 Lecture 21. As-Salaam-Alaikum. Welcome to the virtual university's course on business and technical communication. In this lecture, we will learn to strengthen your persuasive message with an appropriate appeal. We'll also look at how to gain credibility by supporting your persuasive message with relevant facts and how to use attention, interest, desire and action of the AIDA plan to organize persuasive messages. We'll also look at how to write a message persuading your audience to take action or to grant you an adjustment and how to design a sales letter around selling points and benefits. When we talk of motivating with persuasive messages, then in business terms, the term persuasion means to influence an audience by informing them about something and by aiding their understanding, by helping them to understand something and then leaving them free to make their choice. But once you've given them the information that will help them in making a choice, there you are giving the information in such a way that you are hoping that the choice that they will make will be the choice that you want them to make. Ethical business people inform customers of the benefits of a product or an action so that customers can recognize how well that product or action will fill a need that these customers truly have. So it's just by informing how a need is going to be fulfilled. That is how you are actually motivating people or persuading people to buy a product or take a particular action. Your consideration of customer needs is more than ethical. It is the proper use of persuasion. You are showing your customer that their needs are important. You have kept an eye on them and you have their knowledge. And this is a very ethical way to persuade customers. Also, it's more likely that this consideration of customer needs will evoke the desired response from your customers and colleagues. If you let them know that you are actually aware of their needs, then they are more likely to respond to you the way you want them to respond. Since persuasive messages aim to influence audience who may resist as well, who may not be very open to the ideas that you are trying to sell them, therefore persuasive messages depend heavily on strategic planning. Because it is possible that whatever you are trying to sell, or whatever audience you are trying to buy, they are resistant to taking that action. They are not very easily prepared. That is why you have to do a little more persuasion. That is why it is better to plan your message beforehand and think a lot and plan how you will organize that message, how you will use the words in it, so that you will get the same response you are trying to get. So before you begin to write a persuasive message, ask yourself what you are writing about. What are you writing about? Who you are writing to? Who is the person who will read your message? What are their needs? And what do you want to happen as a result? What are the consequences of writing this message? When you are analyzing your audience, take into account their cultural expectations, what they expect from you. The expectations might be different in one culture from another culture. And also they practice what they do in different cultures as well if you are writing across cultures. So that you don't undermine your persuasive message by using an inappropriate appeal or by organizing your message in such a way that it seems unfamiliar or uncomfortable. Keep in mind the audience's cultural perceptions as well when you are organizing your message. When you are writing persuasive messages, you need to keep four things in mind about your audience and these are needs and appeals, emotion and logic, credibility and semantics. Let's have a look at each of these individually. Needs and appeals, what do we mean when we talk about the audience's needs and appeals? Some researchers believe that certain needs have priority and that the most basic needs such as safety and security must be met before a person will seek to fulfill higher level needs such as esteem and status. Obviously, if a person's basic needs are that he is secure, he is safe and the rest of the needs, whether status is good, self-esteem or society's esteem, they come later. But you need to keep in mind that different people have different needs and everyone's needs differ. So people respond differently to any given message and based on that, based on what their needs are, you will organize your message. For example, not everyone is interested in economy or fair play. Some people's innermost needs make appeals to status and greed much more effective. So if you know that these people have their, what is more important to them is status or greed, then you will make an appeal accordingly. To accommodate these individual differences, you need to analyze the members of your audience and then construct a message that appeals to their needs. So whatever your needs are, you will make a message accordingly so that they can appeal to their needs. They feel that our needs will be fulfilled and our desires will be fulfilled. Now, another thing that we mentioned was emotion and logic, which we had mentioned in the audience. When people's needs are not being met, they are likely to respond emotionally. For example, a person who lacks a feeling of self-worth is likely to be sensitive to the tone of respect in a message. A collection letter to such a person carefully avoids any hint that the person might be considered dishonorable because you realize that that person lacks self-worth and that the person who has a sense of self-worth might be considered dishonorable because you realize that that person lacks self-worth and they are more likely to feel sensitive about anything that you