Step 04: 5-day challenge “the 5 steps of a persuasive talk in a jiffy.”
Time: 20 minutes
Goal: become a super sharp persuasive speaker.
Are you ready for step 04?
Now you have one finger left: your pinkie. (After the point you’ve made and the 3 arguments).
Your pinkie is reserved for your contra argument.
What is a contra argument?
A contra argument is the “YES, BUT……” that you might hear your audience say after you have given your arguments.
Instead of letting the “yes, but….” fester in your audience brain, you use it and voice it in your “persuasive talk”.
In my case, I might already know that my team will think that it is all very nice, but how on earth are we going to tackle this new process practically? Do we have time for this and how can we get to these new results? What are the steps to be taken? They will probably not be keen to take on more work, since they are so busy already.
So, after my last argument. I can say something like this (contra argument):
“Now, after hearing all of this, you might think, this sounds all very nice and great, but how on earth are we going to tackle this? Will this mean more workload for me? And what are the steps to be taken? How will we go about it?”
“No worries. I already gave this a good thought, how we can implement this successfully, without you having to spend extra hours on your part. This will not be necessary. Of course, there will be some training sessions, but we will not ask you to work extra hours. We will take this into account and and compensate you.
As you can see, I already remove the objections to my plan during my presentation. The audience thinks, wow the speaker already thought about this. He or she really thought it through.
The contra argument is not always applicable. If nothing springs to mind, you simply skip it.
Usually when there is a contra-argument present, the thought will pop up in your mind when preparing your presentation.
What could your contra argument be?
Usually, you will start a contra argument with:
Now, you might think……..
Congratulation this was your fourth step. You are almost there!
Let us now check if you managed to stay out of the pitfalls of the contra-argument.
- The pitfall is mentioning something that is not striking a chord with your audience. If you use it, you have to make sure that this is exactly what is on your audience mind. So, you have to know them to a certain extent. If you talk for instance to a group of entrepreneurs in a semi-polluting industry that do not care about the environment like you do. You do not need to come up with the contra argument:“But, now you might think what are the consequences to the environment of this new….”. Maybe, you care. But if this is not on their mind and they do not care about it. It is waisted energy, and they will not recognize themselves in this argument.
- Putting a contra argument when none is needed. If there is no contra-argument present, you simply skip it. Do, not give your audience ideas, ammunition. You might risk that in the Q & A a lot of energy will go into this subject. They did not think about it, but you gave them new thoughts!
Did you lay it against the yardstick? Is all of the above clear?
Great congratulation! This was your fourth step!
Do you want me to check it? Send “YOUR SITUATION” and “The POINT you want to make” the WHY’s or HOW’s, and your possible CONTRA ARGUMENT to me and I will have a look! Send it to info@presentingwithimpact.nl
Now reward yourself for finishing your fourth step! You are almost there! Get ready for the 5th and last step tomorrow!
To more grip, impact and presenting pleasure!
