MOTIVATION IS ESSENTIAL WHILE CONSIDERING PERSUASION

Becoming a Master of Persuasion

Persuasion power can help you get more of the things you want faster than
anything else you do. It can mean the difference between success and failure. It can
guarantee your progress and enable you to use all of your other skills and abilities at
the very highest level. Your persuasion power will earn you the support and respect
of your customers, bosses, co-workers, colleagues and friends. The ability to
persuade others to do what you want them to do can make you one of the most
important people in your community.
Fortunately, persuasion is a skill, like riding a bicycle, that you can learn
through study and practice. Your job is to become absolutely excellent at influencing
and motivating others to support and assist you in achieving your goals and solving
your problems.
You can either persuade others to help you or be persuaded to help them. It is
one or the other. Most people are not aware that every human interaction involves a
complex process of persuasion and influence. And being unaware, they are usually
the ones being persuaded to help others rather than the ones who are doing the
persuading.

Motivation
Franklin defines motivation as "the general desire or willingness to do
something." She links it to control of tasks. Typically, you are motivating someone to
do something, not just take a particular view. In this respect, the person being
motivated has direct involvement with the task at hand, and the technique is more
direct than influencing.
Motivation techniques depend on whom you are motivating. As you would
expect, different people are motivated by different things. Some project team
members will be motivated by reward, so you may want to explain how participation
links to a bonus scheme. Others could be motivated by responsibility, so you could
focus on how this increases their remit or helps them develop professionally. Still
others may be motivated by enjoying their work, so you could discuss how this new
change or project removes some of the not-so-fun activities in their role.
Unfortunately, you rarely know what people will find motivating, so one
strategy is to take a broad brush approach and make your communications
appealing to all groups. If you can tap into what motivates individuals through your
discussions with them and being alert to clues, you can better understand how to
motivate the people in the project team and the wider stakeholder group.

Persuasion
"Persuasion is a process designed to change the attitude or behaviour of a
person or group from their current view to a view that the persuader wants them to
hold," writes Franklin.
Who is doing the persuading is an important factor. Persuasion is impacted by
a number of things and in my view, the 'who' is critical. If the person being persuaded
holds the persuader in high regard and likes them on a personal and professional
level, it is usually easier to have persuading conversations. Equally, if the persuader
has authority over the person being persuaded, it is likely that the resistance to
change will be lower. Mapping these relationships in a tool like Drop Mind is one way
to work out who to involve on your communications planning.

PERSUASION THROUGH MOTIVATION

The key to persuasion is motivation. Every human action is motivated by
something. Your job is to find out what motivates other people and then to provide
that motivation. People have two major motivations: the desire for gain and the fear
of loss.
The desire for gain motivates people to want more of the things they value in
life. They want more money, more success, more health, more influence, more
respect, more love and more happiness. Human wants are limited only by individual
imagination. No matter how much a person has, he or she still wants more and
more. When you can show people how they can get more of the things they want by
helping you achieve your goals, you can motivate them to act in your behalf.
President Eisenhower once said, "Persuasion is the art of getting people to do
what you want them to do, and to like it." You always need to be thinking about how
you can get people to want to do the things that you need them to do to attain your
objectives.
People are also motivated to act by the fear of loss. This fear, in all its various
forms, is often stronger than the desire for gain. People fear financial loss, loss of
health, anger or disapproval of others, loss of love and the loss of anything they have
worked hard to accomplish. They fear change, risk and uncertainty because these
threaten them with potential losses.
Whenever you can show a person that they can avoid a loss of some kind by
doing what you want them to do, you can influence them to take a particular action.
The very best appeals are those where you offer an opportunity to gain and an
opportunity to avoid loss at the same time.