say and they are more likely to read more into a message which even hints at them being dishonorable. All the emotional issues can be a pitfall for persuasive messages. Emotional issues are at home. It becomes difficult to encompass and deal with them in persuasive messages. But you can actually call on human emotion as long as your emotional appeal is subtle. If you are not using a very obvious emotional appeal, then with a subtle emotional appeal you can actually reach out to your audience. You can make use of the emotions surrounding certain words. For instance, the word freedom evokes strong feelings and also words such as success, prestige, credit record, etc. All these evoke strong feelings, strong emotions amongst the readers. So you can make use of these words to make sure that you are actually using the right type of appeal to reach out to their needs. Now emotion and logic work together in a unique way. People need to find rational support for an attitude that they have already embraced emotionally. So if people have an attitude, they have an emotion that you are aware of, then those people are trying to find a logical appeal to that need as well. And to help satisfy this need, a logical appeal calls on human reason. If you feel that your audience needs and you use the same appeal to reach out to their needs, then you need to keep an eye on human reasoning as well. Now the third thing that we will look at is credibility. Your credibility is your capability of being believed because you are reliable and because you are worthy of confidence. The credibility of your audience will be established if your readers feel that you are true, then you are credible and they will believe in what you say. If you get insincerity from your message and your readers feel that you have insincerity, then your credibility will be reduced. Similarly, if in your previous correspondence or your previous interaction with your client, they feel that you are sincere or not sincere, then your credibility will be different and the way they will respond to your future messages will be affected. For you to persuade skeptical or hostile audience members, the audience must believe that you know what you are talking about and that you are not trying to mislead them. If you feel that your audience is hostile, then it is very important for you to have a relationship with them so much that they believe that you are misleading them or you may not know about your field. One of the best ways to gain credibility is to support your message with facts. Testimonials, documents, guarantees, statistics, research results, etc. are all facts, information, material that provide seemingly objective evidence for what you have to say. They make your message more credible. If you include any of these as appropriate, then your message is likely to come across as being more credible and consequently you are likely to come across as being a more credible person. Obviously if, for example, you are using statistics that are not relevant to the message that you have to give, then they will not really do much to add to your credibility. So you have to add information, add facts that are relevant to the information that you are giving out and also if you are using any sources or if you have referred to any sources or you have gained your information from somewhere else, then it helps to name your resources, especially if they are respected by your audience because then you are showing your audience how credible you are and that these, even the people that you are consulting or the sources that you are consulting are credible as well. It helps put you in the same bracket as those sources and it gives you more credibility as well. Other ways of gaining credibility are being enthusiastic, your excitement about the subject of your message can infect your audience. If you are enthusiastic, then your audience will be enthusiastic as well. Also being sincere, your honest, genuineness, good faith and truthfulness helps you focus on your audience's needs. If you come across as being sincere, then the audience feels that you are aware of their needs and you are actually sincere to their needs as well. Also if the audience perceives of you as being an expert, your knowledge of your message's subject area or even of some other area helps you give your audience the quality information necessary to make a decision. So if you are an expert, then obviously you will have more credibility because you can give out the relevant and correct information. You are also credible if you have good intentions. Your willingness to keep your audience's best interest at heart helps you to create persuasive messages that are ethical. So if you really have your audience's good will at heart and your intentions are really good, then your persuasive messages will obviously come across as being ethical. If you are trustworthy, you are honest and dependable, then that can also help you get your audience's respect. Also if you can establish common ground, if your beliefs, attitudes and background experiences are like those of your audience, then you can help your audience identify with you. You and your audience can actually share common ground and if you feel that you think similarly about certain things, then you can actually use that to your benefit and to stress your credibility. Now lastly, the last thing that we need to keep in mind or the final thing that we need to keep in mind is semantics. The words you use or the words you choose to state your message say much more than their dictionary definitions. Depending on what you want to say, you need to choose the right word. For example, useful, beneficial and advantageous. Maybe considered synonyms, they all have the