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Management Services Winter 2012


“It’s important to inoculate yourself


against being negative – especially if your


persuasion strategies don’t always go to plan.”


then relatively easy to work together enabling them to develop, implement and sustain various changes in their business. Because I work in partnership with clients, we can address any objections; inoculate our proposals before presentation – even to a hostile audience – thus ensuring that resistance to change is at a minimum.


2. Develop your linguistic fl exibility


If your client appears to be infl exible, take a good look in the mirror. Are we tending to attract the behaviour from others. Ask yourself, why does the other person not fi nd your proposals or suggestions appealing? Why is there a disparity in perceptions? Have you devoted suffi cient time addressing the client’s model of the world, looking at things from their perspective? Could you reframe things for them to appeal more to this perspective? You the specialist, the change maker, the salesperson, the master persuader, must consider the personality ‘make-up’ and


the typical objections the other person will have to your ideas prior to making your pitch. Resistance is a sign of lack of rapport with your client. Building rapport is the second step in our fi ve step persuasion process which will be discussed later.


3. Be at cause not at effect We all have the choice to either be at the ‘cause’ or the ‘effect’ of a problem. It is far more empowering to be at ‘cause’, which means that we take responsibility in our mind for everything that has happened – even if it was not our fault! Consider. I know you, the reader, are not the ‘cause’ of all things that go wrong for you, but just suppose for a second that this is true, there are benefi ts to being at ‘cause’.


It means you will have a


different and curious mindset, which creates an empowering belief that aids you looking for new ways to resolve problems instead of blaming others.


Conversely, if you are,


at ‘effect’ you may appear powerless to act. Your attitude will be very different. You may not consider that things have transpired to put you in that position and easily blame others. You may even consider yourself a victim and those things are not in your favour. To illustrate, let’s say you did not get what you wanted, the promotion, the agreement to progress a key project with your boss, the contract or whatever with your client. If you are at ‘effect’ you may focus on excuses rather than reasons. You may think – “I did not get the work because someone else was pencilled in for the project’. Or you may think ‘My face did not fi t’ or ‘I am too inexperienced... too old... too expensive… etc. Stay in the emotional state


of ‘effect’ and you will give yourself tons of ‘excuses’ rather than real reasons why things did not happen in your favour. Choose to be at ‘cause’ and you will fi nd new ways to get ‘back up’ and adopt new strategies. You cannot get that


personal power coming from ‘effect’. Rather it must come from the empowering belief that “I will cause things to happen – I will turn this around”.


4. No failure, only feedback


It really is important to inoculate yourself against being negative – especially if your persuasion strategies don’t always go to plan. Don’t confuse excuses with reasons! It is easy to fi nd ‘excuses’ for not getting your own way and winning your projects. It is easy to list a set of conditions that reinforce your belief that you have no control over circumstances


The major point here is that when things are not going well, we often dream up excuses to shut us out from the harsh reality of life that we can all do something to make things better. Catch yourself when you do it. Ask, “is this a valid reason or an excuse that I am using?” Reframe things around you to being at ‘cause’. And further, consider this, if you have teams who support you in your work, take a careful look at their ‘beliefs’ and ‘limiting decisions’ about what is going on in their world.


5. Hypnotic language patterns


Communication is what is received, not what is sent. Be careful with your language and your proposals to others. Say things the way you want them to be received. Really think consciously about what you want to happen.


Persuasion strategies


Communicate to people what you want them to receive – precisely


Stop telling people what you ‘do not’ want them to do or think. “I don’t think you should experience any problems with our IT solutions.” “Don’t worry; we’ll always put our customers fi rst.” I am thinking “I was not worrying until you mentioned it”.


Communication is a very important tool, operating at both the conscious and other than conscious levels. We can train people to use communication at these levels to increase the achievement of ‘win-win solutions’. You can even use the negative phrase to reinforce a message at the unconscious level. For instance, “I am not going to suggest that you will be totally pleased with our services all the time.” “Further, I cannot promise 100% that all our training will deliver performance improvement to every member of staff.” “Needless to say I would not want to give you the impression that we are the leaders in the provision of infl uencing and persuasion packages.”


Just suppose your people could learn these techniques – how effective would they be in infl uencing others and cementing cast iron relationships? The techniques are referred to as ‘hypnotic language, and are founded on the science of neuro linguistics, using language patterns at the conversational level, which will enable you to understand more about what motivates your clients and associates, and enables you to build win-win solutions. Currently I am working on language patterns developing an interactive software e-learning process entitled ‘Persuasion & Negotiation Coach’ to equip people in


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