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Why Money Matters in Persuasion Situations

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It’s time to revisit you persuasion priority: Who is the one person you want to say “yes” to what? 

In other words: If, in your professional endeavors, you could flick a switch and convince one person to do just one thing, what would that be? Remember that your persuasion priority must be specific, significant and meaningful to you and your organization, and realistic enough to be attainable. It also must be set with others in mind, because if you can help them get what they want, you’ll ultimately get what you want.

Is Your Persuasion Priority Really a Priority?

Occasionally, professionals spend inordinate amounts of time, energy and effort on persuasion campaigns that aren’t worth all that hard work. Discretionary time is wasted, political capital is squandered and relationships are sometimes damaged irreparably in the pursuit of an ill-advised strategy.

Thus, it’s easy to be fooled into thinking an objective is worthwhile. We feel the opportunity is scarce (I’ll never get another chance to work on a project in Germany!) or fall prey to base rate neglect (I know a person who tried this approach to product marketing and it worked for him! [But maybe it failed for everyone else…])

The carpentry rule applies here: Measure twice, cut once.

What Will Be Your Personal Financial Return?

There are many questions to ask when crafting your persuasion priority, and I will cover them in a series of posts beginning with this question: Is there a personal financial gain at stake?

In other words, if you are successful in achieving your persuasion priority, will you make more money? I’m talking about individual compensation or group compensation, as well as short-term compensation and long-term return. 

An example of individual compensation is when you earn an individual sales commission for closing a deal. Group compensation involves receiving additional dollars when the sales team as a whole meets a particular sales objective. Short-term compensation is reflected in your next commission check, while long-term return may refer to quarterly or yearly returns. 

Typically, people place their highest priority on individual short-term financial gains, such as an increase in hourly wage or salary, so they can enjoy immediate gratification. 

In reality, the more-powerful financial return might be long-term group financial gains, such as stock options, deferred compensation and royalties.

The question of potential personal financial gain is the first one to ask because, well, money is important. I chuckle when someone tells me it isn’t. My mind immediately jumps back to my earliest days working for Harley-Davidson at the company’s Milwaukee headquarters. Rich Teerlink, then president and chief executive officer, gave me a piece of advice I’ll never forget: “Mark, if someone ever tells you they are not interested in money, watch them, because they’ll lie to you about other things, too.”  

That said, while money is important, it’s far from the only thing that matters. I’ll cover more of those things in future posts.

What Will Be Your Legacy?

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What is your persuasion priority? In other words, who is the one person you want to say “yes” to what?

Once you know the answer to that question, ask yourself this: Will my persuasion priority impact my legacy either at my company or in the field?

If you’re 21 years old, fresh out of college and starting your career, you may consider your legacy to be an inconsequential and trivial matter. You have the entire rest of your life to worry about a legacy. If, however, you’re in your sixties and thinking about what your next chapter in life holds, your legacy is a significant consideration.

When you reach that point, here are some questions to ask yourself regarding your persuasion priority:

• How will others view this action or attempt in the future?

• Will it be seen as self-serving or as contributing to the larger group? 

• Will it be seen as the act of a confident and conscientious member of the team or as something done from an insecure position?

• Are your efforts an attempt to leave a stronger company in your wake? Develop future organization leaders? Preserve personal records or accomplishments?

Even if you’re not nearing the end of your time at a company or in a career, it’s still wise to consider these questions now. Your actions today will contribute to your legacy tomorrow.

Persuasion Power: The Role Return on Investment Plays

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In a previous post, I began explaining how to build your business case to achieve skyrocketing persuasion results. It all begins with doing due diligence.

The most fundamental financial measure is return on investment. Companies use this measure to determine if they should take action — or if the action they took was worth it.

The classic ROI Calculation is this: ROI = Net Benefit/Total Cost.

You want a positive number here, which is why some companies even have ROI minimums before they take on a project. If your ROI number is negative, your persuasion priority is no good for your organization, and you should reconsider — even if your persuasion priority works to your own advantage.

ROI can be expressed in dollars, as a percentage or as a ratio.

How much did you invest, and how much did you receive in return? Let’s say you invested $100,000 in a marketing campaign, which in turn reaped $1 million dollars in sales.

ROI in Dollars

To find your ROI in dollars, use this calculation:

  1. Begin with the total dollars garnered from your initiative: $1 million
  2. Subtract the cost of your initiative: $100,000
  3. That leaves you with the dollars returned: $1,000,000 – $100,000 = $900,000

Not including the cost of the initiative would be a gross overstatement. Some financial experts might even consider this entire example a gross overstatement, because it doesn’t account for the cost of goods sold.

