Chapter 14
Persuasive Presentations

•     Types of Persuasive Presentations

•     Persuasive Strategies

•     Organizing Persuasive Messages

•     Samples Sales Presentation

Persuasion is the act of motivating an audience, through communication, to voluntarily change a particular belief, attitude, or behavior.

A persuasive presentation attempts to change the way an audience thinks, feels, or acts.

Types of Persuasive Presentations

•    Motivational Speeches

–  Attempts to generate enthusiasm for topic

•    Goodwill Speeches

–  Aims to create favorable image of speaker’s cause in the minds of the audience

•    Proposals

•    Sales Presentations

•    A proposal advocates that your audience take specific action.

•    Proposal Structure

–  Problem-solution approach

–  Describe problem

•   Demonstrate nature of the problem

•   Show undesirable consequences of problem

•   Highlight ethics of problem

•   Provide causal analysis

•    Proposal Structure

– Provide a solution

•  Describe proposal and its positive consequences

•  Show how proposal avoids bad consequences

•  Highlight ethics of proposal

•  Address feasibility

In a sales presentation, one party presents remarks aimed at persuading another to purchase a product or service.

•    Sales Presentation Guidelines

–  Establish client relationships before talk

–  Put your clients’ needs first

–  Listen to your clients

–  Emphasize benefits, not features

–  Use an effective closing strategy

Ethical Persuasion

•    Example: City council’s intention to turn an athletic field into a parking lot.

–  Residents have four choices

�   Do nothing

�   Use coercion – forcefulness, threats

�   Use persuasion – organized appeal

�   Use manipulation – trickery, deceptive

•     Coercion, Persuasion and Manipulation do NOT fall into 3 distinct categories

–  Blend into one another like colors on a spectrum

•     Best measures of genuine persuasion are:

–  Whether recipient feels free to make a choice

–  Whether originator would be comfortable as recipient of message

Persuasive Strategies

•    Aristotle’s “The Rhetoric”

•    3 approaches to maximize influence

– Ethos: Appeal to credibility

– Logos: Appeal to logic

– Pathos: Appeal to emotion

•    Maximize your credibility

– Ways to enhance credibility

•  Demonstrate your competence

– Knowledge of subject

– Credentials

– Demonstration of ability

•  Earn the trust of your audience

– Honesty

– Impartiality

•  Emphasize similarity to audience

•    Use logical arguments

–  Fallacies are arguments that are flawed by errors in reasoning

•     Fallacious reasoning isn’t always intentional

–  Weaken case by casting doubt

Most common fallacies

–Personal attack (Ad Hominem)

•    Attacks individual’s integrity to weaken his/her argument

–Reduction to the absurd (Reductio Ad Absurdum)

•    Attacks argument by making it look ridiculous

–Either/Or

•    Sets up false alternatives

•    Most common fallacies

– False cause (Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc)

•  Mistakenly assume that one event causes another because they occur sequentially

– Bandwagon Appeal                 (Argumentum ad Populum)

•  Based on the notion that because others favor an idea, you should too

•    Use Psychological Appeals

– Appeal to needs of audience

– Make your goal realistic

•  Social Judgment Theory

– Focus appeals on critical segments

– Defer thesis with hostile audience

– Present ample evidence

•    Use Psychological Appeals

– Consider citing opposing ideas when the audience:

•  disagrees with your position

•  knows both sides of the issue

•  will soon hear your viewpoint criticized or another one promoted

– Adapt to cultural style of audience

Organizing Persuasive Messages

•     Problem-solution plan

–  Works well when your audience does not feel strong need to change from status quo

•     Comparative Advantages

–  Use when audience is considering an idea competing with yours

•     Criteria Satisfaction

–  Shows how product meets selected principles

•     Motivated Sequence

–  Attention, Need, Satisfaction, Visualization, Call to Action

“True selling is caring, listening, solving problems, and serving your fellow human being.”--Robert Kiyosaki