same meaning, yet these three words are not interchangeable. You cannot use any of these. You cannot say that I will use either one or the other and the meaning will remain the same. Let's have a look at what I mean. If you say she suggested a useful compromise, then what you're implying is that the compromise allowed the parties to get to work. It was useful and work could begin. On the other hand, if you're saying she suggested a beneficial compromise, then you're implying that the compromise not only revolved, but also had a positive effect perhaps for both parties. It was beneficial and perhaps it was beneficial for both. In the third instance, if you're saying she suggested an advantageous compromise, then you're implying that the compromise benefited her, the person who suggested it, or her company much more than it benefited the other party. So although all of these useful beneficial advantages, all of these have a similar meaning. Their use makes their meaning very different. So you need to be careful of that as well. What is the word you're choosing and what is the implication of choosing that particular word. Another way semantics can affect persuasive messages is the variety of meanings that people attribute to certain words. This means that there may be words which can have more than one meaning. We just saw that there were two or three words and their meaning was the same, but their meaning changed in their use. Similarly, it can be that there are multiple meanings. So you need to make sure that you're actually choosing a word where the meaning in which it is to be used is clear because abstractions are subject to interpretations because they refer to things that people cannot experience with their senses as well. Also you need to keep in mind that abstractions are subject to interpretations because they refer to things that people cannot experience with their senses. So basically if you're talking of abstract things, if you're talking of things which are not tangible, then you need to be very careful in how you refer to them because they will be interpreted differently by different people. The things that are tangible and the facts which can have the same meaning, everyone will have the same meaning. But the abstract things which can have different meanings, you need to carefully express them for them. You may be able to sell more flags by appealing to your audience's patriotism which may be interpreted in many ways then by describing the color and size of the flags for example. Obviously when a patriotism has a feeling, different people interpret it differently. You can sell flags or flags with any interpretation. But if you say that you are buying Pakistani flags and they have this color and they have this moon color then you will not be able to sell flags and no one will be able to motivate you to buy flags. But if you persuade them to appeal to their emotions and their patriotism then they will sell your flags for example. You may also have better luck collecting an overdue bill by mentioning honesty and fair play then by repeating the sum owed and the date on which it was due. Now if say you are a collecting agency or if you are providing a service for which you have not been paid the bill is overdue it would be more persuasive if you wrote to the customer and talked to them about fair play and honesty and just mention the amount and when it was due rather than stressing on the amount and when it was due because by that you are actually putting your customer at guard and you are putting them off. But if you are talking about honesty and fair play then you are actually reaching out to their need to be approved off and everybody wants to be seen as an honest person. Everybody wants that other people consider them to be honest so if you include those things then you will include such words by which you will praise them and we know that you are an honest tax-paying customer but they stay on your side and you return them to us so it will have a more positive effect. Now you need to also remember that when you are organizing persuasive messages persuasion requires the indirect approach. We talked about routine messages in many places you can use the direct approach because people are happy by reading routine messages but in persuasive messages you have to use the indirect approach because it is not necessary that you want to persuade them to persuade them immediately. One specialized version of the indirect approach is the AIDA plan. This basically means attention, interest, desire and action. In the attention phase you convince the audience right at the beginning that you have something useful or interesting to say. You don't say what it is but you catch their attention you let them know that what is to be followed will be interesting and useful. The audience wants to know what's in this message for me without making extravagant claims or threats and without bringing up irrelevant points. Obviously an audience wants to know what's the benefit for me when they read a letter. So you won't make extravagant claims or talk too much but to the point you will tell them what's the benefit of your actions. For example, if you say something like you've mentioned several times in the past two weeks that constructing an employee schedule becomes increasingly difficult. Let me share an idea that could substantially reduce the time you spent making and revising the schedule. Now in this message as you see you are actually as the writer you're actually letting them know letting the reader know that you're going to be sharing an idea that will reduce their time. So you are actually catching the audience's attention and letting them know that what will follow will be beneficial to the