Let’s say the cost of goods sold in our example is $500,000. Now you have sold $1 million in product, but that product cost you $500,000 to produce and get to market. Our ROI dollars calculation now looks like this: $1,000,000 Gross Revenue – $500,000 COGS – $100,000 Marketing Investment = $400,000 ROI. If you want to appear reasonable, conservative, and responsible to senior management, use the gross profit number in your persuasive efforts.

ROI as a Percentage

Expressing ROI as a percentage is even more common than expressing it as dollars. Again, let’s use the same example of investing $100,000 and garnering $1 million in gross revenue — which, by the way, would be a fantastic investment! To find this:

  1. Calculate gross profit:
    Revenue – COGS = Gross Profit —> $1 million – $500,000 = $500,000 Gross Profit
  2. Subtract your investment from the gross profit:
    Gross Profit – Investment —> $500,000 – $100,000 = $400,000
  3. Divide that by your investment amount to determine a factor:
    $400,000 / $100,000 = 4
  4. Then multiple that factor by 100 to give you a percentage:
    4 x 100 = 400% ROI

ROI Ratios

A ratio demonstrates the quantitative relationship between two numbers, showing how many times one number contains the other. The most elegant way to write this is with a colon. In our example above, our initiative has a 4:1 ROI ratio.

Typically when using ROI ratios, whatever you invest is always 1. So if the marketing campaign example above cost $150,000 (instead of $100,000), you would simply divide $400,000 by $150,000 and find the product to be 2.666; now your ROI ratio (rounded up) would be to 2.7. That makes your ROI ratio 2.7:1. Not as compelling but still not bad!

The challenge with return on investment calculations is what’s included and what isn’t, on both sides of the equation. Do you include the total cost for salaried employees to work on your initiative as a cost? Do you attempt to quantify improved morale as a benefit? With ROI, like all measures, it’s valuable to consider those inclusions and exemptions. Every company has different ways of looking at the numbers.

One final note about ROI calculations: If you are using these calculations to forecast anticipated ROI, you may want to run a few different scenarios. What if sales are off by a particular percentage? What if your cost of goods sold is higher than anticipated?

As I’ve mentioned in the past: Know this kind of stuff, and you’ll be well on your way to becoming a professional persuader — because you’re proving the viability of your ideas and initiatives to your targets.

Up next: The Breakeven Calculation

Chipping Away at the Blocks to Persuasion Success

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In a recent post, I wrote about common blocks to hearing yes.

Expanding on that, I’ve identified four specific target blocks: personal details, personalities, preferences and parameters. Each block includes sub-points that will help you chip away at a particular block to get to “yes.” Think of your persuasion priority: Who do you want to say “yes” to what?

Keeping that priority in mind, carefully review each of the four areas and identify what is a block, what isn’t a block and how you know. (This is an exercise you should repeat every time you have a major persuasion priority on your hands.)

You won’t need to provide detail for all areas here, but the more information you have, the better your chances of persuasion success. If it helps, create a worksheet to keep track of what is a block, what isn’t a block and how you know. You’ll also be amazed at what you’ll learn.

Let’s begin: What do you know about your target?

Personal Details

⇒ Professional objectives: These goals are important to a person’s business or career, which may involve status in a hierarchical structure, entrepreneurship or business ownership.

⇒ Personal agendas: These goals involve family, friends, hobbies, travel, recreation, civic and service involvement, religious commitments and self-development.

⇒ Emotional intensity: This comes into play if a persuasion situation also involves a personal relationship, a belief that goes beyond intellectual evaluations or commitment over compliance. Think of emotional intensity as the volume knob on a Marshall half stack, not the on/off switch. You can turn it up or down, depending on your needs.

Personalities

⇒ Gender or generational differences: Are there behavior tendencies influenced by gender where you two are potentially out of synch? Are there generational differences creating a stone wall in front of you?

⇒ Organizational influence: What is your target’s organizational horsepower?

⇒ Publicly stated perspective on a given issue: This can include conversations, written communication, the championing of or opposition to similar issues, role as a stakeholder, and experience with the given situation.

⇒ Trust level: What is the degree of trust shared between you and your target? Think of your personal history with the target, respect given and shown, mutual obligations, favors supplied and reciprocal support.

Preferences

⇒ Idiosyncratic communication preferences: Does your target prefer to communicate with you and others via email, phone or text message?

⇒ Data preferences: Some people want all the information; others just want the executive summary. Some people like to study the stats, others want the story. How does your target prefer his information?

⇒ Target’s tendencies: Do he approach problem solving in a particular way? Does she have a go-to person? Does he often resort to cutting expenses or sales promotions? Do they exhibit behaviors that may impede your path to yes?

