Sue Barrett says, “Forget dictatorships, or command and control style approaches, persuasion has a lot more going for it when it comes to better sales, better relationships, better team work, better business outcomes and long term change in actions and behaviour.

The term persuasion is most commonly associated with sales people. And there’s a good reason for that. If we consider the Business Dictionary definition of persuasion — “process aimed at changing a person’s (or a group’s) attitude or behaviour toward some event, idea, object, or other person(s), by using written or spoken words to convey information, feelings, or reasoning, or a combination of them” — it is clear that selling has a lot of persuasion in it.

But persuasion is not just the purview of sales people — it is vital life skill.

We use persuasion in our daily interactions with others, often without even realising it. For example, when we want our boss to take on our new idea, or our children to eat those tricky foods, or get out of bed, we are persuading them to our point of view. How well we do it is another question”.

The science of persuasion

Smart Company

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