Getting What You Want

There are two ways to get the things you want in life. First, you can work by
yourself and for yourself in your own best interest. You can be a "Robinson Crusoe"
of modern life, relying on yourself for the satisfaction of your needs. By doing this,
you can accomplish a little, but not a lot. The person who looks to himself or herself
completely is limited in his or her capacities. He or she will never be rich or
successful.
The second way to get the things you want is by gaining and using leverage.
Leverage allows you to multiply yourself and get far more out of the hours you put in
rather than doing everything yourself.
There are three forms of leverage you must develop to fulfil your full potential
in our society: other people's efforts, other people's knowledge, and other people's
money.
1. You leverage yourself through other people's efforts by getting other people to
work with you and for you in the accomplishment of your objectives. Sometimes you
can ask them to help you voluntarily, although people won't work for very long
without some personal reward. At other times you can hire them to help you, thereby
freeing you up to do higher-value work.
One of the most important laws of economics is called "Ricardo's Law." It is
also called the Law of Comparative Advantage. This law states that when someone
can accomplish a part of your task at a lower hourly rate than you would earn for
accomplishing more valuable parts of your task, you should delegate or outsource
that part of the task.
For example, if you want to earn $100,000 a year, in a 250-day year, you
need to make $50 per hour. That means you must be doing work that is worth $50
per hour, eight hours per day, 250 days per year. Therefore, if there is any part of
your work--like making photocopies, filing information, typing letters or filling out
expense forms--that is not valued at $50 per hour, you should stop doing it. You
should persuade someone else who works at a lower hourly rate to do it for you. The
lower level tasks you can persuade others to do, the more time you will have to do
tasks that pay you more. This is one of the essential keys to getting the leverage you
need to become one of the higher paid people in your profession.
Management can be defined as "getting things done through others." To be a
manager you must be an expert at persuading and influencing others to work in a
common direction. This is why all excellent managers are also excellent lowpressure salespeople. They do not order people to do things; instead, they persuade
them to accept certain responsibilities, with specific deadlines and agreed-upon
standards of performance. When a person has been persuaded that he or she has a
vested interest in doing a job well, he or she accepts ownership of the job and the
result. Once a person accepts ownership and responsibility, the manager can step
aside confidently, knowing the job will be done on schedule.
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In every part of your life, you have a choice of either doing it yourself or
delegating it to others. Your ability to get someone else to take on the job with the
same enthusiasm that you would have is an exercise in personal persuasion. It may
seem to take a little longer at the beginning, but it saves you an enormous amount of
time completing the task.

Getting Others to Work for You

2. The second form of leverage that you must develop for success is other people's
knowledge. You must be able to tap into the brain power of many other people if you
want to accomplish worthwhile goals. Successful people are not those who know
everything needed to accomplish a particular task, but more often than not, they are
people who know how to find the knowledge they need.
What is the knowledge that you need to achieve your most important goals?
Of the knowledge required, what knowledge must you have personally in order to
control your situation, and what knowledge can you borrow, buy or rent from others?
It has been said that, in our information-based society, you are never more
than one book or two phone calls away from any piece of knowledge in the country.
With online computer services that access huge data bases all over the country, you
can usually get the precise information you require in a few minutes by using a
computer. Whenever you need information and expertise from another person in
order to achieve your goals, the very best way to persuade them to help you is to ask
them for their assistance.
Almost everyone who is knowledgeable in a particular area is proud of their
accomplishments. By asking a person for their expert advice, you compliment them
and motivate them to want to help you. So don't be afraid to ask, even if you don't
know the individual personally.
3. The third key to leverage, which is very much based on your persuasive abilities,
is other people's money. Your ability to use other people's money and resources to
leverage your talents is the key to financial success. Your ability to buy and defer
payment; to sell and collect payment in advance; to borrow, rent or lease furniture,
fixtures and machinery; and to borrow money from people to help you multiply your
opportunities is one of the most important of all skills that you can develop. And
these all depend on your ability to persuade others to cooperate with you financially
so that you can develop the leverage you need to move onward and upward in your
field.
The Four "P"s
There are four "P"s that will enhance your ability to persuade others in both
your work and personal life. They are power, positioning, performance and
politeness. And they are all based on perception.