⇒ Relationships: This involves examination of advisors, peers, past sources of influence, probability of independent actions (or actions dictated by others), and reactions to peer pressure. Does your target have any exceptionally positive or unusually strained relationships?

Parameters

⇒ Approval authority: This is usually related to economics, budgets and the ability to secure funding by attracting donors or underwriters. (This also is crucial when dealing with nonprofit organizations.)

⇒ Budget parameters: These relate to the ability to make unilateral decisions, timing in the budget process, ROI considerations, changing priorities and non-allocated discretionary funds.

⇒ Time constraints: Consider the deadlines you and your target are under, the magnitude of what needs to be accomplished once agreement is reached, and the hours/days/months/years it will take to make the ask’s concept a reality.

⇒ Issue expertise: This may involve credibility, history in this and similar circumstances, researching and studying the issue, and public statements.

Summary

You may wish to add or amend categories. My point is that in order to define your target and the likelihood of persuasion, you need intelligence — not brain smarts, but what the government would call “intel.”

I choose not to think of this as “competitive intelligence,” because the target isn’t necessarily in a competitive position (at least we should hope not). But the target is in a questionable position, insofar as how amenable that individual might be to your persuasive charms.

Remember: The most effective and impressive persuaders know exactly who they’re persuading and how to tailor messages specifically to them.

The Michelangelo Method: Chipping away at everything that isn’t ‘yes’

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“Every block of stone has a statue inside it, and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.” 

Those words come from Michelangelo, the Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet of the Renaissance Era. And they still ring true today: We are all sculptors, and in life (as in art) we must eliminate the blocks to our success. Which means you must chip away, as it were, at everything that might prevent your persuasion target from saying “yes” to your request. I call it the “Michelangelo Method.”

Here are some common blocks to your rock of yes that must be chiseled away:

  • A lack of knowledge of the issue or your solution
  • Poor market conditions for your request
  • A toxic operating environment or corporate culture
  • Competing options for your request
  • No urgency
  • Lack of attention
  • An unknown or low ROI

The most common chiseling challenge is all that existing rock, which has been built up over years and maybe even decades. You need to be skilled at removing the unnecessary and the irrelevant — the parts that don’t fit your picture of the future you’re trying to achieve with your persuasion priority.

Identifying the blocks to your request and eliminating them also requires you to deftly yet confidently wield the hammer and chisel of evidence gathering. This, my friends, is the artistry of persuasion.

We’ll begin chipping away at this topic in my next post.

Persuasion Success: Navigating the Gender Gap

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If you like to watch fireworks, just bring up the subject of gender differences at your next friendly neighborhood cookout. Chances are the grill won’t be the only thing on fire.

The moment you take an absolutist stand on gender differences, you find yourself in a proverbial gender La Brea Tar Pit. Every individual — man or woman — has unique education backgrounds, experiences and frames of reference. (Please keep that in mind before you send me irate emails.) That said, there is real science behind the differences between men and women when it comes to decision-making and persuasion. Consider these findings:

Men often overstate their abilities; women understate them.

“In studies, men overestimate their abilities and performance, and women underestimate both. Their performances do not differ in quality,” wrote Katty Kay and Claire Shipman in a lengthy article for The Atlantic magazine’s website in 2014. The authors of Womenomics and authorities on gender differences in business found that women working at Hewlett-Packard applied for a promotion only when they believed they met 100 percent of the job qualifications. On the other hand, men were happy to apply when they thought they could meet 60 percent of the job requirements.

Bottom line: Persuasion is about taking risk. You can’t get the job if you don’t apply.

A four-letter word for men: help.

In her book, Why She Buys: The New Strategy for Reaching the World’s Most Powerful Consumers, gender expert Bridget Brennan claims women love asking for and receiving help. For men, “help” is a four-letter word.

Bottom line: When persuading women, offer assistance in some form. This gender preference will do wonders for you and your persuasion priority. If you’re persuading men, try something like this: “I did find a report that talks about what you were researching. I’ll leave it here.”

Men buy, women shop.

Shopping behavior mirrors gender differences throughout many aspects of life. Women consider shopping an interpersonal activity, according to Wharton marketing professor Stephen J. Hoch. Men treat is as something that must be done.

Bottom line: Pair this idea with personality behaviors to give you strong indications of how fast or slow you should move with your request.

Perfectionism is a confidence killer.

“Women feel confident only when they are perfect,” Kay and Shipman wrote for The Atlantic. “Study after study confirms that [this] is largely a female issue, one that extends through women’s entire lives. We don’t answer questions until we are totally sure of the answer, we don’t submit a report until we’ve edited it ad nauseam, and we don’t sign up for that triathlon unless we know we are faster and fitter than is required. We watch our male colleagues take risks, while we hold back until we’re sure we are perfectly ready and perfectly qualified.”

