Becoming a Master of Persuasion
April 27, 2008
by Brian Tracy: Excerpt From: "Sales Success"
Persuasion power can help you get more of the things you want faster than anything else you do. It can mean the difference between success and failure. It
can guarantee your progress and enable you to use all of your other skills and
abilities at the very highest level. Your persuasion power will earn you the
support and respect of your customers, bosses, coworkers, colleagues and
friends. The ability to persuade others to do what you want them to do can make
you one of the most important people in your community.
Fortunately, persuasion is a skill, like riding a bicycle, that you can learn
through study and practice. Your job is to become absolutely excellent at
influencing and motivating others to support and assist you in the achievement
of your goals and the solving of your problems.
You can either persuade others to help you or be persuaded to help them. It is
one or the other. Most people are not aware that every human interaction
involves a complex process of persuasion and influence. And being unaware, they
are usually the ones being persuaded to help others rather than the ones who are
doing the persuading.
The key to persuasion is motivation. Every human action is motivated by
something. Your job is to find out what motivates other people and then to
provide that motivation. People have two major motivations: the desire for gain
and the fear of loss. The desire for gain motivates people to want more of the
things they value in life. They want more money, more success, more health, more
influence, more respect, more love and more happiness. Human wants are limited
only by individual imagination. No matter how much a person has, he or she still
wants more and more. When you can show a person how he or she can get more of
the things he or she wants by helping you achieve your goals, you can motivate
them to act in your behalf.
President Eisenhower once said that, "Persuasion is the art of getting people to
do what you want them to do, and to like it." You need always to be thinking
about how you can get people to want to do the things that you need them to do
to attain your objectives.
People are also motivated to act by the fear of loss. This fear, in all its
various forms, is often stronger than the desire for gain. People fear financial
loss, loss of health, anger or disapproval of others, loss of the love of
someone and the loss of anything they have worked hard to accomplish. They fear
change, risk and uncertainty because these threaten them with potential losses.
Whenever you can show a person that, by doing what you want them to do, they can
avoid a loss of some kind, you can influence them to take a particular action.
The very best appeals are those where you offer an opportunity to gain and an
opportunity to avoid loss at the same time.
There are two ways to get the things you want in life. First, you can work by
yourself and for yourself in your own best interest. You can be a "Robinson
Crusoe" of modern life, relying on yourself for the satisfaction of your needs.
By doing this, you can accomplish a little, but not a lot. The person who looks
to himself or herself completely is limited in his or her capacities. He or she
will never be rich or successful.
The second way to get the things you want is by gaining and using leverage.
Leverage allows you to multiply yourself and get far more out of the hours you
put in rather than doing everything yourself.
There are three forms of leverage you must develop to fulfill your full
potential in our society: other people's efforts, other people's knowledge, and
other people's money.
You leverage yourself through other people's efforts by getting other people to
work with you and for you in the accomplishment of your objectives. Sometimes
you can ask them to help you voluntarily, although people won't work for very
long without some personal reward. At other times you can hire them to help you,
thereby freeing you up to do higher-value work.
One of the most important laws of economics is called "Ricardo's Law." It is
also called the Law of Comparative Advantage. This law states that when someone
can accomplish a part of your task at a lower hourly rate than you would earn
for accomplishing more valuable parts of your task, you should delegate or
outsource that part of the task.
For example, if you want to earn $100,000 a year, in a 250 day year, you need to
make $50.00 per hour. That means you must be doing work that is worth $50.00 per
hour, eight hours per day, 250 days per year. Therefore, if there is any part of
your work—like making photocopies, filing information, typing letters, or
filling out expense forms—that is not valued at $50.00 per hour, you should stop
doing it. You should persuade someone else who works at a lower hourly rate to
do it for you. The more lower level tasks you can persuade others to do, the
more time you will have to do tasks that pay you higher amounts of money. This
is one of the essential keys to getting the leverage you need to become one of
the higher paid people in your profession.
Management can be defined as "getting things done through others." To be a
manager you must be an expert at persuading and influencing others to work in a
common direction. This is why all excellent managers are also excellent
low-pressure salespeople. They do not order people to do things; instead, they
persuade them to accept certain responsibilities, with specific deadlines and
agreed-upon standards of performance. When a person has been persuaded that he
or she has a vested interest in doing a job well, he or she accepts ownership of
the job and the result. Once a person accepts ownership and responsibility, the
manager can step aside confidently, knowing the job will be done on schedule.
In every part of your life, you have a choice of either doing it yourself or
delegating it to others. Your ability to get someone else to take on the job
with the same enthusiasm that you would have is an exercise in personal
persuasion. It may seem to take a little longer at the beginning, but it saves
you an enormous amount of time in the completion of the task.
