Persuasion is a subtle skill to influence another person. Never confuse it to manipulation.
When manipulation is about influencing another party to do something that is really just directly beneficial to the manipulator, persuasion is about influencing another person to listen, pay attention and act on something that is directly beneficial to both of you.
What is persuasion?
Persuasion is an important skill in business and in work life. When we persuade, we help another person or an entire audience to take actions to their benefit.
Daniel Pink, known as one. of the top thinkers in the world about motivation and persuasion in selling, points out how the world has changed a lot during the past 10 years and that is the reason why persuasion has become such a critical skill in business.
“Before, we were living in information asymmetry. Seller always had more information than the buyer. During the past 10 years the world has moved towards information parity.”
Sellers and buyers have access to the same information, there are more choices for buyers and the decision making process in buying is totally different.
Because our audiences are able to search for information, ask other people’s recommendations, opinions and experiences, we cannot hide or twist the truth anymore. If you want convince your talent audiences to respond to your calls to action, you must learn to persuade.
The ABCs of Persuasion according to Daniel Pink
One of key learnings I’ve adopted from Daniel Pink is the key to persuasion is about being a better person. This makes all the difference between a healthy act of persuasion and being a nasty manipulator.
Effective persuasion requires three fundamental qualities. These are what Daniel Pink calls the ABSs of Persuasion.
A for Attunement
Attunement is about taking another person’s perspective. Putting yourself into that other person’s shoes and looking at the situation through their eyes.
Being persuasive starts with attunement as in understanding what’s in it for the other person. In the Magnetic Employer Branding Method we position the talent as the hero to our employer branding story. When we do this, we are in fact looking at the world through our ideal talent audiences lenses.
Imagine being in a new job and your new boss is asking you to do your work in a very different way you are used to. Being experienced in your profession, you know your way is how you prefer to do your job and get to the results.
Your bosses way sounds like you have to adopt new skills and you’re not sure why. Can’t you just do it the way you always did?
You’re new boss has two options how to go about getting you to do the job like they want to.
(a) Coerce you as in use their power over you to get you to follow their orders.
(b) Persuade you to understand why it might be more beneficial for you to take sometime to learn the new methods and ways of work.
Which option would you prefer?
B for Buoyancy
People working in head hunting roles know all about rejection when it comes to directly contacting talents your business or client wants to hire.
Buoyancy, according to Daniel Pink, is all about keeping your head above the water line in the ocean of rejection.
And it’s not just head hunting and sales where we are being rejected on a daily basis. At least our kid is pretty easy about rejecting my kind suggestions to tidy up his room or finish his plate.
Examples of where buoyancy is needed at work and at home
As an employer, I also get rejected by my employees on a daily basis. They are smart enough not to jump at my whistle every time I blow it. They question me, they want to understand why they should go about doing something new. Almost daily they teach me about how to persuade.
Welcome to the 2020th century!
When I call action on my social media posts to get you to read my blog post or sign up to Talent Marketing School, you’re not going to do that just because I want to. You want to understand what’s in it for you.
Buoyancy is about your explanatory style. How you address and explain a topic of your interest to another person?
Buoyancy is about your explanatory style. How you address and explain a topic of your interest to another person.
Daniel Pink
Especially when building an employer brand, it takes time to win that attention and convince others to pay attention to you. I personally keep repeating my messages over and over again, over many months, even years before I get through enough of the masses for my work to start delivering value back to my business.
Rejection is not always a direct no thank you.
I recently started the Talent Marketing Pro Instagram account.
There are currently about 150 followers. That’s nothing! That’s nowhere nearly enough to deliver any value for my business.
While people are not rejecting they are not yet engaging either. It takes perseverance to prove yourself and earn that trust to get views, to get attention and get people to respond.
Most people quit. A professional talent marketer will not. Buoyancy is an important asset to you.
C for Clarity
Clarity is one of my favourite words as a professional marketer and communicator. Because we are living in this Information Era, we have access to and are being constantly invited to an entire mountain of information.
All of us has this access, so the access itself is not competitive advantage to anyone. Competitive advantage comes from your ability and your personal motivation to put effort into curating that information.
When we curate information, when I curate information for you, I clean it for you. I take away all the nonsense and the garbage and serve you the finer bits on a silver platter. That’s one way to persuade you to follow me and dig into my content.
Clarity is so essential in this world. Nobody needs and wants any more noise in the form of social media content and website content. How good are you in clarifying information to your audiences?
If you want to succeed in persuading your talent audiences to follow your business (or you), you must master the skill of persuasion:
- Attune to your audiences’ perspective.
- Remain buoyant when you face rejection to your calls to action, your posts, your content.
- Always improve the clarity of your messages.
Daniel Pink’s surprising secret to persuading others >>
Psychology of persuasion and social influence>>
Robert Cialdini on the Science of Persuasion
Listen to episode #52 about Persuasion in talent marketing
In this week’s episode of Building a Modern Employer Brand -podcast I want to introduce you to something called persuasion, because the ability to influence someone in a positive and kind manner is key to professional talent marketing. No one wants to be coerced or manipulated into doing something that lacks benefit to themselves.
Key questions answered in this episode:
- What is persuasion?
- Why talent marketers can greatly benefit from being more persuasive?
- Why persuasion matters?
Episode-length: 27:24 min
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Click on the link and you will be directed to the Building of Modern Employer Brand -podcast. Click follow there and you will be notified weekly on a new episode!
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