The first "P" is power. The more power and influence that a person perceives
you have, whether real or not, the more likely it is that that person will be persuaded
by you to do the things you want them to do. For example, if you appear to be a
senior executive, or a wealthy person, people will be much more likely to help you
and serve you than they would be if you were perceived to be a lower level
employee.
The second "P" is positioning. This refers to the way that other people think
about you and talk about you when you are not there. Your positioning in the mind
and heart of other people largely determines how open they are to being influenced
by you.
In everything you do involving other people, you are shaping and influencing
their perceptions of you and your positioning in their minds. Think about how you
could change the things you say and do so that people think about you in such a way
that they are more open to your requests and to helping you achieve your goals.
The third "P" is performance. This refers to your level of competence and
expertise in your area. A person who is highly respected for his or her ability to get
results is far more persuasive and influential than a person who only does an
average job.
The perception that people have of your performance capabilities exerts an
inordinate influence on how they think and feel about you. You should commit
yourself to being the very best in your field. Sometimes, a reputation for being
excellent at what you do can be so powerful that it alone can make you an extremely
persuasive individual in all of your interactions with the people around you. They will
accept your advice, be open to your influence and agree with your requests.
The fourth "P" of persuasion power is politeness. People do things for two
reasons, because they want to and because they have to. When you treat people
with kindness, courtesy and respect, you make them want to do things for you. They
are motivated to go out of their way to help you solve your problems and accomplish
your goals. Being nice to other people satisfies one of the deepest of all
subconscious needs--the need to feel important and respected. Whenever you
convey this to another person in your conversation, your attitude and your treatment
of that person, he or she will be wide open to being persuaded and influenced by you
in almost anything you need.
Again, perception is everything. The perception of an individual is his or her
reality. People act on the basis of their perceptions of you. If you change their
perceptions, you change the way they think and feel about you, and you change the
things that they will do for you.
You can become an expert at personal persuasion. You can develop your
personal power by always remembering that there are only two ways to get the
things you want in life: You can do it all yourself, or you can get most of it done by
others. Your ability to communicate, persuade, negotiate, influence, delegate and
interact effectively with other people will enable you to develop leverage using other
people's efforts, other people's knowledge and other people's money. The
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development of your persuasion power will enable you to become one of the most
powerful and influential people in your organization. It will open up doors for you in
every area of your life.

