Persuasion

These are pretty amazing times to be a sales person. The tools available today have made the job so much more efficient. It seems not so long ago, part of managing your territory was knowing how to get to a wired phone, instead of a cell phone, and customer files were all paper which were kept in a portable file case in the trunk.; now we have laptop computers and sales software. The technology is great, but to be successful in sales you must understand and master a basic tool of the trade, the art of persuasion.

The Greek's summed it up with three words, logos, pathos, and ethos. Translated they mean: logic, credibility and emotion. These terms were used by the famous philosopher Aristotle in the art of rhetoric, and they work as well today as they ever have. All sales will be influenced by using one of these strategies to convince customers what products or services to purchase. Here are a few examples of how these three concepts are being used today and how you can incorporate them into your sale presentations.

One of the typical forms of logic is productivity. An example of this would be the above mentioned cell phone. When they first came out, they were fairly expensive, but imagine the gleam in the sales manager's eye when it was explained to him that his sales force could now make customer phone calls during what use to be unproductive windshield time, and important customers could virtually get a...