How to Coach Yourself and Others How to Influence, Persuade and Motivate | Page 338

personal experience, the best you can do is tell your prospects a story that
simulates an experience of your trustworthiness. Hearing your story is as
close as they can get to the firsthand experience of watching you in action.
Your goal is for the listeners to arrive at your conclusions of their own
free will. Your story needs to take them on a step-by-step tour of your
message. A persuasive story simplifies your concepts so your audience
can understand what you are talking about and what you want them to do.
We love stories to give us answers to our problems. We accept the
answers a story gives us more than if someone were to just provide us
with those answers.
Courtroom lawyers often create reenactments of events. They make the
stories so rich in sensory detail that the jury literally sees, hears, and feels
the event as it unfolded. The trial lawyer's goal is to make the description
so vivid that the jurors feel the client's distress as their own and as such
are moved by it. The more concrete and specific your descriptive details,
the more persuasive your story telling will be. Using specific details pulls
the listener into the story, making it real, making it believable.
Pack your stories with authenticity, passion, and humor. Make sure they
are straightforward and that the timeline or character development is not
confusing. A story that confuses will not convince. Use your body, voice,
props, music, or costumes if necessary. These methods intensify your
message because they reach all the senses. Engaging the senses of your
listeners will make your story more effective. If you can get your listeners
to see, hear, smell, feel, and taste the elements of your story, their
imaginations will drive them to the point of experiencing without actually
being there.
As you learn to incorporate the senses, you will find that their effects can
persuade faster than your words. For example, smells and tastes can be
very powerful. Both can evoke strong emotional memories and even
physiological reactions in your listeners. Invite them to imagine the smell
of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies and you will see noses flare and
faces relax with the feeling associated with that special aroma. Such
sensation will fill their minds with feeling. Or describe in full detail the
sensation of biting into a fresh orange. You want the experience to come
alive in their mind as if it is happening to them. Paint the picture in such a
way that it becomes so real that your audience feels a part of it. People
will participate in your stories when you let them.
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