Thinking is hard work. Most people avoid it at all costs.
If you can earn someone’s trust, he’ll gladly allow you to do some of this thinking for him.
If you can display deep expertise on a topic he’s interested in, he’ll happily outsource some of his thinking to you.
If you can minimize the perceived risk or difficulty of changing perspectives/approaches, you may find you have a loyal convert… and a paying client.
[I took this picture earlier this month after speaking at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the city’s largest university.]
This may all sound kind of negative or “manipulative,” but there’s nothing wrong with outsourcing brain work. In fact, most people are craving this kind of leadership.
Nobody can know everything, and even if we could, it would take a lifetime to learn it.
Why do that when we can just plug into someone who’s already an expert?
With that in mind, you may want to:
1) Build your trustworthiness.
2) Demonstrate your expertise.
3) Think about how the person you want to persuade perceives risk as it relates to the topic you want him to think differently about. Can you minimize the risk or reframe it to make it less frightening?
Take these steps and you’ll amp up your persuasive abilities in a major way.