Maximize Your Influence Episode 38 - Watch Your Tone
If Kurt and Steve haven't yet offended you on the podcast, they give it a good try here (all in good fun, of course). They also discuss the strange fact that a lot of listners to the podcast seem to be from Iran. After the initial banter that for some reason didn't involve any "food talk", Steve apologizes profusely for not posting the link to the Advanced Influence Course from last week. Kurt then shamelessly plugs the course so that all may enjoy. Why not? It's 85% off for listeners of Maximize Your Influence! Persuasion is a soft skill that requires regular attention so that you don't lose your touch. It's not like "hard skills" like riding a bike. When you learn to ride a bike you know it for life. But with persuaison, it requires constant practice or you'll get rusty.
Steve asks Kurt about a recent study published on Psychology Today entitled "4 Ways Men Can Woo Women." According to the study, Men who are nice, are also nice to children, are creative, and are dog lovers have better luck "wooing" women. Kurt and Steve discuss how effective these techniques may be with one giant caveat: neither of them are women. They then ask women listeners from the show to chime in and vote as to how effective they think these techniques may be when attracting women. They also point out that if the article is right and being a dog lover attracts women, being a cat lover is just creepy. Check cat lovers off of the list of people to offend.
Heading into the main segment of the show, Kurt discusses how more business is done online and via email and phone today. Word choice is more critical than ever before. While we might think that we use the right words when persuading, over time words that are not effective tend to creep into our presentations. Kurt offers a list of words that we shoudln't be using when persuading as well as gives some real life examples of when word choice can go wrong.
Kurt and Steve then delve into things like vocal tone, rate of speech, and the strategic use of silence. Those who can talk a little faster than average are actually statistically more persuasive. The reason for this is that the prospect has less time to doubt and quesiton the information being presented. There is of course, a fine line between talking quickly and being effective and coming across as a slick fast talker. Kurt and Steve also discuss vocal fillers and how to best elminate them from your vocabular. Vocal fillers can easily creep in on all of us so it's important to have a third party (or record ourselves) identify them from time to time. It's just like staying in shape. You're never perfect!
Finally, Steve awards the persuasion blunder to owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, Donald Sterling. Kurt and Steve discuss what happens in people's minds when somebody commits a massive PR blunder, ala Donald Sterling. They also reflect on what PR firms are trained to do when these kinds of things happen. And because Kurt is obsessed with Seinfeld, he once again brings up Michael Richard's (Kramer) massive racial blunder in front of a comedy club a few years ago. He breaks down whether or not people who commit these kind of blunders can ever recover in the public eye.