The Art of Persuasion

How often have you wished you could persuade anyone to do anything? There are some people who seem to be able to do this naturally and they seem super-human to the rest of us mere mortals. How can they do it and we can't?

The simple answer is that you can if you know what motivates someone. My brother recently sent pictures of his one year-old daughter having her hair cut for the first time. The first picture showed her throwing a major crying tantrum because she didn't want to sit still. The second picture showed the hairdresser holding a chocolate biscuit in front of the toddler who had a surprised and interested look on her face. The final picture showed a happy baby with a chocolate-covered face smiling and showing off her new haircut. The hairdresser obviously knew what would motivate a one year-old to sit still quietly.

Obviously that's a simple example of motivation at work and it's much more complicated than that, particularly with adults. Although everyone reacts differently to specific information there are patterns to the way they choose to react. These are called meta-programs and there are six of them that involve motivational traits. For each trait there are specific words that will influence someone's reaction to what you say because the words hold an emotional charge for that person. We often call these their 'hot buttons'. If you can work out a person's motivational traits then you can use words that will have the most impact on them.

The six motivational traits are:

1. Level - whether a person is proactive or reactive
2. Criteria - the things that are important to the person so they can judge whether they have got what they want
3. Direction - whether a person moves away from pain or towards gain
4. Source - how someone knows when they've done a good job (internal or external)
5. Reason - why they do something (lots of options or follow procedures)
6. Decision factors - this is basically how they handle change

If you told someone whose decision factor was 'sameness' that what you had to offer was 'new and cutting-edge' they would feel very uncomfortable because they like things to stay the same.

How does this help you with a presentation? Well, you need to use language that will influence the majority of the audience. So if we continue to use the decision factor example you would say it is something 'new and improved'.

Think about how you react to certain words and you will begin to understand how powerful this can be if you want to influence someone.