Persuasive Speaking

What Are the Three Essential Considerations?

Persuasive speaking

To be persuasive requires not only knowing technique but also principles. These tips and techniques will sound wonderful to the ear. However, to be effective in persuading, you will need to do much more. You will need to understand and be able to apply the principles.

Take fluency for example. If your speech lacks this one little quality, you will hinder your ability to persuade. This is a fundamental principle of good speech. All the other tips and tricks in the world will not compensate for a lack of fluency. In the Speaker Skills you will find the speech quality Fluency along with tips and techniques to help you improve in this speech quality.

The Challenge

Consider the listening styles of the audience. This adds yet another element that demands attention to enable you to give a persuasive speech. It's not tips and tricks that will help you. The challenge is understanding the human mind and meeting it's needs.

To be a persuasive speaker will also require you to challenge the traditional ways of presenting information. Most speech text books might encourage you to start with a story, an anecdote or even a joke. To truly master persuasive speaking, you will need to reevaluate these traditional ideas. They may not be the most effective for your audience.

What does the audience need?

To be effective at persuasion what else does the audience really need? Unless you’re a comedian and are there to entertain, leave the jokes behind. This will save embarrassment if the joke fails. Stories are nice too, but only if they are on point and on purpose. Otherwise, they may serve no need of the audience.

The needs we do have relate to the five human senses. Do we try to reach all of these during a speech? To give a persuasive speech requires addressing all of these and more.

To start, all you need is an understanding of the three pillars of persuasive speaking.

Pillars of Persuasion

Persuasive speech mastery can be divided into three considerations or pillars.

Your Mental Preparation

Identifying the audience and their needs as fellow participants in the race we call human.

Identify your needs. Want do you want to accomplish, major and minor goals you hope to persuade. Your purpose. Unlike plans that can change, a purpose remains the same.

Dealing with your own stress.

Your mental framing of this process. Sometimes there needs to be a straightening out of the mental relationship of what you want and what you want for the audience (When Right and Left Brains are in different frames).

Getting your mind into the best frame for success. A simple philosophy here, the more you can focus on helping others get what they want the sooner you can get what you want.

Ethical considerations.

Prepare you heart, your deepest inner motivation.

What you say

Make Your Words Sell is a free e-book on how to use words.

It is a must read on the subject of persuasive speech writing or content writing.

Illustrations or Stories: weave the picture from introduction through the entire speech. The story or illustration will give the visual and auditory memory pegs to hang the information on for memory. Give an illustration with a moral, and yours is the privilege of placing the information within their hearts, their seat of motivation.

Connect with & attain credibility, rapport and accord in the group.

Use words that influence. Avoid words that close the door of the mind.

Address the need for internal verifiability.

Identify and mirror sentence structure, phrases & sensory words.

Speak to the culture: regional or corporate, the only way to get beyond biases is to speak to the different behavioral and motivational patterns they operate within given their circumstance or context. Speaking persuasively requires addressing this need.

Use spaced repetition for details that need to be remembered. This is a process of repeating what you have said only slightly differently or from a differing viewpoint.

Conclusions that sum up.

Conclusions that call to action.

Conclusions that persuade.

How you say it.

All the speech qualities come to play here. The more adept you are at using them, the more persuasive your speech.

Audience contact both visual and visceral. You can connect with the audience simply by asking questions for a show of hands. There are important elements to concern your self with here to master persuasive speaking.

This is a new way of looking at the 80/20 rule. How much of your communication is verbal?

How much is physical? How much is visceral? More importantly, what percentage of communication will you devote to each?

The numbers based on current science may surprise you.

The Mental Process is an overview of the three elements or considerations required in persuasive speaking. It uses the acronym A PIE to help map out the elements of what needs to be included in what you say in a persuasive speech.

Persuasive Speech Example of how to create a persuasive speech on the subject creation vs evolution. Take a look at the applications of public speaking to persuade.

Persuasive Speech Home and more on the persuasive speech process.

Speechmastery.com:The Persuasive Speaking Public Speaking Website

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