Entries by Mark Rodgers

Are You Made to Persuade? A Self-Test

Successful peuasion requires intellectual heavy lifting. Understanding your target, knowing how to increase the value of your offering, choosing the right words and determining the timing of your persuasive efforts all are prerequisites of effective persuasion. No approach or technique can guarantee persuasion success, but there are ways to determine if you are, indeed, made […]

What Is Your Persuasion Destination?

Has your success ever hinged on someone agreeing with your initiative? Have you ever watched a project fail because of a lack of buy-in? Stood dumbfounded as someone else was handed the promotion you coveted? Watched a potential client pass on your proposal in favor of a more charismatic competitor? Whether you are in the […]

I am stuck on Band-Aid …

Hearing “yes” is largely about appealing to the other person’s enlightened self-interest. And one of the ways to effectively appeal to that is through the use of language, specifically a figure of speech called “chiasmus.” A chiasmus is a verbal pattern in which the second half of a phrase is balanced against the first, with […]

Want to be more convincing?

Be convinced. A biotech marketing director asked, “Mark, how to I get my team on board with a program I don’t believe in?” My immediate, slightly sarcastic, mental response: These aren’t magic methods. My actual response: You can’t. Your external actions and internal thoughts must be in alignment. I call this state congruency. Not to […]