The second form of leverage that you must develop for success in America is
other people's knowledge. You must be able to tap into the brain power of many
other people if you want to accomplish worthwhile goals. Successful people are
not those who know everything needed to accomplish a particular task, but more
often than not, they are people who know how to find the knowledge they need.
What is the knowledge that you need to achieve your most important goals? Of the
knowledge required, what knowledge must you have personally in order to control
your situation, and what knowledge can you borrow, buy, or rent from others?
It has been said that, in our information-based society, you are never more than
one book or two phone calls away from any piece of knowledge in the country.
With on-line computer services that access huge data bases all over the country,
you can usually get the precise information you require in a few minutes by
using a personal computer. Whenever you need information and expertise from
another person in order to achieve your goals, the very best way to persuade
them to help you is to ask them for their assistance.
Almost everyone who is knowledgeable in a particular area is proud of their
accomplishments. By asking a person for their expert advice, you compliment them
and motivate them to want to help you. So don't be afraid to ask, even if you
don't know the individual personally.
The third key to leverage, which is very much based on your persuasive
abilities, is other people's money. Your ability to use other people's money and
resources to leverage your talents is the key to financial success. Your ability
to buy and defer payment, to sell and collect payment in advance, to borrow,
rent or lease furniture, fixtures and machinery, and to borrow money from people
to help you multiply your opportunities is one of the most important of all
skills that you can develop. And these all depend on your ability to persuade
others to cooperate with you financially so that you can develop the leverage
you need to move onward and upward in your field.
There are four "Ps" that will enhance your ability to persuade others in both
your work and personal life. They are power, positioning, performance, and
politeness. And they are all based on perception.
The first "P" is power. The more power and influence that a person perceives
that you have, whether real or not, the more likely it is that that person will
be persuaded by you to do the things you want them to do. For example, if you
appear to be a senior executive, or a wealthy person, people will be much more
likely to help you and serve you than they would be if you were perceived to be
a lower level employee.
The second "P" is positioning. This refers to the way that other people think
about you and talk about you when you are not there. Your positioning in the
mind and heart of other people largely determines how open they are to being
influenced by you.
In everything you do involving other people, you are shaping and influencing
their perceptions of you and your positioning in their minds. Think about how
you could change the things you say and do so that people think about you in
such a way that they are more open to your requests and to helping you achieve
your goals.
The third "P" is performance. This refers to your level of competence and
expertise in your area. A person who is highly respected for his or her ability
to get results is far more persuasive and influential than a person who only
does an average job.
The perception that people have of your performance capabilities exerts an
inordinate influence on how they think and feel about you. You should commit
yourself to being the very best in your field. Sometimes, a reputation for being
excellent at what you do can be so powerful that it alone can make you an
extremely persuasive individual in all of your interactions with the people
around you. They will accept your advice, be open to your influence and agree
with your requests.
The fourth "P" of persuasion power is politeness. People do things for two
reasons, because they want to and because they have to. When you treat people
with kindness, courtesy and respect, you make them want to do things for you.
They are motivated to go out of their way to help you solve your problems and
accomplish your goals. Being nice to other people satisfies one of the deepest
of all subconscious needs, the need to feel important and respected. Whenever
you convey this to another person in your conversation, your attitude and your
treatment of that person, he or she will be wide open to being persuaded and
influenced by you in almost anything you need.
Again, perception is everything. The perception of an individual is his or her
reality. People act on the basis of their perceptions of you. If you change
their perceptions, you change the way they think and feel about you, and you
change the things that they will do for you.
You can become an expert at personal persuasion. You can develop your personal
power by always remembering that there are only two ways to get the things you
want in life, you can do it all yourself, or you can get most of it done by
others. Your ability to communicate, persuade, negotiate, influence, delegate
and interact effectively with other people will enable you to develop leverage
using other people's efforts, other people's knowledge and other people's money.
The development of your persuasion power will enable you to become one of the
most powerful and influential people in your organization. It will open up doors
for you in every area of your life.
"Learn how to influence others -- Simply by using your words"
Your ability to communicate with others will account for fully 85% of your success in your business and in your life.
Would you like to be able to influence people you speak with, and get them to agree with your point of view?
How well you communicate, influence, persuade, and negotiate will ultimately determine the quality of your life.
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About the author: Brian Tracy is a leader in the field of human development. He is a millionaire, entrepreneur, businessman, author, and motivational speaker. He is also Chairman and CEO of www.BrianTracy.com
. He is the best-selling author of more than 17 books and over 300 audio and video learning programs.
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