Logic and emotion are the two elements that make for perfect persuasion. We can be persuaded using only logic or only emotion, but the effect will be short-term and unbalanced.

Emotions create movement and action. They generate energy during the presentation and get prospects to act on the proposal being presented. The challenge with relying exclusively on emotion to persuade your prospect is that after she has left the persuasive situation, her emotions fade, leaving her with nothing concrete to fall back on. Logic plays the role of creating a foundation for emotion. This balance between logic and emotion could be called the twin engines of persuasion and influence. Master Persuaders know that each audience and individual has a different balance between logic and emotion. Your analytical type personalities need more logic than emotion. Your amiable personalities require more emotion and less logic. Always remember, you have to have both elements present in your message, regardless of the personality types listening.

Whereas logic is the language of the conscious mind, emotion is the language of the unconscious mind. We know that emotions are reactions to perceived and imagined stimuli, not based on logic, but on one’s own personal experiences. Emotions often outweigh our logic. Imagine placing a plank of wood on the ground and walking its length a few times. Easy enough, right? But suppose you placed it a hundred feet in the air between two buildings. You know you can walk that plank–you just did it over and over again. Yet now, emotions and fears outweigh logic. Your “what-ifs” and your imagination supersede the concrete knowledge of your ability to walk the plank.

In his book Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman asserts that understanding emotions is more pertinent to leading a successful life than having a high intelligence. Often people of high IQ struggle at work because of their weaknesses in fundamental human relation skills. Goleman calls this skill “emotional intelligence.” He emphasizes that emotional intelligence largely determines our success in relationships, work, and even physical wellness. Emotional intelligence “is a type of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use the information to guide one’s thinking and actions.” Emotional intelligence includes emotional management, personal motivation, empathy, self-awareness, and social skills.

When you are persuading someone, emotions provide the springboard for a successful execution of your argument. In fact, I would even say emotions are the energy and very fuel of the persuasion process. Without tapping into your audience’s emotions, there is no strength or energy in your message. Emotion is a power you can harness and use in practically every aspect of persuasion. Remember, logic is important, but emotion helps you catapult an otherwise dull or flat exchange to the next level.

Consider the following advantages of emotion over logic:

1. Arousing the emotions of your audience engages your listeners and distracts them from your intention to influence and persuade.

2. Emotion requires less effort than logic. Logic solicits cognitive effort, whereas emotion is automatic.

3. Presentations aimed at engaging the audience’s emotions are usually more interesting than logical ones.

4. Emotion-based arguments are often easier to recall than logic-based arguments

5. Emotion almost always leads more quickly to change than logic does.

You must know when to create positive or negative emotions and when to dispel negative emotions. You have to find ways to tap into your prospects’ emotions, such as hope, love, pride, gratitude, and excitement. If you can do this, you can inspire anyone. Decide ahead of time what emotional climate you want to create, capture those emotions within yourself, and you’ll be surprised how you can transfer those emotions to your audience.

When your prospect is worried or preoccupied with something occurring now or that is about to happen in the future, your ability to persuade declines. Worry is feeling anxious, uneasy, or concerned about something that may or will happen, or has already happened. I have heard worry referred to as “negative goal setting.” Anxiety creates tension–a fear that occupies our thoughts, which, if encouraged will grow and continue to dominate our thoughts.
You can combat worry in your prospects by modifying their anxiety into thoughts of reality. Bring them back to reality by having them realize we can’t change many things in life. Stress that most of the things we worry about are those very things we can’t change and won’t likely ever happen in the first place. Help your prospects substitute their negative mental images with positive ones.

Fear is anxiety or tension caused by danger, apprehension, harm, pain, or destruction. The possibility of harm can be real or imagined. Fear motivates and moves us away from unpleasant circumstances or potential destruction. Fear persuades us to do many things we might not otherwise do. Out of fear we buy life insurance, air bags, home alarms, and guns.

Fear does not work in every circumstance, however; if we were solely motivated by fear, we would never speed or start smoking. The proper dose of fear is essential in persuasion. If the dose is too small, it will not stimulate action. If the fear is too large, it will trigger resistance and acceptance will decrease.9 For fear to stick and create action and persuasion, it must include the following steps:

1. The image of fear must be unpleasant, such as threat of pain, destruction, or grief.

2. It must be imminent. Your prospects must feel not only that the fearful event is likely to happen, but also that they could be victimized by its occurrence. They must feel vulnerable.

3. You must provide a solution to the fear. Give your prospects a recommended action to suspend or eliminate the
fear.

4. Your prospects must believe they are capable of doing what is asked of them and that doing so will work for them.

Anger is a secondary emotion. A prospect’s anger is usually an indicator that something else is askew and/or that he needs and wants attention. You can assist in diminishing his anger by determining the key issue he is upset about. It is also often effective to ask for his help, opinions, or advice. This will usually diffuse his anger or even change his attitude and demeanor completely. In some circumstances, you may want to use anger to make a certain point or to evoke a certain reaction.

You can generate action for your cause by creating sympathy for it. When we see others victimized by misfortune that was beyond their control, we feel more sympathetic toward them and more motivated to help them. You’ve probably seen this technique used by marketers when they show you pictures of starving children, battered women, abandoned animals, and disabled adults.

