PODi Europe

It’s tough being a printer today, even a digital printer with all the web-to-print, cross-media and interactive bells and whistles you have at your disposal. Print is no longer taken for granted. You have to persuade people that you have a solution that meets their needs and provides a benefit.

I recently came across a Harvard Business Review paperback called “Communicating Effectively”. It is one of a series of collections of the HBR’s perspectives on management topics and business best practices. It contains articles on communicating, persuading, presenting and pitching originally published between 1995 and 2006. One article stands out, The Necessary Art of Persuasion, by Professor Jay Conger of the University of Southern California Business School, because it echoes so many of the best practices in PODi’s own S3 Strategic Solutions Sales training programme.

He describes four essential steps for effective persuasion: establishing credibility, framing for common ground, provide evidence and connect emotionally. The ideas are based on in-depth research the author had done on the techniques used by senior business leaders as well as lower level managers in organisations who had all shown themselves to be effective change agents.

Establish Credibility
The whole of the first stage of the PODi S3 process is devoted to helping you to build credibility. It is essential that you are trusted, but the research revealed that credibility grows out of expertise and relationships. You need to be perceived as possessing a thorough understanding of both your own business capabilities and also the key challenges and issues facing your potential client’s business.

Professor Conger suggests that a history of prior successes will strengthen your perceived expertise but counsels that you should make an honest assessment of yourself and your business against these criteria. His research found that most business managers overestimate their own credibility.

If you discover weaknesses in your expertise, he suggests several practical ways you can bolster this: bring in partners who have necessary expertise, make good use of outside sources of information and run pilot projects to demonstrate the value of your ideas. These are all techniques that PODi members have successfully adopted to boost their credibility. And PODi has amassed an unparallel pool of information in the online resource center and case study database for you to use in building credibility.

Frame for Common Ground
The second stage of the PODi S3 process involves analysing your potential customers’ business needs and proposing solutions that address those needs – in terms they understand. This is exactly what Jay Conger means by “framing for common ground”. He says that a solid understanding of your audience is central to this and that, “it is critical first to identify your objective’s tangible benefits to the people you are trying to persuade.”

For example, you may have a solution that is more efficient because it involves digital print on demand using a web to print system. But if the people you are talking to are concerned about increasing market share or improving profitability then make sure that is the common ground to demonstrate the benefits of your solution rather than just the great technology or clever software that you have.

Provide Evidence
Jay Conger’s finds that the “most effective persuaders supplement numerical data with examples, stories, metaphors and analogies to make their positions come alive”. Your proposal must have quantifiable targets and measurable results but that may not be enough to persuade your audience of its value. They still need to understand and believe you, especially if you are offering an innovative and, to them, untested solution. This is where the power of case studies and other real-world examples and stories can help add that extra dimension to make your case compelling and reassuring.

Connect Emotionally
You will hopefully be enthusiastic and passionate about your own commitment to the solution you have, but you need also to develop a strong and accurate sense of your audience’s emotional state. Does your solution threaten anybody? Are they fearful that it might all go wrong? Who are the various people in your prospective customer’s organisation that you need to persuade? Who are the sceptics? Who is a potential champion who may stand to gain respect and kudos from colleagues by the success of the outcome? Build relationships, understand and have empathy for the individual concerns and needs of the people who deal with as well as the organisation they represent. It’s about matching your emotions to those of your audience.

Why Should I?
Paying attention to these steps will help you in closing the sale, delivering the project successfully and expanding the future relationship with your client. As Jay Conger, points out in the Necessary Art of Persuasion, “work today gets done in an environment where people don’t just ask What should I do but Why should I do it”. It’s no longer enough to tell a customer what you will do for them and how much it will cost; you need to persuade them why they should go along with your solution.