Do you want to know how to improve persuasion skills?
If your answer is yes, then you should come along with us.
Being able to persuade others is something that comes in handy when operating a business.
Often time, people you do business with might not agree with some of your ideas and perceptions.
Your ability to influence their reasoning will help you to smoothly conduct business.
Therefore, if your persuasion skills are poor, you need to improve them.
Since we are here to help, as usual, we will share some essential information that will help you to improve your persuasion skills.
To begin, we will be looking at what persuasion is…
What is Persuasion? – How to Improve Persuasion Skills
Persuasion is the ability to convince or influence others’ thoughts, attitudes, beliefs, etc using convincing facts and arguments.
It is also defined as a powerful force that affects other people’s decisions or actions.
Communication is needed for persuasion to occur.
That is, you cannot persuade someone without communicating with them because you will have to pass across your facts and argument to them.
Oftentimes people associate persuasion with negative actions or behaviors.
However, this is not so.
Persuasion is not manipulation.
It involves presenting convincing facts and argument and leaving it up to people to decide.
Your ability to convince and influence others is not based on your ability to manipulate people or information.
Rather, it is based on how well you present your facts and arguments.
What are Persuasion Skills? – How to Improve Persuasion Skills
Persuasion skills are a set of common soft skills that enable you to effectively convince people to agree with your idea or opinion.
These skills are:
Communication
As we earlier said, communication is needed for persuasion to occur.
This is because it is through communication you can convince people.
If you cannot effectively pass your message or information to people, then you cannot persuade people.
Hence, effective communication skills should be a foundation for building other persuasion skills.
Effective communication skills will enable you clearly express yourself, making use of oral communication and non-verbal communication.
When you can engage your listeners and effectively share your thoughts and ideas, you will find it easier to persuade them.
Active Listening – How to Improve Persuasion Skills
Active listening skills are necessary for persuasion.
This is because you need to know and also understand the arguments or concerns of the people you want to persuade.
So, active listening skills help you to listen well to others and understand their point of view.
This way, you will understand people’s motivations, and use them to create a better persuasive argument.
Emotional Intelligence
The ability to understand people’s emotions and appropriately respond is called emotional intelligence.
This skill is needed for persuasion because you need to notice and interpret people’s emotions to effectively persuade them.
Also, it enables you to use persuasion methods that will suit certain persons and situations.
Interpersonal Skills – How to Improve Persuasion Skills
Interpersonal skills help people to have positive interactions, build good relationships, and maintain them.
If you do not possess interpersonal skills you might have a hard time persuading people.
This is because to be persuasive, you need to be natural, genuine, and charismatic to a point.
Interpersonal skills ensure this.
Understand that you are more likely to get people to accept or agree with you when they like you.
Reasoning and Logic
As we said, you make use of arguments and facts to persuade people.
If your argument is not convincing enough, you cannot persuade people.
This is where reasoning and logic skills come in.
These skills enable you to effectively reason and come up with logical arguments.
Also, reasoning skills will enable you to effectively reason with the people you want to persuade using the information or facts that back your view.
Negotiation – How to Improve Persuasion Skills
Negotiation skills are what will help you to come to a compromise with other parties when an agreement cannot be met.
In some cases, the people you try to convince might not willingly agree with you until they are gaining something from you.
Hence, you need negotiations skills to reach a compromise and persuade them.
Benefits of Effective Persuasion Skills – How to Improve Persuasion Skills
Effective persuasion skills come with great benefits that helps to build one’s career and business.
Let us quickly see some of those benefits:
It Makes You a Better Sales Person
Persuasion skills make you more productive as a salesperson.
It will help you to easily convince customers and clients to go for your business’s products and services.
It Enhances Your Pitching Abilities – How to Improve Persuasion Skills
Some people find it difficult to sell their ideas to investors not because their ideas are not great but because they do not make them sound convincing.
However, with persuasion skills, a person will easily sell their ideas to investors.
