The Art & Skill of Persuasion – A Workshop for Finance Professionals

Course Overview:

This workshop style course has been designed to meet the needs of finance professionals who need to build relationships within their organisation in order to get colleagues on side and for those in a sales or account management role who are dealing with potentially difficult customers or situations.

This course will help you bring people around to your way of thinking, reducing resistance to new ideas and eliminating conflict. You will learn how to build rapport more easily by utilising appropriate communication styles and practise persuasion techniques for dealing with difficult people and situations.

Course Content:

Understanding Persuasion

• What makes a successful persuader?
• The qualities of a successful persuader
• Influencing and persuading, not manipulation
• Defining persuasion and influence
• Principles of effective influencing
• Self- Belief, Confidence & Assertiveness
• What do we mean by push and pull styles of persuasion
• The psychology of persuasion – the basics

Example/Exercise

Preparing to persuade

• Building Trust
• “Mocking Bird” Theory
• Non verbal communication
• Building Trust and rapport
• Finding out what others want or need – listening and questioning
• Perception – how you perceive situations and how others may perceive you

Example/Exercise

Explore what others want

• Setting clear objectives on the scope of selling you wish to embark on
• Effective questioning techniques
• Realise the values and motivations of others
• Hone your listening skills and overcome barriers to active listening
• The identification of individual ‘filters’ and how to overcome these
• The power of positive thought – preparing for the persuasion discussion

Example/Exercise

Communication Style

• Choose from a range of communication styles depending upon the situation
• Learn to respond, rather than react
• Open, leading and closed questions.
• The Funnel questioning technique.
• Understanding values and how to persuade around these
• Questioning techniques to understand values and build relationships

Example/Exercise

Overcome resistance

• Select one of the six levels of assertiveness, without compromising the values of others
• Apply a practical 6-step Influence Model
• Using FAB to match the needs gathered from customers
• Dealing with conflict – handling difficult situations without emotions
• Presenting your case with impact, taking the values of others into account

Example/Exercise

State your case persuasively

• Presenting at the right stage.
• Adopt strategies that work for you
• State your case assertively and convincingly.
• Knowing the audience
• Gathering the content
• The 10/80/10 rule for structuring the presentation
• Delivering a presentation

Example/Exercise

Handling Objections

• Identifying frequently encountered objections.
• The pre-emption of objections.
• Developing appropriate responses.

Example/Exercise