How to Coach Yourself and Others Influencing, Inter Personal and Leadership Skills | Page 28

4. Powerful Persuasion Techniques
“They who influence the thoughts of their times, influence all the times that follow. They
have made their impression on eternity.”
Influence and the psychology of persuasion.
Whether you are writing an advertisement, an email to a friend, an inter-office memo,
hoping to change a family member’s actions, or trying to convince a group of people to
come over to your way of thinking, you need to know the methods top persuaders use to
change people’s thinking and get them to take action.
Here is a collection of the most persuasive techniques used by politicians, advertising
copywriters, spin-doctors, propaganda writers, lawyers…anybody who ha s to change an
individual’s mind–or groups of people’s minds–quickly.
A person could use these techniques to get people to do things they wouldn’t ordinarily
do, change their beliefs, get them to change their minds, get them to take action.
I’ll give some short examples for each technique in an advertisement using the
fictitious Special-J Dog Food. I’ve tried to sum up each technique with a sentence or two,
but you could expand each one into a few sentences or paragraphs. That would make
the techniques you are using much more powerful.
1. Appeal to Identity
Who a person is and how they see themselves is an incredibly important influence tool,
maybe the most important of them all. If you can tie in what you want with what
their identity would do in a similar situation, you’d have a very good chance of getting
him or her to do it. As a matter of fact, if you’re convincing enough, you would cause
inner conflict that would compel them to act in the way you want.
Of course people have more than one identity. They combine with their roles in life and
how they see themselves. Many of these are fairly universal: being a good parent, a
good friend, a good manager, being interesting, honest, etc.
Another use of the Appeal to Their Identity is the use of Labels. What positive label
could you put on the person(s) you are writing to?
Here are some frames you can use for labelling someone:
* You’re a natural _______. (“You’re a natural entrepreneur.”)
* You’re not the type of person who _______. (“You’re not the type of person who would
lie .” The label here? Honest.)
* One thing I really like about you is _______. (“One thing I really like about you is your
open-mindedness.“)
* Unlike other ______, you’re ________. (“Unlike other managers, you’re generous.“)
The above frames are very useful in buttering a person up before asking them to do
something for you. You would use one of the above frames and then make a request
that would cause a conflict with the label you gave them. So, if I used the, “Unlike other