Persuasion: A Vital Communication Skill

All effective communicators in the business world know how important it is to be able to use persuasion. This is an excellent way to urge prospective customers into taking a particular course of action you desire.

One of the ways you can do this is to have an effective marketing strategy. Sometimes it isn’t necessary to physically talk to someone to persuade them. If you have a marketing campaign that targets a specific want or need of consumers, that in itself will persuade them to buy the product or service being advertised.

Another way you can use persuasion in marketing is to hire new employees. Richard Huseman described this type of persuasion as an effective way to expand your company.

He states “Sometimes, consumers gauge your company’s success based on its size. If your able to persuade people to join the company and carry out its goals and missions, consumers will notice and trust your company to successfully satisfy their needs.”

If your business is growing and you’re looking to hire new people to keep expanding, an effective hiring campaign could convince people to want to join your team.

Huseman also goes on to discuss how important it is to have the right people in place to be a successful company. That’s why it’s vital to persuade the most qualified people to join your company. By showing them that your company offers them the best chance for growth, promotions, and personal satisfaction, you can make people want to work for you because it benefits them just as much as it benefits you.

This can be just as effective as using persuasion to sell your products to customers. The more people that want to join your team, the bigger your company gets and in return more people want to do business with you. With more employees on your team, you now have more people focused on selling products and services, increasing revenue and profits for the company.

This is a double win. Not only does this make your company look better to outsiders, it also brings more money to the company itself.

I was able to test my persuasion skills this week, trying to convince someone that the copier he was looking at was an essential part of his business that would be a revelation for his business because of the amazing picture quality that the copier produced. His current copier was unable to print evenly on certain stocks of paper, reducing the amount of work he was able to do for his own customers.

Having him come into the office to look at the machine and run some samples, I was able to persuade him to purchase it. He was extremely impressed with our product, and I simply just reminded him of all of the benefits that this purchase would do for his business. By only focusing on the positives of the machine and the value that it would add to his company, the cost of a new purchase became less of an issue.

This is effective persuasion. I was able to make him want the product by focusing on all the positives it would bring into his business.

Citations

Lahiff, J. M., Penrose, J. M., & Huseman, R. C. (1988). Business communication: strategies and skills. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.