Even if there are some mistakes in their idea, they will know how to speak about it in a way that will show its potential and convince their investors.
In other words, when you possess persuasion skills your ability to pitch ideas will improve.
It Helps to Motivate People
There will be times when morale will be low among your employees.
During those times, you have to boost their morale by motivating them.
Motivation works well when a person can persuade others.
This is because, when people’s morale is low, they sometimes do not care if they do not do what is right or best for themselves and others.
Hence, you need to be convinced and make them believe that performing their duties and tasks is what they ought to do regardless of how they feel.
When they believe that, they will be motivated to perform their duties and tasks.
In other words, persuasion skills can make you a better motivator.
Check here to discover 14 highly effective ways to motivate employees.
It Helps You to Prepare For Meetings – How to Improve Persuasion Skills
When you go for meetings and you have to speak, there is a possibility that you might clamp up when you are not prepared.
This is especially true when it is a large meeting.
However, with persuasion skills, you find it easier to prepare for meetings because you are confident that you will skilfully present your idea and persuade others.
You will not worry because you know that you will pass across your ideas and thoughts clearly to people in a meeting.
It Boosts Your Team Building Abilities
Your ability to build your team will improve when you possess effective persuasion skills.
This is because you need persuasion skills to encourage people to participate in team building.
Yes, team building activities are important for personnel.
However, when a person’s heart is not in something, they will not put in their best, and one person’s attitude and behavior can affect the team.
So, getting everybody to willingly and happily participate in team-building activities is important.
When you possess persuasion skills you will find it easy to do this and successfully build your team up.
Factors That Can Impair Persuasion Skills – How to Improve Persuasion Skills
As there are benefits that come with persuasion skills, there are also factors that can impair persuasion skills.
These factors need to be dealt with to avoid hindering your improvement.
Before you can deal with these factors, you have to know them.
Hence, we will share with you some of these factors and some ways you can deal with them.
Physical Barriers
Your persuasion skills can be impaired when there are physical barriers such as noise, distance, malfunctioning, or poor equipment.
Distance and noise can make you unable to effectively communicate with people and persuade them.
When people cannot hear your points clearly, they will not understand you.
As a result, they will not be convinced by your persuasive arguments and whatnot.
Also, when you are trying to persuade someone through a faulty device, or poor network, you will have a hard time making progress.
Hence, you need to ensure that when persuading someone there is little to no background noise.
This way, such a person will get everything you say, and be swayed by your arguments and facts.
When you are persuading someone far from you, ensure that you make use of devices and equipment that function well.
Talking Too Much – How to Improve Persuasion Skills
As we earlier said, persuasion also includes listening to people you are trying to persuade.
So, when you are someone who talks too much without listening, it will impair your persuasion skills.
You will end up saying things that will not convince the other party.
To avoid this, ensure that you listen to what the other party has to say.
Physiological Barrier
Physiological barriers are health challenges such as speech impediments, bad hearing, and poor eyesight.
You need to speak and hear well to persuade people.
So, if you have speech impediments, you will have a hard time convincing people.
Also, if your hearing is bad, you cannot hear what the other party says.
As a result, you will not be able to tweak your arguments to interest them.
If you are facing any health challenges that can impair your persuasion skills, you should see a health consultant.
Lack of Believe/Enthusiasm – How to Improve Persuasion Skills
When you lack enthusiasm or do not believe in what you want to sell to people, you will have a hard time persuading people.
This is because people will see that you do not believe in that idea, product, or service.
As a result, they will feel that it is not good.
So, to avoid this, you need to show enthusiasm and believe in what you are selling.
Lack of Emotional Control
If you cannot control your emotions and attitude, it can affect your objectivity.
As a result, instead of calmly attempting to convince someone, you might cause issues that will ruin things.
So, to avoid this, ensure that you are in control of your emotions and attitude when persuading people.
Being Too Desperate – How to Improve Persuasion Skills
When you are desperate to persuade someone, you will try too hard to convince them.
In your desperation to persuade them, you might lean into manipulation.
