Becoming a Persuasive Speaker by Improving Effective Verbal Communication

There is an age-old saying, "You can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar". This essentially means that one can achieve results far better and faster by being agreeable than being disagreeable. In the corporate world, persuasion is an extremely powerful skill to be equipped with. If you are good at persuading others, a shift in people is reflected by a change in their attitude and behaviour. In other words, persuasion is the art of convincing someone by presenting them with strong and undeniable arguments.

In India, one of the most popular and celebrated cases of persuasion can be observed in the Mahabharat, in which Arjun was persuaded by Krishna to fight against his relatives.

Greek philosophers such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle spoke on the art of persuasion, which indicates that the skill of persuasion has been taught and learnt since time immemorial.

Even the kings in ancient times were trained to be persuasive so that they could convince their subjects to pay higher taxes.

The difference between successful and unsuccessful communication is persuasion. It is one of the important tools for effective communication.

There are three main pillars of persuasion and these are as follows: 

• Establishing trust: This is the first condition that needs to be fulfilled in order to persuade someone successfully.
• Providing logic: Your arguments must be logical and should add some value to your listener.
• Invoking emotions: In order to persuade your audience, you need to invoke appropriate emotions that can help you persuade them better and create a lasting impression.
• Note: Persuading someone by threat or force is known as negative persuasion and must be avoided at all costs.

Now, that you know what is required to persuade people, let's learn about the AEIOUxE framework, which is a six-step framework and is one of the main factors of persuasion.

The AEIOUxE framework involves six different steps that you must follow in order to change someone's opinion or attitude towards a product or an idea. These steps are as follows:

• Attention: Research shows that people generally lose interest in a speech after the initial eight seconds. Therefore, it is necessary to capture your audience's attention right from the start of your speech. Say something that grabs their attention at the very beginning so that they are interested in listening to your entire speech.
• Examples: Present authentic data, facts, studies and arguments to your audience in order to retain their interest. Give them some simple and relevant examples so that they enjoy your speech or presentation.
• The ‘I’ factor: Demonstrate your credibility by showcasing your expertise or any relevant experience to your audience. You can also present case studies that they can later go through as an authentic source of information.
• Objective: Use the SMART framework to define your objective clearly to your audience. SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely.
• The ‘you’ factor: Tell your audience what they will derive from your presentation; it must be something beneficial to them. In the corporate world, you must make your audience count the benefits that your presentation will bring to the table.
• Emotions: Analyse the emotional wavelength of your audience and then bring out emotions in your speech, as many times as possible, because emotions change people. Also, try to be a storyteller and convey the emotions in the form of a story. This will increase audience engagement as people usually love listening to stories.

With this, let's move to the next segment to explore the art of storytelling.