These include knowledge and understanding of the person to be persuaded and the setting; the enterprising person’s heartsickness, social skills, social capital, perseverance, and strategy; the past relationship Of the parties involved; and characteristics of the persuasive message. Keywords: persuasion, compliance, social skills, perspective-taking, adaptability, expressiveness, impression-management, Ethos, Pathos, Logos, Theory-of- Planned-Behavior, heuristics, peripheral-processing. 2 Winning people Over INTRODUCTION Persuasion is the process of trying to move one or more people to a new or changed belief, attitude, value, or behavior.
In this article, the focus is in particular on behavior: Getting people to commit to an action or course of action. It is about having people say ‘ yes’ to a request, but it often goes further than that: persuasion is to win people over to lend their support to the new venture, whether as customer, investor, worker, supplier, or any other role. In this article, the person who persuades is referred to as the enterprising person (PEP), and the person who is being persuaded as the persuaded person (UP).
As with the other articles in this program, the default context is that of a novice enterprising person who pursues a new venture, be it a commercial product or service, a nee-off event, or a social enterprise. Enterprising means the pro-active pursuit of a novel venture that entails risk and uncertainty (it might fail), and that involves other people. These others will need to be convinced to take part.
This article is about influencing in direct personal contact (face-toffee, phone, email), rather than persuasion attempts by means of advertising or branding.
VI As stated above, enterprising behavior is a social process; it involves other people, and it is ultimately about relationship management. The enterprising person works with a number of stakeholders. Although the enterprising person may feel central to the project, all these stakeholders see themselves as being at the center. From a relationship perspective, the enterprising person is not at the center but rather at the edges, running around the circle, being involved with the stakeholders, managing the relationships in such a way that the venture is furthered.
As any enterprising venture is ultimately about satisfying the needs of Article 7: Persuasion 3 stakeholders, it is imperative for the PEP to have a deep understanding of who he or she is trying to persuade. They can be users, buyers, clients, suppliers, financiers, workers, or business partners. Respectively, these are asked to use, buy, and stay with the product, to provide supplies, to invest, to supply their labor to the venture, and to become part of the new venture team.
In the case of new ventures, these stakeholders need to be won over to the new idea (if the venture is in the opportunity stage), product or service, and organization. Still other stakeholders are in the Pep’s personal network (e. G.
, a spouse needs to be convinced that this new venture is worth giving up quality mime together) and business network (who may be asked to do favors or jobs for the new venture). The relationship management perspective also implies that in many cases persuasion takes place in an ongoing context, rather than being a one-off event. This applies just as much to customers or clients.
In many cases the sale will be part of an ongoing relationship. Thus, it is less about ‘ the sale to be made’ and more about ‘ the person to be served’. Even if the sale is a one-off event, it is important for the new venture to further positive word-of-mouth and reputation.
Persuasion in the context of enterprising behavior is more about winning people over than about defeating them. New ventures often suffer from liabilities that come with being new (Coexistence, 1965). New ventures have no track record, are unfamiliar, and their fate is often shrouded in uncertainty.
New and emerging offerings may require the development of new levels of expectation, changes of habits, establishment of new standards, the building of desire for products or services, and even the creation of new markets (Earned, Manning, and Erect, 2012).
This applies to customers as much as o other stakeholders. APS are asked to commit resources to the venture such as money, time, and energy, which may currently be allocated elsewhere, in return for promised but uncertain benefits. Thus, persuasion is arguably the most important skill for enterprising people to possess. The term persuasion applies to settings where the UP has at least some level of free choice. There must be a level of discretion for persuasion to exist.
A policeman telling a bystander to step back, or a boss ordering an employee to take on a particular task, are not examples of persuasion. A robber who puts gun one someone’s head and asks for the wallet is also not persuading. The term persuasion does not apply to contexts where influence is exerted on the basis of authority, hierarchy or physical force. Persuasion also does not refer to offering money.
Paying a landscaper 1, 000 dollars to tend one’s garden is not persuasion: it’s buying a service.