THE ART AND SCIENCE OF PERSUASION AND MOTIVATION

Are you good with people? Do you know how to get them to do stuff? Are you
using tips and techniques you picked up from others or experimented with?
If so, we can bet that sometimes your strategies work and other times they
dont.
There are seven basic drivers of human motivation. And if you understand
what motivates people youll be better able to figure out how to get people to do stuff.
Thats the premise of my book How to Get People to Do Stuff. Heres a
summary of the seven drivers of motivation:
The Need to Belong
Have you ever felt left out? Not part of a group you wanted to be part of? It
probably made you feel sad, depressed or angry, or all of the above.
We are ultimately social animals, and our desire to connect with others is a
strong, innate drive. Were not meant to live alone, and well work hard to be socially
accepted. We need to feel that we have a place in the world where we belong.
You can use the need to belong, and the longing for connectedness, to get
people to do stuff.
For example:
If you use nouns when making a request, rather than verbs for example: Be
a donor versus Donate now it results in more people taking action. Thats
because nouns invoke group identity.
People are more likely to comply with a request if they trust you.
The best way to get others to trust you is to first show that you trust them.
Habits
It might surprise you to learn how much of everything we do in a typical day
we do out of habit without even thinking about it. We dont even remember how
those habits got formed.
We hear so much about how it takes months to create a new habit. How could
that be, when we seem to have created hundreds of them easily without even
realizing it?
It turns out that its actually very easy to create a new habit or even change an
existing one, if you understand the science behind habit formation. You can use the
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science of habits to help other people create or change habits, so you can get them
to do stuff. Heres a little bit of information about the science of habits:
The easiest way to create a new habit is to anchor it to an existing habit.
If you use anchoring, you can get people to create a new habit in less than a
week.
An important part of getting someone to create a new habit is to break things
into really small steps.
The Power of Stories
What kind of person are you? Are you someone who helps those in need? Do
you keep up on the latest trends and fashions? Are you a family person who spends
time and energy to nurture family relationships?
We all have self-personas. We tell ourselves, and other people, stories about
who we are and why we do what we do. Some of our self-personas and our stories
are conscious, but others are largely unconscious.
If you understand these self-personas, then you can communicate in a way
that matches those self-stories and thereby get people to do stuff. For example:
If you can get people to take one small action that is in conflict with one of
their self-personas, that one small step can eventually lead to big behaviour change.
You can prompt someone to change their own story by having other people
share their stories. If someone hears the right story you can get people to change
their own self-stories in as little as 30 minutes and that one change can alter their
behaviour for a lifetime.
Writing something down (in longhand, not typing) activates certain parts of the
brain and makes it more likely that people will commit to what they wrote.
Carrots and Sticks
Have you ever been to a casino? Think about this: You spend a lot of time and
energy trying to get people to do stuff; you may even offer rewards or pay people to
do stuff. And yet a casino gets people to pay them!
Casinos understand the science of reward and reinforcement. Here are just a
few things the science of reward and reinforcement tells us about how to get people
to do stuff:
If you want consistent behaviour dont reward people every time they do
something, just some of the time.
People are more motivated to reach a goal the closer they get to it.
When you punish someone it only works for a little while. Giving rewards is
more effective than punishment.
Instincts
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Imagine youre driving down the road and theres an accident ahead. You tell
yourself not to slow down and look, and yet you feel the irresistible urge to do exactly
that.
Being fascinated by danger is one of our basic instincts. Instincts are strong
and largely unconscious. They affect our behaviour. Sometimes you can get people
to do stuff just by tapping into these instincts. For example:
People are more motivated by fear of losing than the possibility of gaining
something.
We are basically all control freaks. The desire to control starts as young as 4
months old.
When people are sad or scared they will want is familiar. If theyre happy and
comfortable theyll crave something new.
The Desire for Mastery
Even stronger than giving an external reward is the desire for mastery. People
are very motivated to learn and master skills and knowledge.
Certain situations encourage a desire for mastery, and others dampen the
desire for mastery. You can use what we know from the research on mastery to set
up conditions that will encourage and stimulate the desire for mastery, and, by doing
so, get people to do stuff. For example:
Giving people autonomy over what they are doing will stimulate them to
master a skill and will motivate them to work harder.
If people feel that something is difficult they will be more motivated to do it.
Dont mix praise with feedback if you want to stimulate the desire for mastery.
Just give objective feedback.
Tricks of the Mind
Youve probably seen visual illusionswhere your eye and brain think theyre
seeing something different than they really are.
What you may not realize is that there are cognitive illusions, too. There are
several biases in how we think. Our brains are wired to jump to quick conclusions.
This is useful in reacting quickly to our environment, but sometimes these fast
conclusions and decisions lead to cognitive illusions. You can use these tricks of the
mind to get people to do stuff. For example:
If you mention money, then people become more independent and less willing
to help others.
People filter out information they dont agree with, but you can get past those
filters by first agreeing with them.

People are more likely to do something if you can get them to phrase it as a
question to themselves (Will I exercise each week?) than if you get them to say a
declarative statement (I will exercise each week.)
If you understand what motivates people, then you can change and modify
what you do, what you offer, and how and what you ask of people.
You can change your strategies and tactics to get people to do stuff.

CONCLUSION
Understanding the theories of persuasion, motivation, and influence will put
you in life's driver's seat. Why? Because everything you want, or will want, in life
comes from these three simple concepts. Did you know that less than 1 percent of
the world's population understand and can actually apply the twelve Rules of
Persuasion? If you know the secrets of influence and science of persuasion, you will
be able to persuade and influence with complete accuracy. You will gain instant
influence over others and inspire others to take action, all while getting exactly what
you want from life. You will win people to your way of thinking and will empower
yourself with an unshakable confidence. You will triple your prosperity in sales and
marketing. You will become a captivating magnet of success.
Therefore motivation is essential while considering persuasion

BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Seiter, Robert H. Gass, John S. (2010). Persuasion, social influence, and
compliance gaining (4th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon. p. 33. ISBN 0-20569818-2.
2. "Persuasion". Business Dictionary. Retrieved 9 May 2012.
3. Fautsch, Leo (January 2007). "Persuasion". The American Salesman 52 (1):
1316. Retrieved 9 December 2012.
4. Schacter, Daniel L., Daniel T. Gilbert, and Daniel M. Wegner. "The Accuracy
Motive: right is better than Wrong-Persuasion." Psychology.; Second Edition.
New York: Worth, Incorporated, 2011.
5. < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persuasion>

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