To be persuasive, you have to spend a considerable amount of time getting to know your audience. What is it that they want to hear, not what you want to tell them.
A key element of persuasion is empathy (the feelings desires. wishes, fears, and passion of the audience). Persuasion comes when you stir their emotions. The best way to achieve empathy is with a story that relates to their situation.
Everything you say and do must serve the needs of the audience and if you are guided by the audience, you will be successful. An important way to achieve understanding and empathy is to change your focus from features to benefits.
A feature is a fact about you or your product or service and may not be relevant, but a benefit is always relevant. People need a reason to act and that reason must be theirs, not yours.
Think about this. Give the audience a fact and some context as to why that fact is important. Then, give them the benefit of that fact. If you don’t have a benefit, you don’t need that fact.
If you know someone who needs to turn skeptics into believers, tell them about this post. Maybe it will help.
