How to Coach Yourself and Others Influencing, Inter Personal and Leadership Skills | Page 39

2/ Monroe’s Motivated Sequence of Persuasion Steps
In the 1930s, John Monroe developed a series of steps that he believed were the keys to
persuading another individual. The steps are:
• Attention
• Need
• Satisfaction
• Visualization
• Action
1. Attention
To get someone to listen to your argument, you need to get their attention. You have
about five seconds when talking to someone to engage their attention before they will
lose focus. You Can do this in several ways.
• Use their name with a tone that conveys urgency or importance
• Use emotion to demonstrate your position – smile, frown, be exasperated – whatever
emotion conveys the strength of your position
• Physically touch them if you have the level of rapport where this is appropriate. Put
your hand on their forearm or shoulder to draw their attention.
• Bring up a topic that you know they are passionate about and segue into your
argument – but be sure there is a valid connection so you don’t seem to be changing the
topic too quickly
• Start with a statement that conveys the benefit of your position for the other person
2. Need
Once you have the other person’s attention, work to keep it. You can lose their attention
as quickly as you have it if the other person doesn’t see the need to continue listening.
To keep the other person’s attention, you have to be familiar with what is important to
them. What do they want? What do they value? Why should they care about your side of
the argument? Once you can answer these questions, you are ready to ‘hook’ the
listener by focusing on what they care about.
3. Satisfaction
In this step, you describe to the listener how your position will meet the need you
addressed in the previous step. Will your solution solve their problem? Will it prevent
them from having to deal with additional problems? In other words, what benefits will
the listener receive if they are persuaded by your argument. Or what negative
consequences will they avoid?
4. Visualization
Visualization means that you can create a picture for the listener of what the situation
will look like once they have been persuaded to accept your position or agree to your
decision. Help them do this by describing what the world will be like ‘after’ they agree
with you. For example, use language like:
• Imagine what it will be like when you no longer have to…
• Can you see how this would reduce your work load (solve your problem, increase your
profits, etc.)