Persuasive Communication

How Audiences Decide

Richard Young

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317417163
• Édition: 2
• Sujet: Negocios y empresa
• Sous-sujet: Comunicación empresarial

This updated and expanded edition of Persuasive Communication offers a comprehensive introduction to persuasion and real-world decision making. Drawing on empirical research from social psychology, neuroscience, business communication research, cognitive science, and behavioral economics, Young reveals the thought processes of many different audiences—from investors to CEOs—to help students better understand why audiences make the decisions they make and how to influence them.

The book covers a broad range of communication techniques, richly illustrated with compelling examples, including resumes, speeches, and slide presentations, to help students recognize persuasive methods that do, and do not, work. A detailed analysis of the emotions and biases that go into decision making arms students with perceptive insights into human behavior and helps them apply this understanding with various decision-making aids. Students will learn how to impact potential employers, clients, and other audiences essential to their success.

This book will prove fascinating to many, and especially useful for students of persuasion, rhetoric, and business communication.

Part I Understanding Rational Decision Making

1 Audience Decision-Making Expertise

DOI: 10.4324/9781315687117-1

In June 2008, a sourcing manager for a large networking company was asked to find a new subcontractor. The subcontractor had to be capable of designing an essential hardware component for one of the firm’s multimillion-dollar networking projects. Although the firm had never contracted out the design of this component before, the sourcing manager soon found three interested design firms who appeared to be good candidates for the job.

In his initial discussions with the salespeople from each design firm via email or phone, the sourcing manager explained the goals of the project and gave them the information they would need to evaluate the opportunity they were being offered, such as the forecasted demand, the timeline expectations, and the technical performance requirements. In order to expedite his selection process, the sourcing manager also sent each sales team the following questions to be answered in a crisp one-hour meeting:

• How would you describe your company?
• How complex were your past projects, and when were they completed?
• How long did it take you to complete the projects?
• Were they completed on schedule?
• What kind of issues came up, and how did you overcome them?
• What do you see as the biggest risks, and how would you mitigate them?

The VP of Sales for the first design firm and his team of technical experts spent most of their hour-long meeting presenting an overview of their company. The sourcing manager reiterated his need to get answers to the rest of his questions. So the VP requested another meeting to answer them. The manager told the VP that he did not have time for another meeting. Later, when the VP sent emails and left voicemails asking for another meeting, the sourcing manager politely declined once again.

The salespeople who represented the second design firm were equally disappointing. They spent about half their allotted time giving an overview of their company and then asked the sourcing manager to supply more details about his firm’s project. The sourcing manager declined to tell them more and spent the remainder of the hour re-asking his initial questions. After the meeting, he wondered whether he wanted to work with a company that needed him to repeat his criteria for choosing a subcontractor.

The sales team for the third design firm was different. They addressed every one of the sourcing manager’s questions during their one-hour meeting with him. They willingly disclosed the issues that had come up in similar projects just as the manager had requested, giving them added credibility in the manager’s eyes. In addition, the third sales team asked relevant questions about the firm’s objective for pursuing this particular networking project, the firm’s required pricing, and the features they desired.

It should come as no surprise that the sourcing manager recommended the third design firm to his upper management. The favorable impression made by that firm’s sales team led to two significant contracts for the design firm totaling $15 million per year or $80 million over the lifetime of the project.

Although most audiences do not spell out their information requirements as clearly as the sourcing manager did for the three sales teams who presented to him, we can still learn several lessons from this true story. One of the most important lessons we can learn is that experienced audiences, like the sourcing manager, already know what information they need from other professionals in order to make the types of decisions they make routinely. What’s more, experienced audiences may judge the quality of a recommendation or firm on the basis of how thoroughly, efficiently, and honestly business people and other professionals address their information needs. Chapter 1 amplifies these lessons. It describes the nature of audience expertise in decision making and what professionals in many fields need to know about it in order to be persuasive.

The audiences of professionals include all the people who read the documents professionals write, attend the presentations professionals give, and listen to what professionals have to say either in person or on the phone. Some important audiences of business executives are board members, stockholders, customers, employees, bankers, suppliers, distributors, and Wall Street analysts. Some important audiences of physicians are patients, residents, nurses, pharmacists, hospital administrators, health insurance companies, state medical boards, and government agencies. A few of the important audiences of judges are litigants, attorneys, legal academics, other judges, ideological groups, and think tanks.¹

Audiences use the documents, presentations, and other information that professionals convey to make informed decisions. Board members use executives’ strategic plans to decide whether to allow management to pursue a new strategic direction. Consumers use manufacturers’ advertisements, packaging, product brochures, and warranties to decide whether to purchase a product. Bankers use entrepreneurs’ proposals for credit lines to decide whether to extend credit. Undecided voters use politicians’ campaign speeches to decide whether to vote for a particular candidate. Even U.S. Army personnel do not blindly obey the orders of superior officers but use their directives to make decisions, decisions that might surprise the officers who issued the orders.² Research finds that 78% to 85% of all the reading employees do at work is for the purpose of making decisions and taking immediate action. In contrast, only 15% of the reading students do is for that purpose—students read primarily to learn and to recall later.³

Sometimes audience members make decisions as individuals, and at other times they make decisions as a group, usually after much discussion and debate. For example, jurors decide as a group whether defendants are guilty or innocent, school board members decide as a group which curricula can be taught in local schools, legislators decide as a group which bills to pass into law, and faculty selection committee members decide as a group which candidates to hire. Most strategic business decisions are made by groups, as opposed to individuals.⁴ In all these cases, group members interact with each other, playing the roles of both communicators and audience members. As communicators, group members make arguments to the other group members for or against alternative proposals. As audience members, group members help decide which of the proposals made to the group is best.

Understanding audiences as decision makers differs dramatically from viewing them as passive receivers or decoders of information, the conventional view unintentionally inspired by the field of information theory.⁵ Understanding that many audience members are expert at making the decisions professionals want them to make differs even more profoundly from the notion that audiences are empty cups waiting to be filled with the communicator’s knowledge about a topic.

Audiences gain decision-making expertise as they make a particular type of decision repeatedly. For example, consumers, a primary audience of computer manufacturers, develop expertise that helps them choose the best computer after buying and using several different computers. Board members, a primary audience of business executives, develop expertise that helps them decide which new management proposal merits their approval by attending numerous board meetings. Voters, a primary audience of politicians, develop expertise that helps them decide which political candidate most deserves their vote by reading the news and voting regularly.

With time and experience many audience members learn how to make good decisions. More specifically, they learn what information to look for in a document or presentation and what questions to pose in meetings and conversations. Of course, audiences will sometimes lack the expertise they need to make some decisions. In these cases, audience members are dependent upon others to tell them what information they need to consider in order to ensure their decisions are well informed.

This chapter shows that professionals who understand audience decision-making expertise are in a good position to give novice or inexperienced audiences the information they need to make informed decisions. The before and after examples of documents in this chapter and others show that professionals who understand audience decision-making expertise are also in a good position to select and deliver the information expert audiences will find most relevant and persuasive.

Decision Criteria of Expert Audiences

Decision Criteria: The Audience's Mental Checklist of Questions

As audience members become expert at making a particular type of decision, they develop a set of decision criteria. Top management teams use decision criteria, both quantitative and qualitative, to make corporate financing decisions.⁶ Experienced consumers typically...

Table des matières

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Detailed Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I Understanding Rational Decision Making
• Part II Understanding Intuitive Decision Making
• Part III Understanding Emotional Decision Making
• Conclusion
• References
• Figure Credits
• Index