Five Steps of Effective Persuasion

Effective Support Raising and Partnership Development

Since Greek and Roman times skilled communicators have known that people resist change. They have also know that people go through five distinct stages of resistance before they make a change. Jesus, the Apostle Paul and others in the Bible understood these stages. They organized their preaching and teaching so their listener and readers could come to a decision in a natural way. (For examples, see Jesus’ discourse with the Samaritan woman in John 4:7-24; Paul on Mars Hill, Acts 17.)

In my training you will gain practice in anticipating the five stages of resistance every audience member goes through, and the five effective responses to these stages.

Five Stages of Resistance*	Five Effective Responses*
1. Rejection	Gain attention through affirmation
2. Indifference	Gain interest based on need
3. Skepticism	Gain conviction based on evidence
4. Procrastination	Gain desire through visualization
5. Fear	Give reassurance and an opportunity to respond

Not everyone in an audience will manifest each of these attitudes but we can best assume the majority of people will. Therefore, it serves you well to anticipate all of them in every presentation in which you want people to stop doing, start doing or do something differently.

The five responses can become a structural framework for all your spoken and written communication to persuade. They apply to preaching, evangelizing, fundraising, recruiting volunteers, personal witnessing or motivating people in any way. You can use them in writing memos, reports, work papers and newsletters. They are worth writing down, memorizing, keeping on a card in your wallet, posting above your desk, and storing in your computer.

In my training you will gain skill in organizing the elements of your presentation is such a way that it naturally responds to the five stages of resistance. It will allow people to discover truth and respond to it in logical sequence. Once they discover truth, they own it and they unconsciously begin to adjust their thinking and behavior accordingly.

* I am indebted to Mr. Claude Bowen for this specific wording of the five attitudes and responses.

How to Prepare a Story

Four crucial steps to preparing a story:

1. Make notes of the key elements of your story

I recommend that you do not write out stories that you plan to tell. The problem is that we write in a different style of language than we speak. If you write it out completely it will not come across naturally when you tell it. Just think through the story and make notes of the critical action and key scenes.

2. Craft a power line

The power line is the one line in the story, often the final line, which draws the whole story together and portrays its meaning. It is similar to the punch line of a joke.

Samples of power lines:

“I never took another drink after that.”

“That is when I realized I could never stop loving her.”

“So my advice is never to walk away from a crying spouse.”

3. Cut the fluff

As you practice your story, practice cutting anything that doesn’t enhance or support the power line. Don’t cut any visual aspects of the scene because those are important. Get brutal; however, get violent and merciless in cutting out generalities. A generality is anything that doesn’t connect with specific time, specific people and specific places. Cut everything that doesn’t add power to the power line. Regardless of how funny it is, how smart it makes you look or how short it makes the story, cut it. Your audience will love you for it.

4. Practice telling it with visual and emotional power.

Get alone, stand up, and practice the story. Get your voice, your face and your whole body into the scene. Feel it in your heart. Visualize your audience reacting in just the way you want them to.

Seven Rules for Telling Stories

I can train you to engage the seven rules for telling stories

1. Keep your stories short.

There is no such thing as a long story and a short story. There are only long and short versions of stories. For our training purposes and to develop the discipline of tight stories, we keep the maximum length down to two minutes.

2. Begin where the story begins.

This takes training and discipline. We are naturally inclined to introduce a story or explain what it is about before we tell it. The story is much more powerful when your audience discovers what it is about as you tell it.

3. Get to the Action.

The “Action” is where specific people are in a specific place at a specific time where specific things are happening. Action is visually oriented and emotionally engaging.

Generalities, where people “sometimes used to go here or there and do this or that” are boring, useless and pointless.

4. Stop where the story ends.

Something in our culture drives us to explain or state the moral of stories we tell. You know what happens to a joke that needs to be explained. It is the same with any story. If it needs to be explained it means was either the wrong story or it was poorly told. When you have to explain it, your listener is forced to make a judgment about whether it is true or not. When they discover truth from your story, they bypass judgment and they own it.

5. Know the opening and closing lines.

The two most critical points in a story are getting in and getting out. Getting in is easy. Just make it a habit of putting three important pieces of information in the first sentence: Answer the questions: who? when? where? Example: “In the fall of 1971 my wife and I drove a Chevrolet van from California to Quito, Ecuador…”

Getting out takes a little more thought. Think of how the punch line of a joke has to be exactly right. The “power line” of a story should be thought through and memorized. I don’t recommend that you write it out, just think it through and memorize it. It is the power line that ties the whole story together and portrays its full meaning

6. Don’t just say it; portray it.

According to research, words alone account for only seven percent of the total impact of a talk. The rest of the impact comes from your voice and non-verbals like face, gestures and body language. You can engage the other 93 percent of the impact by putting your whole person in the scene. You see the action; feel the emotions and re-live every aspect of the story.

7. Use visual images.

We all think and remember in pictures. Every story needs a scene that people can picture in their minds. Let your eyes move to see the scene; let your hands help shape it in their imaginations. React physically with your whole body to the action taking place in the story. Create imaginary props in your hands. Where there is dialogue, practice playing the role of each speaker and simulate their voices.

Avoid adjectives that don’t create mental pictures. Adjectives like “wonderful, awesome, beautiful, interesting,” are next to useless in stories. Use visual imagery like, “struck like a cannonball, “gorgeous like a fresh rose”, “more annoying than a hangnail”, “angry black storm clouds”.