audience. In the interest phase you explain how your message relates to the audience. You will continue the theme that you started with and by doing that you paint a more detailed picture with your words. Your goal is to get the audience thinking. This is an interesting idea. Couldn't it possibly solve my problems? So in the attention phase you've identified what it is that you're going to be talking about you've caught the audience's attention. In the interest phase you are now getting them interested in your way of thinking and you are actually getting them slightly getting them a bit towards what you want them to be. For example if you say something like Incorporated Magazine ran an article in the July 2 issue about a scheduling concept called FlexTime. It gives employees leeway to schedule their own work within certain guidelines. Two companies profiled in the article were having problems as we have been with late arrivals, long lunches, early departures and too many sick days. Everyone would adhere to however once these companies instituted FlexTime their problems practically dissapeared. The same message we saw how they started the interest, the attention of the readers is the next section in which they are giving details. They are developing some interest in their audience and they are talking about a concept that can be solved. Now this interest section ties together a factual description and the benefits of instituting this FlexTime program. Also the benefits relate specifically to the attention phase that came earlier to this paragraph that we looked at earlier as well. And even though the FlexTime system might help improve employee morale that benefit is secondary to the main interest of the intended audience and that is to reduce the frustration of devising useless schedules. And therefore employee morale is not mentioned. So now let's see how they meet the needs of the audience that they have mentioned. The audience that they were going to read that time is not wasted. That is why they have highlighted the other benefits of this program by adopting it. In the third phase the desire phase of a persuasive message you back up your claims and thereby you increase your audience's interest and your audience's willingness to take the action that you will suggest in the final in the next section. So you are making sure that you are backing your claims. You are toasting them and your audience is coming closer to getting persuaded. Whatever you use to prove your claim, make sure that the evidence is directly relevant to your point. Don't use evidence that is irrelevant. Now as you see in this example, the writer has continued talking about what he was talking about earlier. He is still referring to the articles that were profiling that had adopted Flexitime and here he says, one of the people interviewed in the article, the head of manufacturing for a $10 million company said, I seem to be spending all my time making schedules and then tearing them up. Now I let my employees figure out their own schedules. I have more time to oversee the work that is being done and to track the quality of the products we ship. Now as you can see, this information has been added that the head of manufacturing has been quoted in the interview and he has only put the same thing in the interview which was relevant for the reader to understand how the head of manufacturing saved his time. Let's continue this example. It says, this company had a Flexitime program in full operation within three months of deciding to start. Attached is a copy of an article about the factors to consider before going to work and the three steps involved in instituting it. Now whatever detail was further necessary to actually implement the program has been attached. It has not been listed detail in this letter because then the letter would become too long. So the attached information has been given as an attachment and it has been referred to in the letter. In the action part, you suggest the action you want your audience to take. These are persuasive messages and with a section that urges specific action but the ending is more than a statement such as institute this program as soon as possible or send me a refund that you need to give much more than that. In fact this section offers a good opportunity for one last reminder of the main benefit that the audience will have from taking the action that you want them to take. This is a good opportunity for you to remind your audience that whatever you want them to take step by step what will be the benefit. This is the closing section of this message. Let's meet early next week in brackets Monday 3pm with a question mark because the writer is not sure if that time is actually convenient to his colleague or not. To see how we might implement a flex time schedule with a little bit of effort now you could soon be concentrating on something more important than scheduling. So here the writer is suggesting action he's suggesting time for a future meeting where they could discuss adopting this procedure because obviously he's trying to persuade the reader to adopt flex time and again he in the end he also gives one last benefit one key benefit that the reader will have more time if he adopts flex time Now many persuasive messages are written to solicit funds, favors, information or cooperation. A lot of times it happens that you need some kind of cooperation or you need funds or favors from the reader and in an organization persuasive techniques are often required to get someone to change policies or procedures to spend money on new equipment for example and service to promote a person or to protect territory of a person within an organization so all these could be different reasons