Asking the Right Questions II

Leading questions and Rhetorical questions are also tools to activate audience self persuasion.

Leading questions influence how your listeners interpret facts and what they remember.  They help plant specific information in your listeners' minds.  For instance, suppose you're conducting a market study in which participants are viewing photos of a new product.  You want them to notice and remember a particular feature of the product--for example, a special instant-replay button.  If you ask, "How do you like the instant-replay button? rather than "Do you see an instant-replay button?"  your participants will be far more likely to remember the button after the study.

Rhetorical questions enable you to give the answer after asking the question.  These kinds of questions help push the listener into accepting a clearly defined proposition.  Thus it's best to use them as you're summarizing your presentation or argument.

Suppose you're seeking to persuade your subordinates to adopt a new way of processing orders.  They've used the existing process for a long time, and some are skeptical about the proposed change.  You present your case, and then you say something like "We all know that order-processing errors have increased in the last two quarters.  how else will we eliminate them if we don't overhaul the way we process orders?"

ACTION POINT:  Use leading and rhetorical questions to activate audience self persuasion triggers.

Asking the Right Questions

By asking questions, you control the content, pace, tone, and direction of the persuasion situation. 

Persuaders also use questions to engage audiences in a dialogue about their proposals.  In fact, questioning counts among persuaders' most effective tools.  Why?  many people enjoy answering questions.  Having someone care about what they think makes them feel important.   But the urge to answer questions also springs from the fear that others will look down on them if they avoid or can't answer a question.  By asking questions, you control the content, pace, tone, and direction of the persuasion situation.  You also determine which issues do--and don't--get discussed.

What kinds of questions best activate a listener's self-persuasion mechanism?  There are several types you can employ:

Disturbing questions get at the heart of your listeners' greatest concerns or problems.  for example, suppose you're selling a parcel-tracking software system to a courier firm that's experiencing problems with lost and delayed parcels.  You might ask your potential customer questions such as these:

"How much unproductive time does your staff spend locating lost parcels?"

"What effect is this problem having on your reputation with your clients?"

"Could this problem slow down your proposed expansion into new markets?"

These queries increase the magnitude of the lost-parcel problem in ;the customer's mind.  They make the solution you're proposing more attractive and make the listener more willing to pay a premium to solve the problem. 

ACTION POINT:  Use disturbing questions to get at the heart of your listeners greatest concerns.

Using Visualization

Persuaders help audiences visualize the potential benefits of their proposals.

Persuaders help audiences visualize the potential benefits of their proposals.  For example, researcher posing as salespeople went door-to-door "selling" cable TV subscriptions.  Some potential customers received a straight pitch stressing cable TV benefits.  

Others were invited to image how cable TV would provide them with broader entertainment. The results? Among people who received the straight pitch, only 19.5 percent signed up.  Among those who imagined using the service, a whopping 47.4 percent decided to subscribe to cable TV.

ACTION POINT: Encourage your listeners to imagine the results of the ideas you are presenting.

Activating Audience Self Persuasion

What is audience self-persuasion?

In mastering the art and science of persuasion, you have a wide range of strategies at your disposal..  These include establishing your credibility, understanding your audience, and capturing listeners' minds and hearts-- as well as overcoming resistance and activating persuasion triggers.  But there's another even more powerful technique: audience self-persuasion.

What is audience self-persuasion?  It's a process in which you actively involve listeners in discovering the logic of your argument--in effect, getting them to persuade themselves. Persuaders use the following three techniques to transform listeners from passive recipients of a pitch to active participants in a dialogue:

Visualization

Questioning

Active listening

ACTION POINT: Use the strategies above as well as visualization, questioning and active listening to master the art and science of persuasion.  

Persuasion Triggers - Commitment and Consistency, Authority and Scarcity

Commitment and Consistency. People are more likely to embrace a proposal if they've made a voluntary, public, and written commitment to doing so. For example, 92 percent of residents of an apartment complex who signed a petition supporting a new recreation center later donated money to the cause.

To activate the commitment and consistency trigger, make others' commitments voluntary, public, and documented. Suppose for instance, that you want to persuade an employee to submit reports on time. To inspire this behavior, make a link between the commitment and the person's values (mention its benefits for team spirit). Get that understanding in writing (a memo). And make the commitment public (mention your colleagues agreement with the memo).

Authority. Many people are trained form childhood to automatically obey the requests of authority figures such as parent, doctors, and police. Authority comes from a combination of a position and its associated credentials. For example, your authority as a manager in a drug company will be enhanced if you possess medical as well as business qualifications.

Appropriate clothes or other trappings of authority can also increase the chances of successful persuasion. A businessperson who "power dresses" for an important presentation improves the odds that the pitch will be successful.

To activate the authority trigger, make sure that the people you want to persuade are aware of the source of your authority. Also leverage appropriate clothing and other trappings of authority.

Scarcity. When something is in scarce supply--such as information, opportunities, and resources--people value it more. For instance, in one experiment, wholesale beef buyers were told that they were the only ones who had received information on a possible beef shortage. The orders jumped 600 percent.

To activate the scarcity trigger, use exclusive information to persuade. For example, capture key decision makers' attention by saying something like, "I just got this information today. It won't be distributed until next week."

Be sure that the information is truly exclusive; otherwise it could hinder your credibility.

ACTION POINT: Recognize when to use commitment, authority or scarcity to assist in persuading others.