This will make them not interested in hearing what you have to say anymore.
So, as much as you want to convince people, ensure that you are not too desperate, or seem desperate.
Tips on How to Improve Persuasion Skills
We have talked about the skills that make up persuasion skills, their benefits, and factors that can impair them.
Now, we will be discussing some things that can help you improve your persuasion skills.
We have prepared them like tips.
So, we advise that you put the following tips into practice:
1. Demonstrate Your Credibility
Your credibility has a high percentage of how persuasive you can be.
In other words, when you are credible, people will easily be convinced by what you tell them.
You can demonstrate your credibility by building relationships with people and having knowledge of what you do and the thing you sell to people.
One cannot substitute anything for expertise.
So, to be proficient in what you do, you need to constantly work towards personal and professional development.
2. Be Prepared – How to Improve Persuasion Skills
You cannot overemphasize the need to be prepared if you want to be persuasive.
As we said, persuasion is all about convincing people with convincing arguments and facts.
If you do not prepare how will you gather your arguments and facts right, and make them convincing?
So, you see, adequate preparation has to be done for you to effectively persuade people.
When you prepare, you research, outline your key points, and rehearse how you will present your argument.
Your research should not only be about what you want to sell but also about the people you want to convince.
When you know the people you want to convince, you will know how to create your arguments, facts, or proposal in a way they can easily relate to.
Preparation will boost your reasoning and logical skills.
3. Discover Common Grounds
As we earlier said, building strong relationships is a great way to build and demonstrate credibility.
However, you should know that you will meet new people who you need to persuade.
As they are people who you did not know before, you would have not built any relationship with them.
Hence, what you need to do is to discover common grounds.
That is, before you start sharing your idea, try to connect with them on an emotional level.
The connection you build with them can be based on anything you have in common.
When you can build that connection you will find it easy to get them on board with you.
4. Practice Active Listening – How to Improve Persuasion Skills
As much as you need to talk to convince someone, you also need to listen.
We earlier talked about how listening actively can help you tweak your arguments to suit the person you are trying to convince.
So, you should not take listening lightly.
Rather, make it a habit to listen to other people’s opinions and ideas.
When we say listen, we mean that you should actively listen to people.
The more you practice active listening, the better you will become at making adjustments and persuading people.
5. Be Prepared For Arguments or Opposition
Understand that it is not every time you will easily win people over to your side.
There will be people who will oppose or argue.
Your readiness and ability to effectively counter-arguments and oppositions relies on your emotional intelligence and preparation.
Good preparation will help you to consider and think about all the arguments you might receive while pitching.
It will also help you to consider the best way to respond to them and persuade the people involved.
Meanwhile, emotional intelligence will help you to gauge people’s emotions and think of the best way to ease tension.
It will also help you to stay in control of your emotions.
You cannot do this if your emotional intelligence skills are poor.
So, you need to develop your emotional intelligence.
6. Be Confident – How to Improve Persuasion Skills
If you are not confident, people will not buy into what you are telling them.
Also, if you do not believe in what you are selling, the people will not believe it too.
So, work on your confidence, and ensure that you believe in whatever you are selling to people.
7. Persist
Do not be quick to give up when persuading people.
You might need to put in more effort to convince some people compared to others
Meanwhile, some people want some benefits before they can be persuaded, so you need to learn to make compromises that will benefit you and them.
As much as you should persist while persuading people, you have to ensure that you do not come off to be desperate.
Rather, know when to draw the line and walk away.
8. Develop Your Communication Skills – How to Improve Persuasion Skills
If your communication skills are poor, then your other persuasion skills will not be effective.
So, you need to work to develop your communication skills if you want to persuade effectively.
Conclusion on How to Improve Persuasion Skills
Persuasion skills make you a better business person, as it helps you to conduct business more smoothly.
Hence, you should not take them lightly.
We have shared with you some great tips on how to improve your persuasion skills.
So, we encourage you to take advantage of it.