for writing a persuasive message within an organization there's a difference between internal persuasive messages and external persuasive messages internally within an organization personal messages, persuasive messages or external persuasive messages the function will be different or their style or organization will be more formal an external persuasive message is one of the most difficult persuasive tasks you can undertake firstly people are busy so they're reluctant to do something new it takes time and it offers no guarantees, offer reward in return they don't know you, they need to take out a lot of time to actually take the action that you want them to take secondly there are a lot of competing requests a lot of for example if you are trying to persuade a company or somebody who is not part of your organization but somebody outside of your organization to give you funds then that person might have a lot of other people requesting him or her for funds as well so you'll have a lot of competition and in fact public relations departments many large corporations receive so many requests for donations to worthy causes that they sometimes resort to lotteries to decide which one to support they'll just take a pic do a lucky dip and decide which one to give the money to or give the donation to rather than actually looking at each application or each request separately so in that sense when your persuasive message tends to be more difficult to write if it is to solicit funds or favors from an outside organization if you're lucky the company might believe in the project or cause that you're trying to persuade them about and also they might feel that it gives them some benefit to be involved in that or to comply with your request as well and that then is the best use of your persuasive message that then is the best result you can hope from your persuasive message this is more effective in the case of requests for professional favors or information because people may believe that they're obliged to pay their dues by helping others if you can persuade people that by helping you they also have the benefit and they have an obligation then it can be possible that they are ready to help you and you can benefit from it so this is when you're making a persuasive request take special care to highlight direct and indirect benefits to the reader direct benefits might include a reduced workload for a supervisor who institutes flex time or a premium for someone who responds to a survey in the first case someone has a benefit in the second case if you're serving outside of your organization you'll have a survey questionnaire indirect benefits might include better employee morale or the prestige of giving free workshops to small businesses in this case also better employee morale in that case is that you have to persuade someone inside of your company and if you're persuading someone outside of your company to give your business a free workshop what will be the benefit of doing a free workshop so you have to highlight that it will be prestigious to give your company a free workshop when you want to write a persuasive message for action or a persuasive request for action then the attention getting device at the beginning of a persuasive request for action usually shows the reader that you know something about his or her concerns and that you have some reason to do a persuasive request if you're asking for action then you have to show your reader that you know something about his or her concerns and you have to show that you have some reason behind these requests and in this type of a persuasive message more than in most others a flattering comment about the reader is acceptable especially if that comment is sincere the body of the letter or memo covers what you know about the problem you're trying to solve with your reader's help it talks about the facts and figures the benefits of helping the benefits to your reader and also your experience in attacking or tackling the problem the goal is to give you and your request credibility to make the reader believe that helping you will indeed help solve a significant problem the most important thing to remember when writing a persuasive request action is to keep your request within bounds actually nothing is so distressing as a request so generally all encompassing are so inconsiderate that it seems impossible to grant how worthy the cause is whatever your cause is your request should be manageable to grant don't make such big unrealistic requests which cannot be fulfilled because to not do a request even distressing the reader should turn down a request request should be done not to do a request be careful not to doom your request to failure by asking your readers to do all the work for you don't ask your reader to provide all the information that you need just because you are too lazy to seek that information or to spend time to save you from embarrassment or inconvenience or to provide total financial support for a cause that nobody else is supporting because if you're going to make these kind of unrealistic inconsiderate requests then obviously your request is bound to fail another type of persuasive letter is a sales letter by and large sales letters are written by specialized and highly skilled professionals the letter sales letter comes in letter size or larger envelopes with brochures or without brochures and you as a skilled professional letter writer need to know the laws that govern sales letters because this can help you avoid serious legal problems if you do not know the laws of writing sales letter then you need to familiarize yourself with them also you need to be very very clear that making a false statement in a sales letter is fraud if the recipient