Bottom line: No one needs to be at 100 percent all the time. In fact, few are. Leverage that reality in your persuasion efforts.

Gender behavior is based on brain structure and body chemistry.

In 2007, neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine released The Female Brain, a book that generated major debate by claiming that women’s brains “are so deeply affected by hormones that their influence can be said to create a woman’s reality. They can shape a woman’s values and desires, and tell her, day to day, what’s important.” Brizendine then released The Male Brain in 2010, in which she states that “a man will use his analytical brain structures, not his emotional ones, to find a solution.” She also notes that the male brain thrives on competition and is obsessed with rank and hierarchy.

Bottom Line: Differences in estrogen, testosterone and oxytocin affect moods, behaviors and decisions. Everything is situational, especially this guidance. Identify the mercurial targets from the more static and approach accordingly.

Gender behavior changes with age.

As men and women age, testosterone and estrogen levels decrease, respectively. This results in women becoming more assertive and men more accommodating.

Bottom line: Take into consideration the age of your target.

Women don’t ask.

While researching their book Women Don’t Ask: The High Cost of Avoiding Negotiation — and Positive Strategies for Change, economics professor and negotiation specialist Linda Babcock and co-author Sara Laschever found that only about 7 percent of female MBAs attempted to negotiate their salaries when hired, compared to 57 percent of men. Those who did negotiate increased their salary by more than 7 percent.

Bottom line: You’ll never get the promotion, the assignment, the budget or the career you want if you don’t ask. The worst thing your target can say is no.

Women make great personal evangelists.

Women focus on details, researchers say, and are more likely than men to talk to their colleagues about their experiences with you.

Bottom line: If you want personal evangelists — people willing to sing your praises — identify women with whom you’ve exceeded their expectations.

Men decide; women ruminate.

Scientists Colin Camerer and Read Montague imaged the brains of men and women to determine the neural roots of fidelity and betrayal. After making a decision, the male brain turned off. Female brains, however, continued to display activity in parts that regulate worry and error-detection.

Bottom line: When she says, “I’ll have to think about it,” that doesn’t mean “no.” It usually means she actually does need to think about it.

Here are more gender differences to keep in mind:

  • Women are better at negotiating for a group.
  • Men are better at negotiating for themselves.
  • Women tend to avoid conflict situations.
  • Men tend to avoid emotional scenes.
  • Women respond more to stories than facts.
  • Women have better peripheral vision and will notice that family photo on your desk.

Some women — and men — might be highly offended right now and argue against any generalizations like the ones listed above. Others may be nodding in agreement. Regardless, keeping these ideas in mind will help you stay out of the muck as you seek to achieve your persuasion priority.

How to Set Your Persuasion Priority

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Let’s consider your career. If, in your professional endeavors, you could flick a switch and convince one person to do just one thing, what would that be?

Do you want to get the cool assignment? Bring a new product to market? Overhaul the customer service department? Win the promotion? Land a big-name client? Secure a budget increase? Each of these is what I call a “persuasion priority.”

Once you’ve determined the answer to that question, ask yourself this question: Who is the one person you want to say yes to what?

(When setting persuasion priorities, it’s often more effective to state them in the affirmative, even if you’re attempting to dissuade someone. For example, if you want your target to not choose a particular vendor, phrase your priority in the affirmative: “I would like Steve to weigh other options before choosing his vendor.”)

Before you answer the above persuasion priority question, consider the four persuasion priority criteria. Your persuasion priority must be:

  • Meaningful: Important to you and your organization
  • Significant: Large enough to make a difference in your life and workplace
  • Realistic: But not so large that it’s unattainable
  • “Others” Oriented: Because you get ahead by improving the condition of others

Be specific, too. You don’t want to generalize with a statement such as, “I’d like my boss to give me more responsibility.” That’s too imprecise. To increase your chances of persuasion success, specificity is crucial: “I want my boss to give me responsibility for the Latin American project.” 

Don’t say this: “I want my senior vice president to add some people to my staff.” Instead, say this: “I want my senior vice president to approve five key new hires for my department next quarter.” 

Stop reading right now and write down your persuasion priority. Who is the one person you want to do what?

Of course, at any given time, you’ll have multiple issues and objectives for which you seek agreement. But keeping your persuasion priority top of mind will significantly increase your chances of getting to “yes.” And if you’ve chosen your objective carefully, achieving it will have a dramatic and overwhelmingly positive impact on your career — and perhaps your life.