20 Powerful Persuasive Techniques You Can Use at Work
Persuasion is a fundamental skill you need to attract potential customers and investors, create your brand or inspire others. No one can deny the art of persuasion and its role in this era of modern ideas. Persuasion techniques are commonly used in writing and verbal communication to influence others.
Advertisements on TV and other media types commonly use various persuasive language techniques to convince their audience. You need to use multiple ways to prove your point in research and academics. Also, persuasive writing techniques are essential to improve your writing quality.
This article elaborates on 20 powerful persuasive techniques you can use at work. Here is a list of persuasive techniques for your quick review. By using some of the persuasive techniques on this list, you can effectively communicate your ideas and achieve your desired outcomes at work.
- Body language
- Rhetorical Questions
- Personal Anecdotes
- Tricolon
- Inclusive Language
- Emotive Language
- Confidence
- Foot in the Door
- The Framing Technique
- The Unity Technique
- Door in the Face
- Anchoring
- Social Proof
- Metaphor and Simile
- Repetition
- Ethos
- Pathos
- Logos
- Evidence
- Imagery
What are Persuasive Techniques?
Persuasive techniques are the particular approaches people use to convince others to agree with them. Their main purpose is to build trust and help others adopt new behaviours. You will find the prevalence of persuasive techniques in almost every aspect of life.
Principles of Persuasion
Persuasive language techniques and writing skills mainly work on these six principles. Following are the six main principles of persuasion, as described by Robert Cialdini.
1. Scarcity
Inherently, humans fascinate things that are inaccessible or rare. Scarcity involves insight into the limited availability of a particular resource. This perception allows the customers to make a prompt decision for acquiring that specific thing. One can utilise this perception to persuade people to a particular service with various persuasive techniques.
2. Authority
It is all about referencing experts and their expertise. The principle of Authority involves revealing your expertise to educate the public about products and recent trends. It helps establish your credibility.
3. Reciprocity
Reciprocity, when used in persuasion techniques enhances your reputation. It helps you make a strong bond with other people. If you are helpful to people, they prefer you for a service. Moreover, they will refer others to avail of your services.
4. Commitment and Consistency
You can easily get a favour from others if they consider you a trustworthy and reliable person. Stick to your commitments and fulfil the task you announce. It helps you build trust and bonding with the potential audience.
5. Liking
People usually confer favour to the ones they like. Liking persuasive techniques is important to develop an affinity with people or customers. Once people start liking you, you can easily persuade them to do a task or service.
6. Consensus (Social Acceptance)
People tend to value the response of users having a first-hand experience of a service or a product. Get supporting responses from users to develop trust for your product. It helps you persuade the customers as they tend to follow the crowd.
Persuasive Language Techniques
Persuasive language is used to convince the audience about your point of view or any research conclusions. When presenting your ideas at work, it’s important to pay attention to your audience’s reactions and adjust your persuasive techniques accordingly. This article covers all the basic persuasive language techniques people use these days.
Let’s look at the common persuasive language techniques you can use in the workplace.
1. Body Language
It is the most important among other persuasive techniques to convince your audience. It involves maintaining your posture, eye contact, and expressions. Direct eye contact and body language will ensure your audience that you’re listening to them. Also, you can stand upright and show gestures like talking with hands to enhance your influence.
2. Rhetorical Questions
Asking a rhetorical question is an excellent approach to engaging your audience. You can ask an open-ended question to force them to think about a scenario. Also, you can use such questions to evoke emotions or focus on a single point.
3. Personal Anecdotes
Narrating a short story about your life experiences is usually interesting. It can help present a complex idea in a simple way. Also, it’ll be useful to relate an idea or deliver a specific message. Also, you can use it with different persuasive writing techniques.
4. Tricolon
A tricolon is simply a set of three words or phrases put together. 3 is a magical number to leave a strong impression on your listeners. Let’s try using them in different ways and create fun with persuasive language techniques!
