Ten tools for mastering the power of persuasion

As Benet Brandreth wisely points out, “you have to get the attention of the people that you are trying to persuade. It’s no good having the best argument in the world if no one’s listening.” Of course, there are good and bad ways to get attention: the above could mean spending money on a billboard in a prime location, deploying a loudhailer, or turning up at the next board meeting in an octopus costume.

2. Win trust

Nick Brown is the Labour party Chief Whip. He explains how gaining trust is an important part of persuading party members to tow the line: “The thing that works the best is to try to behave very fairly so that the MPs know that you’re on their side rather than prowling the corridors like a wolf.”

Jazz singer Claire Martin says trust is also the key to seducing an audience: “Our intention is to try and engage some trust amongst us so I can take them on an emotional journey.” She will “try and be likeable” and make the audience think, “she knows what she’s doing.”

3. Know your audience

We are faced with brand advertising at every turn, but what makes us engage with a campaign? Tammy Einav, joint CEO of Adam & Eve DDB, says knowing the consumer is crucial: “The emotional engagement comes from understanding our consumers and understanding what resonates with them” and “it is a combination of data and science that allows us to understand consumers better than ever before.”

Juliet Erickson, who helped persuade the International Olympics Association to award London the 2012 Olympics, loves the old adage “never pitch to strangers.” Although a crowd can seem like a blob, “it’s actually individuals who make decisions”. You need to know, understand and connect with each one of them.

Benet Brandreth agrees that knowing one’s audience is crucial. In some cases, rational, reasoned argument is the key to persuasion: "The judge in a law court has to produce a written explanation of why they came to that conclusion and in those circumstances they’re going to look for rational argument as the underpinning for their conclusion."

5. Know when to appeal to someone’s heart, rather than their head

The tools used to persuade a judge or a jury are not going to work, Benet says, “if you’re trying to persuade a mob.” In that instance, if you turn up and give “clear, factual and logical reasons” then “you’re gonna waste your time – a mob is going to be persuaded by questions of emotion”. So we need to know when to appeal to someone’s heart, rather than their head.

Juliet Erickson’s top tip to great persuasion is clarity: “That usually means before jumping to any particular conclusion make sure you understand it… probe for clarification.” Understanding an argument yourself means you can then make it clearly.

Benet Brandreth agrees. He says that, in a nutshell, the key to the success of the great persuaders in court is “to see with clarity what matters in a case.”

If people are exposed to a message enough, eventually they will absorb it. Tammy Einav states how, in advertising, “being present is key… It’s very difficult to persuade someone of something they’re not aware of or they don’t see.” And it’s not just about repetition, but also about being salient and finding a way to cut “through the clutter of everything else.”

The Roman Quintilian laid out five canons of rhetoric in his twelve-volume textbook Institutes of Oratory, which Benet Brandreth believes help when embarking on verbal persuasion.

The first is “invention”, which is “about coming up with arguments; working out how to structure the thoughts and points that you want to make.” “Disposition” is ordering those arguments “in the way that will be most persuasive.”

The third point is “memory”: remembering the words you want to say, plus “building up a stock of stories, poems, quotes, ideas, facts that you can deploy”. The next point, “style”, is about how the words “can be used to influence people to create a certain emotional state or to convey that you, the speaker, have a particular emotional state”. Finally, “utterance” is “the performative aspect of rhetoric: where you put your hands, how you modulate your voice.”

Master these tricks of the trade and you’re more likely to persuade your audience.

9. Know when to shut up

Using the rhetorical toolbox is a large part of winning an argument but, as Juliet Erickson says, sometimes the key to persuasion is to “shut up” and listen.

She says, “it’s very hard to just leave the space and watch it fill with whatever it fills itself with” but that “usually it fills itself with options.” If a strategy for persuasion isn’t working, then take a step back.

10. Never give up

Finally, be tenacious. Nick Brown (a man who knows a thing or two about coercing politicians into doing what he wants them to do) says, “the bottom line is, never give up.”