can prove A that your intent was to deceive or that you made the statement regarding a fact rather than an opinion or speculation the false statement or that the recipient was justified in relying on the statement and also if the recipient was damaged by the statement then all this amounts to fraud or even one of these even one of these can be proven then they amount to fraud also using a person's name or photograph or identity or any other form of identity in a sales letter without permission from that person constitutes invasion of privacy there are some exceptions but generally if you are going to be using any person to promote your product then you need to have their permission written permission to use their name or identity or photograph in your promotional material or your sales letter because without this is illegal there are exceptions for example using the photos of members of a local cricket team or football team in a mailing may be legal if the team members are public figures in the community but otherwise you will need specific permission from people legal problems can also result from publicizing a person's private life in a sales letter so stating that the president of a local bank and if you mention that bank by name serve six months in prison for income tax evasion is a potentially damaging fact to that person and to that bank and this may be considered invasion of privacy even if that bank is your rival and you want to show how much better you are ethically and how much better your organization and the people working in your organization you cannot malign other people what you are talking about is true when you are planning sales letters you need to keep in mind three steps and these are similar to those involved in planning any other persuasive message you need to determine the main idea in sales letters it revolves around a selling point and the related benefits you need to define the audience and you need to choose the approach and format now the main idea is selling points and benefits selling points are the most attractive feature of a product whatever it is that is most attractive about a product is what becomes its selling point obviously whatever is the most attractive thing in a product someone will buy it consumer benefits are the particular advantages that buyers will realize from these features whatever features there will be selling points and the benefits will influence the consumer to buy the product for example one selling point of a personal computer might be its numeric keypad the consumer benefit of this selling point is that the user does not need a separate calculator or the skill to type numbers on the regular keyboard so obviously you cannot write about selling points without a thorough understanding of your subject so whatever you are telling about a selling point there should be some benefit for the consumer because when the consumer sees that benefit then they will be ready to buy your product and to highlight that benefit until you have complete knowledge of your product then you will not be able to explain the selling points and the benefits the first step in writing any sales letter then is to take a good look at the product if you have your own product then you should understand what you are selling ask yourself or someone else if necessary everything you think a potential buyer might want to know about your product what kind of information a potential buyer needs if you are not able to understand then ask yourself if you want to sell this product or if you want to buy this product then you will see what kind of information the audience needs then you will give them information and this defining of the audience's needs is basically defining the audience once you are aware of their needs then you will define the audience in terms of who the audience is who are the type of people who will be buying your product marketers seek to define consumers in terms of demographics which means age, gender, occupation income and education and also in terms of psychographics which means personality, attitude and lifestyles by looking at these things you will classify them as demographics you will categorize your audience or according to psychographics your audience's attitudes personality, beliefs lifestyles you will target them or you will look at their age group or it is possible if you are doing it according to demographics you will see for women of a specific age group if you have designed a product then you will see their psychographics that now in these women in this particular age group generally what type of lifestyle what type of personality is there so you have to look at demographics and psychographics side by side so that you can define your audience in this lecture we learnt to strengthen persuasive messages with the appropriate appeal we learnt how we can gain credibility by supporting our persuasive messages with relevant facts we do not include irrelevant facts because our message gets weak from them we also talked that in our persuasive messages we have to look at interest, desire and action the AIDA plan so that we can organize our persuasive messages according to this plan we also talked about writing a message to persuade your audience to take action or to grant a request or to grant an adjustment and we looked at how to do that what kind of language to use what kind of layout to use and we looked at how to design a sales letter around selling points and benefits of the product we looked at defining the audience and keeping in mind the audience their demographics and their psychographics how we would sell a product to that audience with this we come to the end of this lecture on persuasive messages until next time, Allah Hafiz