocambo, the most famous Los Angeles jazz club.
Time and again, the club manager turned Ella down. He didn’t want to risk blowback from booking a black singer. Not only might he lose ticket sales for the night, but having a black singer could also, in his eyes, damage the club’s brand.
Still, Ella was persistent. She believed singing at Mocambo could help her enter the mainstream. So one night, in frustration, she confided to her good friend Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn was an internationally recognized white film star.
Marilyn was aghast. She picked up the phone and called the manager of Mocambo. She asked him to book Ella on the spot. The manager refused. So Marilyn sweetened the deal: if he made Ella the headliner of Mocambo for a week, she’d sit in the front row every night Ella was there.
The manager considered the offer. He’d get enormous attention by announcing Marilyn was in the house each night. “The press will go wild,” Marilyn reaffirmed to him. He was convinced and agreed to make Ella the headliner at Mocambo.
As promised, Marilyn sat in the front row every night Ella played. Despite still-rampant racism, the club was at maximum capacity each night. And the crowd that initially came to see Marilyn quickly fell in love with Ella’s sultry jazz voice.
That week launched Ella Fitzgerald as a bona fide singing star. She never again played at a small venue and it was thanks to her persistence, her amazing talent, and some persuasive help from a friend named Marilyn Monroe.
You and I may not have the persuasive power of Marilyn Monroe or the vocal prowess of Ella Fitzgerald, but we can still learn a lot from what they were able to do at Mocambo more than sixty years ago.
When we want to create shifts on our team and in the world, we can notice where our power lies and anticipate objections to our proposals with ready-made solutions that are hard to turn down.
The power of persuasion is of extraordinary and critical importance in today’s world. Nearly every human encounter includes an attempt to gain influence or to persuade others to our way of thinking. Regardless of age, profession, religion, or philosophical beliefs, people are always trying to persuade each other. We all want to be able to persuade and influence so others will listen to, trust, and follow us.
The ability to persuade is power, for good or for bad. Think of all the people in your life who have persuaded you to reach higher and achieve greatness. Persuasive people keep kids off drugs, prevent wars, and improve lives. Of course, persuasive people also get kids on drugs, stir up wars, and destroy lives. We want to focus on the power of persuasion for the improvement and betterment of ourselves, our friends and families, and our communities.
If you are being sincere with yourself, the reason you haven’t achieved some goals, signed some deals and whatnot is because you have not successfully harnessed the power to persuade and influence anyone. Nobody listens to you. Nobody accepts the ideas you propose. You, unfortunately, don’t have as much influence on people as you ought to. Needless to say, the power of persuasion makes the world go round.
To persuade or influence, you must be confident. Your first step is to remain and project confidence throughout the entirety of your appeal. The more confident you are, the more convincing your arguments are going to sound, and the more powerful you’re going to appear.
Secondly, Make it seem like a win-win situation. This is where you buttress the benefit the other party will get at the end of the day. One of the more effective means of persuasion is making your request seem valuable and beneficial to the other party like in the case of Marilyn Monroe who sweetened a deal by offering to sit in the front row if the manager made Ella the headliner of Mocambo. If you are to sell a glass of water to me, what benefit will I get from drinking your water? If you want to persuade someone to quit smoking, what is the benefit they get when they quit smoking?
Lastly, be patient but persistent. You can’t always persuade your subject to give you what you want on the first try. If you’re unsuccessful, don’t resort to pleading, begging, arguing or forcing them or getting our character. Instead, let the situation go, recollect yourself, and restrategize on other tactics to get them in your corner.
As Aristotle said, “Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion.”
