Are you someone who can convince your significant other to watch what YOU want on Netflix? Have you ever talked your way out of a parking ticket? If so, you may have a natural gift for persuasive speech!
Persuasive speech is one of the top selling skills and a powerful tool that can be used in a myriad of business situations:
- Convince investors to back your new venture.
- Engage your audience while giving a presentation.
- Inspire employees to buy into new strategies and goals.
- Create a desire in your prospects to make a purchase.
The idea that persuasion is a powerful tool isn’t novel. In fact, Aristotle was the first to discuss the idea of persuasion thousands of years ago when he wrote “The Art of Rhetoric.” In his famous work, Aristotle proposed that there were three modes of persuasion that should be at the very center of any presentation, speech or pitch you make. These three modes are appeals to:
- character (ethos);
- emotion (pathos); and
- logic or reason (logos).
Now you may be thinking, “I doubt this old Greek stuff has any bearing on how successful I am today.” Well I am going to appeal to your logos right now and tell you that these three modes are incredibly relevant today. Together, they act like a 1-2-3 knockout punch that can facilitate buy-in from your audience, whether it’s for your ideas, products, or services.
Let’s dive into each of the three persuasion modes Aristotle spoke of to determine how you can use them when developing your own persuasive speech outline.
Ethos
Ethos is the first mode of persuasion and considered to be the absolute most important. That’s because your authority or clout go a long way in convincing people they should listen to what you have to say.
Think about it, when a speaker takes the stage, they have mere seconds to get the audience to accept their authority. They will either already possess that authority or will need to earn it quickly.
Here’s a for instance: If Bill Gates stepped onto a stage anywhere in the world to give a presentation on technology or entrepreneurship, every single person in the audience would give their rapt attention. That’s because everyone knows Bill Gates is a leading authority on building technology and business.
But someone that runs a local computer repair business is less likely to be known to an audience and will have to build ethos with them.
But Bill Gates doesn’t have ethos (authority) on all topics. What if he were giving a presentation on how to play tennis. He wouldn’t have nearly the same authority and would need to convince the audience to listen to him on this particular subject. He’d share with the audience that he has been playing tennis his entire life and even played a match with Roger Federer (and kept up fairly well) in a charity event.
Aristotle himself considered ethos the most important mode of persuasion and clearly defined three things that contribute to ethos:
- good sense (phronesis – wisdom) – You must be an authority on your subject. But beyond this, you must be able to have the wisdom to understand the best way to share your knowledge with others. You being an expert won’t amount to a hill of beans if your audience can’t grasp your message.
- good moral character (arête) – This doesn’t mean you’ve never lied or used profanity. In modern terms this means someone who has a passion on a topic and wants to share that passion with others.
- goodwill (eunoia) – I often talk about the need for more business owners to “help not sell.” Goodwill toward your audience means genuinely sharing information they can use in their life to make positive changes. If you do this, the sales will follow naturally.
How Can You Build Ethos?
When you are working on your next persuasive speech outline, there are some ways you can build in some ethos:
- Choose a topic you are legitimately an expert on.
- Use language your audience will respond to and avoid industry jargon to sound smart.
- Share your enthusiasm and passion for your topic.
- If possible, have a meet-n-greet with members of the audience before and after your presentation.
- Focus on helping – not selling.
Pathos
Pathos means “pathetic appeal.” But not the pathetic you are thinking of.
In this instance, pathetic or pathos refers to making an emotional appeal to the audience. This is why storytelling is so powerful in presentations. Through stories you build a common bond with your audience and inspire them to take some form of action.
Want to see pathos in action? Just listen to any politician’s speech. Politicians rely almost solely on emotional appeals to get votes and support for their new legislature. By stirring emotions of anger, fear, hopelessness, hopefulness and on and on, politicians, and any speaker for that matter, can easily make a case for action.
When a skillful presenter uses pathos, they convince the audience to feel the same things they do. This creates an instant bond, which by the way, can contribute to ethos, and compels listeners to act. Generally speaking, when it comes to persuasion, it is emotion, not logic or reason, that gets the desired outcome.
