This document discusses persuasive messages and strategies. It defines persuasive messages as efforts to change behavior or convince people. There are three main persuasive strategies: direct request, problem-solving, and sales patterns. The direct request strategy is used when the audience is willing to accept recommendations. The problem-solving strategy is effective when the audience has objections. The sales pattern uses logic rather than emotions for an resistant audience. Analyzing the situation, desired action, potential objections, strength of arguments, and organizational culture helps determine the best persuasive strategy.

1. Persuasive Messages / Persuasive Written Messages:
What are persuasive messages?
“An effort to change people’s behavior or an effort to persuade of convince people.“
For Example:
It includes reports, requests, fund raising messages or job application letter. Reports that include actions
are also another example of persuasive messages.
What are the purposes of persuasive messages?
There are two types of purposes i.e. primary and secondary.
1. Primary Purpose
 It is to change beliefs or people’s behavior.
2. Secondary Purpose:
 To build a good image of the communicator, organization.
 To create a good and secure relationship between communicator and audience.
 To reduce or overcome objections by audience if any.
 To avoid or reduce or eliminate more communication on the same topic in future in order
to save time.

2. Persuasive Strategies:
“There are three types of strategies; Direct Request Pattern, Problem Solving Pattern, and Sales Pattern.”
Direct Request:
 It is used when the audience is willing to accept your recommendations as one need
Reponses from those who are willing to do as one asks and when the audience may not
read complete message.
 Effective for people who are busy don’t read whole message, and the organizations
whose culture favors putting the request first. To persuade in dire situations, direct
request plan is used.
 When one expects his audience to quickly accept your decision, time can be saved by
direct message request.
Organizing Persuasive Direct Request:
 Give your audience all the information they need to act on your advice. Number out all
the requirements so audience can check either they have met the standards or not.
 Ask for the required actions, it makes easier for the audience to understand your
recommendations.
 Consider asking immediately for the information or service you want. If you have several
purposes in the message or it seems to be abrupt delay the message.
 Put the request or the topic of request in the subject line.
 Make requests clear.

3.  In complicated direct requests, anticipate possible responses by explaining which
criteria’s are most important for the reader.
Problem Solving Message:
 Effective when the audience have objections relating to the action you require. You
expect logic to be more important than decisions.
 Use an Indirect Approach, when you confront resistance from your audience but by
showing that doing what you recommended will solve the problem.
 Analyze your audience and situation before you choose this approach.
Organizing Problem Solving Messages:
 Capture audience attention by creating a common ground, show that this solution will
benefit the whole society.
 Define the problem you both share, don’t assign and blame anyone specifically. Be
specific about everything relating to the problem i.e. time, cost, money etc. Convince
them for the best solution as something has to be done.
 Explain the solution to the problem, if you know about a solution that will favor the
audience as whole, start discussing it. Or start with all solutions by explaining the
advantages and disadvantages and then recommend the best solution.
 Show that how every alternative’s disadvantages outweighed by advantages.
 Summarize additional benefits of the solution, if any.

4.  Ask for the actions you want. In most of the cases authority of action is given to the
audience but if you desire your recommendation to be implemented, give your audience
to act accordingly.
 Use a neutral subject line for problem solving patterns.
Sales Pattern:
“Using logic rather than emotions, when the audience may resist doing as you ask.”
Varieties of Persuasive Messages:
 Two important kind of persuasive messages i.e. letter of recommendation, sales/ fund
raising messages and performance appraisals.
Performance Appraisals:
 A supervisor who praises an employee may need to reward that person and must
criticizes a bad performance may then need to explain his inefficiencies.
 Good supervisors give their employees regular feedback on their performance. Some
companies sees the praises as a way to maintain work quality and keep good workers.
 In some organizations, employees have their access to their appraisals.
 Appraisals are more useful to subordinates.
 Letter of Recommendations:
 Recommending someone for an award or job.
 It focuses on minor points.

5.  Indicate whether you would be willing to rehire the person and repeat your overall
evaluation.
 Sales and Fund Raising Messages:
 Special category used as direct marketing as they ask for an order, inquiry, or
contribution directly from audience.
 Large organizations hire professionals to write their direct marketing materials.
 By doing your own organization’s direct marketing money can be saved.
Purpose:
 To make audience act according to your advice and create good image of communicator
and organization
Opening:
 As it makes the readers want to read the message and provide a reasonable direction to
your message.
 Brainstorming for openers involve four basic modes: Questions, Narrations, Startling
Statements and Quotations.
 Questions: Good questions are good enough that the audience want the answers, so they
read the letter.
 Narrations, Stories and Anecdotes: Relating to personal experiences makes it more
interesting.
 Startling Statements: Surprise your audience by using such statement.

6. Content for body message:
 The body of the message provides the logical and emotional links that move the audience
from their first flicker of interest to the action that is wanted. A good body answers the
audience’s questions, overcomes their objections, and involves them emotionally.
 Information the audience will find useful even if they do not buy or give.
 Stories about how the product was developed or what the organization has done.
 Stories about people who used the product or who need the organization’s help.
 Word pictures of people enjoying the benefits offered.
Closing:
 Specify your action or tell the audience what to do.
 Make the action sound easy.
 Offer a reason for acting promptly, people who think they are convinced but wait to act
are less likely to buy or contribute.
In both sales messages and fund-raising appeals, the basic strategy is to help your audience see
themselves using your products/services or participating in the goals of your charity. Too often,
communicators stress the new features of their gadgets, rather than picturing the audience using it, or the
statistics about their cause,rather than stories about people helping that cause.
Tone in Persuasive Messages:
The best phrasing for tone depends on your relationship to your audience. How you ask for action affects
whether you build or destroy positive relationships with employees, customers, and suppliers. Tone will
also be better when you give reasons for your request or reasons to act promptly.

