Persuasion

I was told of an interesting system for measuring how much influence you have when trying to persuade someone to do what you want. My first thought was that persuasion is not the way to be working today, however almost everything we do in business involves it. For example, getting a meeting with a prospect means persuading them that you are worth seeing.

The technique revolves around two criteria - relationship and expertise. How is your relationship with the person to be persuaded and how much of an expert do they regard you as, for the subject being discussed. For example, I met a person earlier this week who is HR Director of a mid sized company. I had not met them before but the company use our HR software. At the start we had little relationship but she regarded me as enough of an expert in the system to have a meeting. My aim during the meeting was to strengthen the relationship.