What do you want your audience to do?

Welcome to Connect2Persuade!

When you speak, whether to one person, a small room, or a large group, you have some purpose. It might be to inform, to entertain, or to convince. All are good reasons to speak.

Your audience may learn something, enjoy themselves, or agree with everything you say and still walk away without taking action.

Often, people confuse convince and persuade. They are not the same thing. In fact, they are dramatically different. To convince someone is to bring them to the point where they share your point of view. For example, you might feel that the ‘27 Yankees were the best baseball team ever, and you want others to agree with you. Good luck, if you have an audience of Red Sox fans!

To persuade is another thing entirely. When you persuade, you get someone to act. You get people to buy your product or service. You get people to donate to your cause. You get people to vote for you.

Persuasion is a powerful skill.

Stories, data, and even humor can help you connect with your audience. Once you make a connection, you’re in a position to ask your audience to act.

You often hear about salespeople who don’t ask for the sale. They wonder why the customer didn’t buy their product, yet they never asked the customer to.

Perhaps you work in a technology startup, and your job is to demonstrate the product to potential customers. You show all the bells and whistles or the features and functions, yet the customer shows little interest. Why? Because you haven’t identified a business problem that customer has, and you haven’t shown how your product solves that problem.

Connect2Persuade is our methodology to help you to connect with your customer, your audience, your boss, or whomever so that you can persuade them to act. Step by step, we will teach you this valuable and life-changing skill. We sometimes hear that someone is good enough to be dangerous.

If you want to be dangerous, before your next presentation, finish this sentence:

Then ask yourself if you’ve given them a reason to do it.