7. Writing To Superiors. You may want to tone down your request by using Subjunctive Verbs (a
specific verb form. It usually expresses something that you wish for, or a hypothetical rather than actual
situation. I only wish that what you say were true.) and explicit disclaimers that show you aren’t taking a
YES for granted.
Passive Verbs And Jargon (A speciallanguage belonging exclusively to a group, often a profession.)
sound stuffy.
Use Active Imperatives (The imperative is used to express a command, exhortation, or an appeal)—
perhaps with “Please” to create a friendlier tone.
Analyzing Persuasive Situations:
Choose a persuasive strategy based on your answers to five questions. Use These Questions To Analyze
Persuasive Situations:
1. What do you want people to do?
2. What objections, if any, will the audience have?
3. How strong is your case?
4. What kind of persuasion is best for the situation?
5. What kind of persuasion is best for the organization and the culture?
1. What Do You Want People to Do?
 Identify the specific action you want and the person who has the power to do it.
 If your goal requires several steps, specify what you want your audience to do now.
2. What Objections, If Any, Will the Audience Have?

8.  If you’re asking for something that requires little time, money, or physical effort and for
an action that’s part of the person’s regular duties, the audience is likely to have few
objections.
 Often, however, that is not the case, and you’ll encounter some resistance.
 People may be busy and have what they feel are more important things to do.
 They may have other uses for their time and money. To be persuasive, you need to show
your audience that your proposal meets their needs; you need to overcome any
objections.
 The easiest way to learn about objections your audience may have is to ask.
3. How Strong Is Your Case? The strength of your case is based on Three Aspects of
Persuasion:
a. Argument
b. Credibility
c. Emotional Appeal
Arguments:
“Argument refers to the reasons or logic you offer. “
Some arguments are weakened by common errors known as LOGICAL FALLACIES. These are
some COMMON TYPES OF LOGICAL FALLACIES:
 Hasty Generalization. Making General Assumptions Based On Limited Evidence. “Most
of my friends agree that the new law is a bad idea.”

9.  False Cause. Assuming that because one event follows another, the first event caused the
second. “In the 1990s farmers increased their production of corn for ethanol. Soon after,
more Americans began using ethanol fuel in their cars.”
 Weak Analogy. Making comparisons that don’t work. “Outlawing guns because they kill
people is like outlawing cars because they kill people.”
 Appeal to Authority. Quoting From A Famous Person Who Is Not Really An Expert.
“Hollywood actor Joe Gardner says this hand mixer is the best on the market today.”
 Appeal to Popularity. Arguing that because many people believe something, it is true.
“Thousands of Americans doubt the reality of climate change, so climate change must not
be happening.”
 Appeal to Ignorance. Using Lack of Evidence to Support the Conclusion. “There’s
nothing wrong in the plant; all the monitors are in the safety zone.”
 False Dichotomy (contrast). Setting Up the Situation to Look Like There Are Only Two
Choices. “If You Are Not With Us, You Are Against Us.”
Credibility:
“Credibility Is the Audience’s Response to You as the Source of the Message.”
Credibility in the workplace has Three Sources:
a. Expertise
b. Image
c. Relationships
Citing Experts Can Make Your Argument More Credible.

10. In some organizations, workers build credibility by getting assigned to high-profile teams. You build
credibility by your track record. The more reliable you’ve been in the past, the more likely people are to
trust you now.
Build Credibility by the Language and Strategy you use:
 Be Factual. Don’t exaggerate. If you can test your idea ahead of time, do so, and
report the results.
 Be Specific. If you say “X is better,” show in detail how it is better.
 Be Reliable. If you suspect that a project will take longer to complete, cost more
money, or be less effective than you originally thought, Tell Your Audience
Immediately
Emotional Appeal:
Emotional Appeal means making the audience want to do what you ask. Emotional appeal helps make
people care. Stories And Psychological Description are effective ways of building emotional appeal. Even
when you need to provide statistics or numbers to convince the carefulreader that your anecdote is a
representative example, telling a story first makes your message more persuasive.
4. What kind of persuasion is best for our culture?
• Different kinds of people require different kinds of persuasion.
• What works for your boss may not work for your colleague. But even the same person may
require different kinds of persuasion in different situations.

11. • But research in the last decade has shown that People Are Also Motivated by other factors,
including Competition and Community Perceptions.
• Many of these new techniques stem from Behavioral Economics, a branch of economics that uses
insights from sociology and psychology.
So What Does Motivate Knowledge Workers?
a. OUR DEEP-SEATED DESIRE TO DIRECT OUROWN LIVES
b. TO EXPEND AND EXPAND OUR ABILITIES
c. TO LIVE A LIFE OF PURPOSE
5-. What kind of persuasion is best for organization and culture?
 A strategy that works in one organization may not work somewhere else.
 One corporate culture may value no-holds-barred aggressiveness. In another organization
with different cultural values, an employee who used a hard-sell strategy for a request
would antagonize people.
 Organizational culture isn’t written down; it’s learned by imitation and observation.
 What style do high-level people in your organization use to persuade?
 When you show a draft to your boss, are you told to tone down your statements or to
make them stronger?
 Role Models and Advice are two ways organizations communicate their culture to
newcomers.
 Different kinds of persuasion also work for different social culture.