Page 35 - ConvinceThemFlip

muldoon’s rules: there’s no failure, only feedback
control of the situation. The cabbie doesn’t like you now,
and he’ll lump you in with all the other jerks who talk to
cabbies like that.”
Sir Winston Churchill called persuasion “the worst
form of social control except for all the others.” Aristotle
posited that for persuasion to be truly effective, three
elements must be present: trust, logic, and emotion. In
modern terms that means that to be convincing, you
need to make a good first impression by establishing
trust through attitude (body language, voice tone) and
personal packaging; you have to present your case with
indisputable logic; and you’ve got to give a tug to the emo-
tions to complete the process. It doesn’t matter whether
you’re selling advertising space, recommending the Pinot
Noir over the Burgundy, or giving the State of the Union
address. You must make your audience trust you, you
must make sense, and you’ve got to move them. To be
convincing, you must communicate all that—and do it
quickly.
But what exactly do we mean by communication? If I
want one of my suppliers to do something for me by a cer-
tain date and they don’t do it, then my communication has
failed. Am I 100 percent responsible for whether my com-
munication succeeds or fails? Yes. In business and life, the
measure of effective communication lies in the response
it gets. So, what do I do if my supplier fails to deliver
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