The Art & Skill of Persuasion

Learn the art and skill of persuasion designed to meet the specific needs of professionals working in both finance and other industries, where persuasion skills are essential

Thoughtful exchange of words between two women near a window

A one-day persuasion course

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Download: Course Category Brochure | Course Outline

Persuasion Skills Training - Part One

What is Persuasion?

The basics
What do we mean by the art of persuasion?
How is this different from negotiation?
What makes a successful persuader
The qualities of a successful persuader
Influencing and persuading skills
Avoiding the risks of manipulation
Defining persuasion and influence
Principles of Effective Influencing Skills
Self- Belief, Confidence & Assertiveness
Push and Pull styles of persuasion – usually a mixture of both
The psychology of persuasion – the basics

Exercise: To be treated as fun and entirely optional. Persuading members of the group to do business with you in just one minute

Preparing to Persuade

The importance of planning
How to build trust
“Mocking Bird” Theory
The importance of non-verbal communication, but keeping a sense of proportion
Having built trust, move on to developing rapport
Finding out what others want or need
Active listening
Intelligent questioning
Understanding the importance of perception
Appreciating how you perceive situations may differ from others

Exercise: Persuading a best friend to lend you their new dream sports car when they secretly think you are a reckless driver

Explore What Others Want

How do we do this?
Setting clear objectives
Effective questioning techniques
Realise the values and motivations of others
Hone your listening skills to become better at persuasion
Overcome barriers to active listening
The identification of individual ‘filters’
Dealing with filters
The power of positive thought
Preparing for the persuasion discussion

Exercise: Getting a car fixed by a lazy and indifferent chief mechanic for a sensible price when your car has broken down and you are desperate to continue an urgent journey

Communication Style

This persuasion course explores the range of styles
Choosing styles to meet the situation
Remember your natural traits will always reveal themselves, eventually
Learn the art of persuasion 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

Exercise: Persuading a self-important boss to allocate the pay and bonus pool more fairly than just you and him/her

Persuasion Skills Training - Part Two

Overcoming Resistance

Persuasion skills training teaches you to understand resistance
Why do people resist?
Overcoming resistance without compromising the values of others
Apply a practical 6-step Influence and Persuasion 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: Getting a colleague to lend you a member of staff who you need when they know you have a reputation for over-resourcing your area

State Your Case Persuasively

Planning and preparation
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

Exercise: Fun session - picking an object at random in the room, persuade the rest of us to buy it from you in a minute or less

Handling Objections

The most challenging for most of us
Identifying frequently encountered objections
The pre-emption of objections
Developing appropriate responses
Realising when to walk away
Dealing with failure well

This persuasion course concludes with a summary and open forum

This persuasion course trainer had a highly successful, long and varied “fast track” career at Lloyds Bank. This led him to a very senior management position in the bank’s private banking and wealth management division at an early age. He was then “head hunted” to join a merchant bank at the main board director level to head the risk management function. He has over 40 years of experience in the UK banking and financial services sector.

Our persuasion skills course trainer has been a freelance soft skills training consultant since retiring and is currently an external Master Trainer at both HSBC and Bank of China. He has delivered soft skills training on a wide range of topics, including the art of persuasion training. At HSBC he helped screen and assess both prospective and existing trainers for soft skills capabilities and has delivered train-the-trainer programmes. At the Bank of China, he has designed and successfully delivered several soft skills courses. He has created and delivered soft skills training to a vast range of clients, from global giants to small firms and partnerships.

He is comfortable training at any level of seniority and experience, from “black belts” to novices. In addition to his soft skills specialism, his expertise includes but is not limited to Risk Management, Trade Finance, Regulatory Compliance, FCC & AML (Anti Money Laundering) and all aspects of Corporate, Private and Retail Banking.

We have created this persuasion skills training course to meet the specific needs of professionals working in both finance and other industries where persuasion skills are essential. It is designed to be enjoyable as well as instructional. It is full of highly interactive and stimulating exercises to illustrate each new learning point as it emerges; a learning point that other persuasion training courses often get wrong.

Here’s what to expect from this persuasion course:

Grow in confidence and feel more empowered during the power of persuasion process.
Considerably improve your personal persuasion skills.
Understand both the theory and practice of persuasive techniques and use the best combination to achieve optimal results.
Explore what makes a successful persuader and how to practise these skills.
Establish what qualities are needed and how to develop them.
Get to grips with preparing to persuade by building trust and rapport.
The dynamics of win-win by appreciating what other people want.
Be able to set clear objectives when seeking to persuade.
Apply the appropriate persuasive communication skills style, depending on the situation.
Discover how to overcome resistance and deal with difficult counterparties.
Be able to persuasively state their case.
Identify frequently encountered objections.
Finally, and importantly, accept that you can't win them all and sometimes you have to lose gracefully.

Mastering the art of persuasion and influence is a critical skill for inspiring, driving and encouraging. This persuasion course is designed to persuade delegates that they have what it takes and that only practice and experience are needed to reach “black belt” levels.
Redcliffe has been established for more than 20 years and has a first-class reputation for delivering persuasion training courses.
The course trainer is not an academic. He is a hands-on practitioner with huge amounts of vocational experience and is well aware of the importance of persuasion and persuasion skills training.
A key component of this art of persuasion training course is the director’s willingness and ability to impart both personal experiences and pass on good and bad examples of persuasion and influencing skills. This helps bring the course to life, makes it relevant and helps delegates to “hit the ground running” when they return to their daily work roles.
Having delivered this persuasion skills course to many different organisations ranging from global giants to small firms, we are well aware of the nuances and requirements of different types of financial institutions. Whatever your background, we can help you.
At the core of the workshop are several highly interactive and very enjoyable case studies to enhance the learning points. All delegates report that these are high points.
We are always judged by our results which speak for themselves. The feedback we have received for our persuasion skills training course has always been excellent.

This is such an important core skill that it is fair to say our persuasion course is a ‘must-know’ for almost everyone. Whether you are a novice or an “expert” we are confident that we can help you.

Our courses on persuasion are suitable for those wishing to either enhance, refresh or learn new skills. In simple terms, this is a “must-know” for all professionals working in both finance and other industries where persuasion skills are essential.

Although we may not have convinced ourselves to believe it, we can all persuade and we all possess the skill of persuasion. The challenge most of us face is having the confidence and self-belief to succeed especially when we are required, instructed or expected to persuade formally or in a business environment. At that point, any nerves, lack of self-belief and even “stage fright” can intervene and cause us to perform poorly.

The essential difference between a good and an improving business persuader is practice and experience; nothing else. We all have the necessary “x” factor but it is tempting at times of frustration to say, “No, that’s not me.” But there are two crucial points to remember. Firstly, we all get our people skills in arrears and it is only through practice and experience that we improve persuasion skills because we learn from our mistakes. Secondly, outside of the work environment, we all use skill and persuasion highly effectively and without even thinking about it. Some of us are naturally better than others but if we had no persuasive soft skills, none of us would meet partners, raise a family or be able to organise social events.

Many people regard the “art of persuasion” as a difficult skill to master — but it most certainly is not and it doesn’t have to be. Practice and experience followed by practice and experience are the keys.

This enjoyable art of persuasion course has been designed to be fun and highly interactive. It has been tailored to meet the needs of professionals who need to build relationships within their organisation. Whether you need to get colleagues on your side, encourage those in a sales or an account management role to be more effective, or to better manage potentially difficult customers or situations, we know we can help.

Persuasion skills training will empower you to bring the art of convincing 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 practising persuasion techniques for dealing with difficult people and situations.