The Art of Woo
March 3, 2008 by admin
Filed under Books, Persuasion, Sales
Using Strategic Persuasion to Sell Your Ideas
by G. Richard Shell & Mario Moussa
(27100)
Relationship-based persuasion almost always follows a distinctive and repeatable four-stop process:
The Art of Woo provides tools for a critically important activity in professional life: selling your ideas to people within the context of ongoing, important relationships. If you want to be a player in your organization, a successful partner with your customers or suppliers, a leader in your community, or even a good parent, you need to woo people to your point of view by putting your ideas across in convincing, relationship-friendly ways. Regardless of the context for your idea sale, the four-step Woo process constitutes the best practice for this art.
–G. Richard Shell and Mario Moussa
Sell your ideas or WOO (Win Others Over):
1. Survey your situation:
2. Confront the five barriers:
3. Make your pitch:
4. Secure commitments:
Deal with politics
Creating Win-Win Situations through Persuading Electronically
February 4, 2008 by admin
Filed under Negotiation, Persuasion, Sales
(16425) Dave Lakhani says:
To persuade effectively nowadays, you have to learn how to persuade electronically using Internet technologies. This is such an important source of information for business people that it is rapidly becoming the first place people turn for new ideas. If people can’t find you when they need your product or service, you’re missing out on a lot of business.
The key areas to get up to speed with in terms of using electronic media to persuade effectively are:
WebsitesHave a website which matches your persona and the image of your company. Effective websites:
Blogs Web-based logs that are easily edited. Blogs give you an outlet for your ideas and a place where others can comment. Blogs can create exclusive access to you in a way that the people you’re attempting to persuade will find very alluring and compelling.
Teleseminars There are Internet-delivered seminars that people can participate in from their own computers rather than having to be there in person. Teleseminars are great for persuasion because they combine audio and visual components. Previously run teleseminars can then be made available through your website for others to view. The more information you pack into your teleseminar, the greater the potential value it will have.
Podcasting Effectively this is a do-it-yourself radio show broadcast over the Internet. People can download what you’ve put together to their digital music devices and then listen to it at whatever time best suits them. Podcasts can be set up to whatever level of professionalism you decide, so it’s important to have podcasts that enhance your image as an expert in your field. Podcasting is very tightly focused, but is emerging as a key persuasive technology of the future.
Creating Win-Win Situations through Negotiation
February 1, 2008 by admin
Filed under Negotiation, Persuasion, Sales
(16424) Dave Lakhani says:
In theory, good negotiations are win-win. The reality is, however, superior persuaders can craft an arrangement that is not optimal for either party and yet which both sides find acceptable. It doesn’t really matter which party feels like they have “won” or “lost” as long as everyone understands and agrees with the reasons for the conclusion reached.
Ideally you want to begin the persuasive negotiation process from a position of power and authority. To do this, you need to be fully informed about:
The key steps in negotiating persuasively are:
1. Let the other party present their proposal first and you may be pleasantly surprised to find they are offering more acceptable terms than you were going to ask for in the first place. This is great, because the negotiation is over before it even starts. It also lets you adjust your pitch to suit.
2. Test your assumption about what is truly negotiable and what is not by asking some questions and posing some scenarios for the other party to respond to. Stress that different is fine as long as both parties are fine with that.
3. Once you test something, put the idea on the back burner and agree on inconsequential items first by looking at the areas you know you will be able to agree upon. Build some momentum.
4. Don’t respond to emotional issues but acknowledge them openly and keep focused on the key issue at hand. Remember, you can always walk away if necessary so mention that if they keep dwelling on irrelevancies.
5. Lay your cards on the table openly and succinctly and make sure the other party knows precisely what you’re asking for. This is a time for clarity, not ambiguity. This often breaks an impasse. For example, if you disclose that accepting their offer would bankrupt you, obviously you’re not going to do that. They need to know where you stand.
6. When you’ve come to a tentative agreement on the best way to move forward, reiterate what the next steps will be and clarify what each party will do. Don’t assume that they view things the same way you do, but be very specific about what needs to happen next.
7. To seal the agreement, continue to persuade meaning do something tangible to follow up. Have dinner with them. Give them some kind of gift or sample. Acknowledge their contribution to your negotiation.
Creating Win-Win Situations through Advertising
January 31, 2008 by admin
Filed under Negotiation, Persuasion, Sales
(16423) Dave Lakhani says:
The key to good advertising is to find your own message and drive it home. You won’t do that by using bits and pieces of your competitor’s ads. Instead, you have to tell the story only you can tell. You want ads that are so distinctive a competitor couldn’t come along and insert their logo instead of yours and run the same ads themselves.
Profitable and persuasive ads follow two straightforward steps:
1. Develop ads that interrupt and tell a persuasive story in and of themselves. First and foremost keep in mind that you’re trying to tell a story that will gently interrupt, persuade and then compel the audience to take some action. To grab attention, you need a headline that compels you to read or hear more. The body of the ad should then be a one-on-one conversation that tells an interesting story, answers questions and provides motivation to either learn more or take action. Persuasive ads use words and images to create dynamic pictures in the minds of prospective customers. They dramatize what the results will be if you do not use the product or service offered, and do so congruently rather than reading like a shopping list flung together for convenience. Great ads focus on one idea or one action item, and have a clear and concise call to take the next logical action. Persuasive ads have a rhythm and pace that figuartively lifts prospective customers and compels them to take action.
2. Measure the effectiveness of your ads. Pure and simple, the only measure of how well your ads are working is how much more or less business you have this year compared with last year. The only way you can track this is by measuring what sales are generated by which specific ads. To do this:
It really doesn’t matter how you track your ads as long as you actually do it. There is no substitute for good information. By tracking what makes some of your offers more persuasive than others, you gradually learn how to make your ads more persuasive. This will be far more profitable for you over a number of years than anything you could ever achieve by copying what your competitors are doing.
The 5 Paths to Persuasion
January 30, 2008 by admin
Filed under Books, Persuasion, Sales
The Art of Selling Your Message
by Robert Miller and Gary Williams (09000)
A two-year study of 1,700 executives found that there are actually only five general types of decision making styles in use:
1. Followers (36%)
–who make decisions based on how other highly successful people have made decisions in the past.
2. Charismatics (25%)
–who get enthusiastic about new ideas but rely on others to think through all the details.
3. Skeptics (19%)
–who automatically distrust anything they hear, especially if it conflicts with their view of the world.
4. Thinkers (11%)
–who need to methodically work through all the advantages and disadvantages before making a decision.
5. Controllers (9%)
–who have to be hands-on and involved in every aspect of the decision-making process.
If you accurately identify the preferred decision-making style of the person you’re selling to, you can then tailor your sales processto provide them with more of what they need and less of what won’t influence them to act. This will ensure your message gets its best possible reception which, in turn, will lead to your being more persuasive and getting more business done.