persuade.html

How To Be Persuasive

Drew Hurley
Santa Fe Community College

SYG 2010
Social Problems

If you are fortunate, there will come a time in your life when you will have the opportunity to win friends and influence people. The techniques presented here are designed to help you make the best impression(s).

The first rule of persuasion is to establish rapport with the audience/reader. The following techniques often work to facilitate the development of rapport. You may successfully use up to four or five of these points at any time, but don't over do it.

1. Be courteous and generous with your acknowledgements and introductions.
2. Begin with a compliment to the audience/reader.
3. Refer kindly to previous speakers or authors.

4. Use sincere expressions of pleasure.
5. Refer to matters of local interest.
6. Respond to the mood of the audience, occasion, or topic.
7. Refer to the special interests or characteristics of the audience or reader.
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8. Use a causal comment on a local or trifling matter of which the audience or reader is aware.
9. Always be friendly and engaging. You must make the audience or reader your ally.

Some topics have greater appeal than others. Even the topics which most people are not terribly interested in can by made more appealing if you work to arouse the interest and attention of your audience or reader. All of the following techniques can be effective. You may successfully use three or four of these at a time, but don't employ too many or you'll undermine your own credibility.

1. Relate your topic to the special interests or needs of the audience or reader.
2. Interpret your subject in concrete terms that are familiar to the audience or reader.
3. Create curiosity.

4. Introduce your topic by laying down a barrage of questions (make sure that you can answer them, otherwise this could backfire).
5. Use a narrative description of a related story or adventure -- if you can tell it well.

6. Open your discussion with striking facts. OR
7. Use an amusing anecdote. OR
8. Use a familiar historic incident, quotation, character, or book. OR
9. Use a visual aid.

There are several analytical processes that can contribute to your analysis and advocacy of a particular point of view. The following questions should be addressed as a means of helping you prepare your case. A substantial basis for validating your opinions and beliefs can be generated by using these questions (without falsifying the data, evidence, or facts).

1. Do present conditions demand a change?
2. If change is necessary, what is the best change possible?

3. Is the proposed change theoretically sound?
4. Is the prposed change practical?

5. Do the advantages of the proposed change significantly outweigh the disadvantages?

6. What concerns does this proposal exclude as irrelevant?

7. What limitations does this proposal admit to? What concessions are waived by it?

8. Who benefits the most from this proposal?
Who is most disadvantaged by it?

9. Is this proposal likely to make a difference for the community, state, region, or nation?

There are a few pitfalls that need to be avoided if your attempts at persuasion are going to be most effective. Please check to make sure that you don't fall into these traps. Just remember, you need to prepare yourself to defend every claim that you make.

1. Don't stray from the point. Too much complexity or diversion weakens your argument.

2. Don't use humor that is not germane to your topic. Relevant humor is priceless. Irrelevant humor often has the effect of being a 'Red Herring' that detracts from, and weakens, your argument.

3. Don't extend the opponent's argument to the point of absurdity. You may only extend other's views if you do so reasonably, otherwise your exaggerations could make you look ludicrous.

4. Don't label and dismiss your opponent's claims without explanation. [This is the Rush Limbaugh oral disease of pettifogging.]

Rome was not built in a day.

Practice these techniques regularly and you will see an improvement in your powers of persuassion, and the ease with which you can win friends and influence people.

Send your Suggestions or Questions To:
drewhurl@sprynet.com

Credits

Produced at Bits & Bytes Farm, 1998

Program written and designed by:
Drew Hurley
Santa Fe Community College
3000 NW 83rd Street
Gainesville, FL 32606

ClipArt provided by:
Imageline, Inc.
401 East Main Street, Suite 100
Richmond, VA 23219

How To Be Persuasive

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