As a Master Persuader you know to use the dual engine of Balance. This dual engine allows you to fly straight and true in any persuasive situation; become a student of both logic and emotion and develop the ability to articulate logic that rings true to your audience; and learn how to use your human emotion radar. It will help you determine important aspects of your audience, such as what your prospects are feeling, what emotions they are trying to hide, and how you can use each of these emotions in the persuasive process. As a Master Persuader you know what emotion to use, when to use it, how to trigger specific emotions, and how to balance the audience’s emotion with logic. Engineer your persuasive message with Balance.

Everyone persuades for a living. There’s no way around it. Whether you’re a sales professional, an entrepreneur, or even a stay at home parent, if you are unable to convince others to your way of thinking, you will be constantly left behind. Donald Trump said it best, “Study the art of persuasion. Practice it. Develop an understanding of its profound value across all aspects of life.”

Conclusion

Persuasion is the missing puzzle piece that will crack the code to dramatically increase your income, improve your relationships, and help you get what you want, when you want, and win friends for life. Ask yourself how much money and income you have lost because of your inability to persuade and influence. Think about it. Sure you’ve seen some success, but think of the times you couldn’t get it done. Has there ever been a time when you did not get your point across? Were you unable to convince someone to do something? Have you reached your full potential? Are you able to motivate yourself and others to achieve more and accomplish their goals? What about your relationships? Imagine being able to overcome objections before they happen, know what your prospect is thinking and feeling, feel more confident in your ability to persuade.

Kurt Mortensen’s trademark is Magnetic Persuasion; rather than convincing others, he teaches that you should attract them, just like a magnet attracts metal filings. He teaches that sales have changed and the consumer has become exponentially more skeptical and cynical within the last five years. Most persuaders are using only 2 or 3 persuasion techniques when there are actually 120 available!

A lively presentation will impress your prospective clients! This will keep your customers’ attention and it might lead to more profit for you. Follow these instructions to create animations for your next talk.

Step 1: Add excitement, but in moderation. Your talk should be captivating and interesting to your audience. At the same time, it’s best not to overdo it. Moderate the amount of animation and video clips you include to keep your presentation from annoying. You can add color and interesting fonts but ensure that you are able to maintain a professional outlook and feel for your presentation too. As an example, the screen that announces a price increase shouldn’t have lively animations zooming across. Keep it appropriate and limited.

Step 2: Use timed content. It can be difficult for presenters to remember that a PowerPoint or Flash requires a click for every little bit of animated text. Try using timed text on your presentation so that the person presenting it will not have to try to memorize it all. Enter at the right moment in the presenter’s speech. (You might need to practice and fine-tune this).

Step 3: Spice up your graphic displays and diagrams. Other animations, such as charts and graphs, can be added as well. Make sure that facts and statistics that are the most important stand out among the others. Use a bar chart which depicts an ascending bar in order to highlight rising profits. Having a visual representation during your presentation is something your audience will appreciate.

Step 4: To explain a process, use animation. When a segment of your advertising presentation needs to be explained, utilize illustrations to get the points across. The presenter should click to show the first step in the process before explaining it. When the user is finished with the first step, he or she ought to be able to click and have the second step appear, without any further action on their part. The concepts will be easier for your audience to grasp if there are good visual graphics to explain the steps. This is better than one large graphic all at one time.

Step 5: Make a joke. If a presentation has some complicated segments to it, break it up with a little light humor. A heavy part of your presentation should be followed by a funny comic or dancing caricature. This will allow your clients both some laughs as well as the chance to digest the information presented. Plus it will stop them from coming to the conclusion “my, this presentation is long and dreadfully boring….”. Add some humour to break things up.

Step 6: Practice beforehand. If your presentation has cute little clips that require excellent timing or ones that will only show up with a mouse click, make sure that you or the presenter practice the presentation. The audience should be surprised as the graphics appear; the presenter should not. Ensure that the presenter is well prepared for the animated presentation.

Most of us feel that making a five minute Powerpoint presentation is like putting an elephant into a small refrigerator. It is just a metaphoric example to express how difficult to cut-sized your product launching report as your product has several important features. It is extremely a challenge to make your audiences listen to your product promotion within given short period of time.

Why it has to be done within five minutes?

No other reasons. If your product is good, it can only take few minutes to mention. It is like TV and radio advertisements – the delivery of the main messages counts, not the total amount of the presentation slides.

How to make a slide that can promote your product fast and simple?

For instance, let’s say we want to promote various of associated computer mouse products.

In the beginning, you need to have high resolution pictures of the computer mouse products. Avoid using low resolution pictures as your audiences will not able to see your products clearly even though it is within viewing distance.

Creatively align these pictures on your slides. You do not have to enlarge these pictures on one slide. It is possible for you to include several pictures on your slides. For better view, include three to four pictures on your slide. After adding pictures into your slide, start using simple effects on these pictures. In this case, choose “Grow/Shrink” for “Emphasis” custom animation. This particular animation will enlarge each of the picture within customizable sizes. In this example, once you click on the slide, the picture will enlarge by 400%. Once the picture is enlarged, you can take this opportunity to elaborate your product during the actual presentation.

Since you have added all pictures with custom animations, you need to make it disappear after you need to proceed with the other picture. Basically you need to create “Now-You-See-It-Now-You-Don’t” picture appearance for your audiences. Take note that no text-contents are included in this slide. Within the custom animation task panel, earlier you will see the “Grow/Shrink” effect that you have added earlier. Add “Exit” effects on the selected pictures and choose “Box” exiting effect.

Finally, manually arrange the sequences of selected effects earlier (“Grow/Shrink” and “Box”) in order to create an “Now-You-See-It-Now-You-Don’t” picture appearance. Now, you are ready to fascinate your audiences with your new product launching.