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Introducing a method to develop your message and increase your powers of persuasion.
Fall 2004
Volume II, Issue 5
Your Guide to Securing the Power
of Pursuassion
Coaching Services to Improve Public Speaking,
Presentation & Communication Skills.
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Move the World
Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it and I shall move the world.
- Archimedes (287-212 BC)
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The ability to persuade an audience is the Holy Grail of
business. If you can persuade your audience to accept your
idea, agree with your logic or acknowledge your value, or the
value of your offering, you will have created significant competitive
advantage. You will position yourself to sell more product,
raise more capital, or gain support for your strategy. And
if you can do this consistently, you will have more than mere
competitive advantage: you will be able to, as Archimedes says, Move
the World.
When in the presence of those who can articulately and persuasively
make a point, be it an audience of one or one thousand, we
are impressed. We remember their names. We remember their presence.
We buy from them, follow them, and invest in them. But while
we recognize the value of the ability to persuade, why are
so few presenters or salespeople truly persuasive?
Think for a minute about your own ability to communicate...
to sell... to lead... to raise capital... to shape opinion
and persuade. How well do you do it? Could you be better? What
about your organization? Is your sales team adept enough to
clearly and consistently communicate your message? How would
you rate your organization’s ability to persuade when
compared to the competition?
Now, let your imagination run a bit. What if every time you
had some thing to say, you had the ability to really be heard?
How would that make you feel? Considered another way, do you
remember a moment when you recognized that you were not being
heard, that your words or ideas did not matter to your audience?
How did that feel?
At The Latimer Group, our first and foremost goal is to help
individuals improve their ability to persuade. To this end,
we have developed a series of frameworks and models that guide
our work with clients. I would like to take the opportunity
to share with you our latest thinking. Over the last year,
in conjunction with several clients of The Latimer Group, we
have refined a method for creating presentation messaging and
content. Whether the venue is a sales call, a road show, a
fundraising event, or an employee meeting, the common challenge
is to develop a message and a system of presenting around it,
so that the message will resonate with your audience and move
them to where you want them to go. Every time.
The Latimer Group method requires that clients ask themselves,
and answer, some deceptively simple questions. By taking the
time to form introspective answers, messages can be created
that are more likely to persuade your audience to buy your
product, invest in your company, or adopt your idea.
The method we designed - and that we now use with many of
our clients -
we call GAP, which stands for Goal-Audience-Plan.
Using a few examples for illustration purposes, let’s
take a brief, broad look at this method and consider how it
can be applied to help you meet the real-life challenges in
your organization.
Setting Your Goals
Every conversation on persuasion needs to begin first and
foremost with a discussion of the goal. You must know where
you want to go before starting out. If we want to persuade
an audience of something, by definition, there must be some
figurative destination to which we want to lead them.
Earlier this year I was engaged on simultaneous projects
with two different salespeople from different organizations.
Let’s call them John and Jane.
By nature, John is shy. He has built good relationships with
his clients and prospects, but his ability to close the sale
was hindered by his shyness and lack of confidence. His product
is difficult to understand and his clients often present points
of concern. I shadowed John on the road, watching him in action,
and it was clear his focus was on nurturing his already-strong, "safe" relationships...
not on “asking for the order.”
Jane, on the other hand, presented the opposite challenge.
She was relatively new in her position, and was confident and
aggressive, bordering on cocky. After spending just a short
amount of time with Jane, the problem was obvious. She was
grabbing for the prize far too early in her relationships,
which often created resistance with prospects. She was making
a call to action before such a call was appropriate. Her goal
was clear - close the business. But while this was, and always
is, the ultimate goal, Jane was missing some critical intermediate
steps.
In each case, the fundamental problem was that my clients’ goals
had not been appropriately considered. Neither John nor Jane
had examined the critical questions about what their specific
goals were. In John’s case, he had the relationships
in hand and his goal should have been more focused on the close.
Jane needed to step back from the close and first build solid
relationships. By realigning their goals more consistently
with where they really needed to take their audiences, both
were able to improve their sales results.
Understanding Your Audience
Recently I was speaking with a senior executive who told
me a story that underscores the importance of knowing and understanding
your audience. He had been invited to be the keynote speaker
at an industry symposium in France . He took me through an
extended explanation of his preparation, and during the re-telling,
most of it seemed appropriate. He arrived in France at the
site of the meeting and at the appropriate time he began his
presentation. He gave what he thought was a thorough and impassioned
performance. However, as he concluded his presentation he was
struck by how quiet and reserved his audience was. He offered
to answer any questions, none were posed, and he left.
Later that day he shared a car back to the airport with another
speaker at the symposium who had presented much later in the
day. They had not attended each other’s presentations.
The fellow speaker asked the following question: “Was
it hard for you to give a speech to an audience who doesn’t
speak any English?”
Truth be told: this story is fiction. But I often tell it
to illustrate how critically important it is to understand
your audience. Having a goal is not enough. You also need to
truly understand your audience if you hope to persuade them
of anything.
Creating Your Plan for Persuasion
I have one final story to share. I was recently working with
a young broker at a major financial services firm. Let’s
call him Steve. He seemingly had all the skills you would want
in a salesperson - personality, presence, a strong voice, confidence,
and a good working knowledge of his industry and his product.
Steve hired me to help him get to the next level of production
at his firm.
We spent some time together, and what quickly became apparent
was that Steve’s greatest skills were also his greatest
liability. He had terrific "natural" sales skills
but relied on them too much. Perhaps because of his strengths,
Steve had never put any importance on creating a plan for persuading
his audience and selling his product. In the end, what was
needed was a plan, a strategy of getting from point A to point
B. Together, we mapped out critical talking points and discussed
various ways to get and keep the attention of his audience.
Persuasion is not telling people what to think. Persuasion
is shaping what people think about, how they make decisions,
and the variables they consider in making their choices. By
knowing your Goals, understanding your Audience, and following
a basic Plan for a persuasive message, you will dramatically
increase your chances for success.
The GAP method is an important tool for The Latimer Group.
It is one that we will continually look to refine, adapt and
apply in new, creative ways to help our clients become more
persuasive. We welcome any feedback or comments to this issue,
or any issue, of The Beacon.
Dean M. Brenner
President |
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© 2004 The Latimer Group. All Rights Reserved.
Dean M. Brenner -
The Latimer Group: 203.265.4344.
Feedback or comments: dmbrenner@thelatimergroup.com.
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