Here are some ways you can create an emotional connection with your audience:
- Be human – Don’t try to be perfect. People like people who are like them, and that is flawed and vulnerable.
- Be authentic – Don’t try and be someone you’re not. Your audience can smell “fake” from a mile away. Just be yourself. Also, human beings are hardwired for stories, so tell more!
- Tell stories – Stories are memorable, easily shared and inspire action.
- Use visuals – They say a picture is worth a thousand words for a reason. Look for ways to support your presentation with moving visuals.
- Choose your words carefully – Authors like Dean Koontz and Stephen King have admitted just how much time they can take to choose the right words. Dean Koontz will spend days just to get one page finished and polished. They take their time because they know each word can be strategically used to paint an entire mental image for their readers.
Which of the following words conveys an emotion better:
- pain or agony?
- sad or devastated?
- amazing or magical?
- happy or elated?
When developing your presentation, choose your words carefully. Have a thesaurus nearby or use this list of power words.
Logos
Logos is the third and final mode of persuasion and it relies on making a logical argument backed with reason to persuade your audience. It sounds effective, but any speaker who relies on logos risks losing their audience.
Now a little bit of logos can go a long way in building ethos. The local computer repair shop owner from our previous example can and should use logos to get the audience to believe he is an expert. He may share statistics on volatile vs non-volatile computer memory as an example. After hearing his explanation, you are convinced he knows his stuff. Or at least, certainly more than you!
Logos can also come in real handy should you be addressing a group of people that already know a lot about your topic. By providing this audience with strong evidence based on facts and data, you will help them see your point of view.
But logos is a bit like salt, it should be used sparingly. David Hume once wrote, “reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions.” Hume knew that passion (emotion – pathos) is what compels human beings to act. Reason does not get a strong response out of people.
All good advertisers know this as well. To sell a product, they first appeal to the consumers emotion to get them to commit to purchasing their product. Only then do they offer logic and reason to support the emotional choice the consumer has already made.
For instance, a luxury car company will use words and images to appeal to emotion. They know most people want to be envied and considered wealthy and successful by their peers. Only after they’ve convinced consumers they NEED to own their car do they offer some logos in the way of mentioning horsepower and safety ratings.
In conclusion, logos can be effective but should only be used sparingly and in certain situations.
5 Ways to Begin Using Persuasive Speech
Now that we’ve covered the basics and you know how ethos, pathos and logos can improve your selling skills, here are some tips to help you get started practicing persuasive speech.
1. Understand That Persuasion and Manipulation are Not the Same Thing
Persuasion is an artform and one used to get people to take actions that are in their best interests and that also benefit you. A win/win. Manipulation, on the other hand, is coercion through force to get something that’s good for you but not necessarily the other person. BIG difference!
2. Focus on the Other Person
In order to persuade you must first get the other person’s attention. Most human beings are interested in themselves followed by money, love and health, in that order. If you can start the conversation by focusing on the other person, you’ll get much farther.
3. Add Value
You’ll hear marketers speak a lot about offering real value to prospects consistently before going for the sale. This is because reciprocity works. When I do something for you, you feel compelled to return the favor. It’s as if reciprocity is part of our evolutionary DNA and that helping each other out allowed the human race to survive and thrive. By providing real value up front, you can easily ask for a favor (sale or another action) on the back end.
4. Communicate Clearly
People can’t be persuaded when they are confused. The art of persuasion lies in the ability to simplify your message down to its core and use common language your audience can relate to.
5. Be Confident
Nothing compels or attracts quite so well as confidence and certainly. If you really believe in the message you are sharing and are coming from a place of genuinely wanting to help people, then you will come across as 100% confident.
Final Thoughts
Whether you are a public speaker, small business owner, or a 10-year-old trying to stay up later, persuasive speech is an art form that, once developed, will help you connect with people and get them to take the action you desire. Spend some time perfecting the art and see how your life and business can change!
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