However, in many contexts hierarchical and economic incentives are intertwined with persuasion practices. In the default situation from which this article proceeds, however, the PEP is not in a position to order around, or to buy her way in. She will need to make clear what she wants, and especially why the UP wants it too. For enterprising people, having to convince stakeholders to commit it is not the only reason why it is important to know about persuasion.
Obviously, the better a case is made and presented, the higher the chances of success. If the PEP has weak persuasion skills, stakeholders will more likely refuse a request, and may even go with the proposal of a competitor.
But one other reason to know about persuasion is that it is a two-way process. For example, it is not just that an PEP persuades an investor to commit money, knowledge and outworks. The investor will persuade the PEP just as much, in order to arrive at favorable terms. All stakeholders have their own aims and agendas, and will use persuasion to further those.
Thus, the better the PEP understands persuasion processes, the better she understands how others attempt to persuade her. Furthermore, Peps often work under conditions of uncertainty, information scarcity or overload, time pressure, and fatigue (Baron, 1998; Gibbs, 1993).
Typically, in these situations there will be an increased reliance on gut-feeling and rules-of-thumb, as these conditions make it impossible to exhaustively duty and analyze the situation. The application of realistic 7: Persuasion 5 of-thumb is studied in persuasion science under the heading of heuristics (Calling, 1984/2007).
Heuristics are generally efficient and effective. However, they also have a long history of use in persuasion, and stakeholders may attempt to influence by means of these heuristics to further their own aims. Enterprising individuals who operate under the conditions outlined above are especially susceptible to these practices.
So the PEP needs el knowledge of persuasion for ‘ defensive’ purposes as much as for achieving what she has set out to achieve. Heuristics will be discussed at length in a later section of this article.
Various professions have persuasion as their daily tasks. These vocations include politicians, diplomats, lobbyists, advertisers, sales people, proselytizes, and recruiters. It is therefore not surprising that a vast body of research has emerged that studies the influence processes and tactics that these persuasion professionals employ.
Although some people appear to be born persuaders, persuasion is not only an art, it is also a science. Persuasion is a complex process in which many factors play a role. Persuasion skills can be improved through study, practice, and reflection.
It is important to be aware of one’s own preferences for certain persuasion styles and tactics, their strengths and weaknesses, and to be able to employ a diversity of approaches. Various overviews of the persuasion literature have been written and any enterprising individual is well advised to study these sources (see Coffee, 2002; Perlman’s, 201 0; Rogers, 2007). This article provides a brief overview of this literature in the context of the novice PEP setting out to realize her aims.
The professions mentioned above are suffering from a poor reputation.
They are believed to be sacrificing the truth to further their own interests. They suffer from a low level of trust and for that reason need to take several extra measures in order to be persuasive. Persuasion processes, however, are not ethically suspect in and of themselves.
Convincing a child to come to the grocery store by highlighting that it will get one of those sweets sold at the counter (or given out for free, by clever retail operators) is a matter of highlighting the Article 7: persuasion 6 benefits of the proposition. But persuasion can easily become manipulative (Johannes, 2001).
In fact, several people who worked as professional persuaders became so sick of themselves that they stepped out of their industries and wrote books exposing the dubious practices involved (some of these cases are discussed by Levine, 2003). Luckily, as a class, start-up entrepreneurs do not have this tarnished reputation.
For Peps, it is very important to build a reputation of honesty and reliability. It is one of the most important factors that people consider when deciding whether they want to have anything to do with the venture.
Suppose that two enterprising individuals have a case to make to a potential artificial in a venture (such as a potential investor, client, supplier, or business partner). Only one of them can be rewarded.
Even in the simplified case of two competing enterprising people, there is usually a third competitive force at work: the vested interests in maintaining the status quo. Incumbent organizations will try to defend their positions. Which factors will tilt the balance? The remainder of this article provides an overview of these factors. Because a great many elements play a role in persuasion processes, this overview is necessarily brief.