5. Inclusive Language
1st and 2nd person pronouns in conversation can help engage the listeners directly by including them. It’s a powerful technique to persuade your potential customers. For example, you can use “us” and “we” to provoke a positive response.
6. Emotive Language
It’s all about the selection of words that provoke emotions in users. Emotive language involves using adjectives and adverbs to create a speech full of life. Metaphors and similes can also help a lot.
7. Show Confidence
Besides other persuasive language techniques, confidence is the paramount key to persuasion. If you’re confident about what you are speaking, your audience will automatically find it interesting and useful. Projecting confidence in your presenting your product can help people believe in you.
8. Foot in the Door
Foot-in-the-door is a persuasive technique in which you use a small initial request to build the trust of consumers. After that, you will increase the request to your interest. It affects you a lot before you’ve already won the trust of another person.
9. The Framing Technique
The technique employs the framing effect to twist the presentation of an idea. Sometimes a small change in how you present instantly makes something look better. For instance, you can say that 50% of the population will survive the pandemic instead of saying that half of the individuals will die of the disease.
10. The Unity Technique
This persuasion technique is all about finding similarities and talking about common interests. Using words like “us” and “we” will make people feel more comfortable and inclined toward your conversation. Whatever the matter, try to find commonalities to talk on common grounds.
11. Door in the Face
This technique involves offering a high offer to help first to help buyers accept the actual price or quality. Door in the face creates a sense of competition, and consumers will accept the deal with a lower price.
12. The Anchoring Technique
The main goal of persuasive techniques is to meet customers’ expectations. Anchoring is a type of cognitive bias to gain users’ attention. For example, you can show your products as more impressive or less expensive to anchor new users.
13. Social Proof
Being social animals, people usually need social proof before trying something new. Susceptibility to peer pressure induces humans to do things that the majority of the population is doing. Providing social proof is a wonderful sales tool to persuade potential customers.
14. Metaphor and Simile
People usually better understand stories, analogies, and metaphors as compared to straightforward arguments. Try using metaphors and similes along with other persuasive language techniques to help people catch your ideas about products or services.
15. Repetition
Repetition is an effective way to inculcate your idea in users’ minds. By repeating letters, words, and phrases in persuasive techniques, you can reinforce your argument and point of view. This way, you can ensure that the point of view you have presented is retained by users.
Persuasive Writing Techniques
Persuasive language techniques involve a personal and informal type of writing to convince readers. Persuasive writers or content marketer can create content for readers to agree on a particular point. It can be a call to action for consumers to buy your products or services.
Here is an overview of persuasive writing techniques you can try.
16. Ethos
Ethos writing is based on personal appeal and the sense of morality of your audience. Here, you have to establish your good character to attract the audience. For this purpose, you can use your real life experience or knowledge to gain support.
17. Pathos
Pathos writing targets the reader’s emotional appeal. You need to generate such content to provoke an emotional response, gaining the attention of your readers. For instance, you can say, “can you watch millions of people die each year as a result of a pandemic?” Some common emotions targeted here are fear, guilt, love, and hatred.
18. Logos
It’s a kind of writing that includes rational facts and figures. Using reliable facts in your writing can make it difficult for others to challenge your credibility. Ultimately, it will draw readers’ attention and persuade them to your argument or opinion.
19. Evidence
Evidence-based writing is a great way to establish the credibility of your writing. It will look more logical and reliable to support your idea. You can use persuasive writing techniques like statistics, scientific research, and other facts to persuade readers.
20. Imagery
You can use images within an article or independently to persuade readers. Also, using a figurative style of language, including metaphors and similes, can create an imaginary picture in the user’s mind. It will ultimately look sophisticated and appealing.
How to Become More Persuasive at Work
Are you struggling to become more persuasive at work? If yes, we have described 20 powerful ways to help you become more persuasive at work. You can practice these simple persuasion techniques to stay organised and enhance your influence in the workplace. Persuasive language techniques help you stand out in interpersonal communication. In addition, persuasive writing techniques will help establish your worth in the workplace.
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