Persuasion Skills: How To Influence People Using The Power Of Persuasion
By Michael Lee

Everyone needs persuasion skills - from the mom who wants her son to eat vegetables, to the son who wants a bike from his dad, to the dad who wants a raise from his boss and so on.

You too must have your own reasons for needing persuasion skills. Whether these reasons are personal or professional, you've come to the right place.

They say that persuasion skills depend highly on logic. While logic does have a place in decision-making, nothing gets you what you want faster than emotions. Persuasion is mostly about appealing to their emotions first. Let me show you some powerful ways to persuade and influence people.

1) Tea for Sympathy

One way to work your persuasion skills is by appealing to people's sympathetic nature. Take those charity coin banks, for example. Do you think people donate to them because it's the logical thing to do? No. People drop their coins in those charity coin banks because they feel that they need to do their part as a member of society.

What about people who support charities like cancer research or those for the disabled? Many of these supporters have either been through something like that or knew someone who has (or had) that particular affliction.

2) Using Laughter to Persuade People

If your persuasion skills need a little polishing, you might want to work on your sense of humor. Laughter, after all, is not just the best medicine. It's also one of the best persuasion tools.

When you make someone laugh, you automatically make them feel more at ease with you. In fact, John Cleese of the famous comedy group Monty Phyton has said, "If I can get you to laugh with me, you like me better, which makes you more open to my ideas. And, if I can persuade you to laugh at a particular point that I make, by laughing at it you acknowledge it as true."

3) Greed is Gold

Let's face it. People can be greedy sometimes. But when it comes to persuasion skills, greed is not something to frown upon; it's something you use to get people right where you want them!

Are you selling lottery tickets? Appeal to people by regaling to them tales of what could be. Are you selling jewelry? Get people to buy them by way of compliments. Tell them how great the stones look on them and how they'll be the envy of everyone else.

Not everyone is born with persuasion skills, but you can definitely learn them and become a master persuader.