I want to give you a quick win on how you can be more persuasive in the workplace. You've no doubt heard that a face to face meeting, talking. Direct presentation is always more powerful than just an email or a phone call or voicemail. That's obvious, right? But how do you increase the odds of people actually seeing you speak? Well, here's one technique I use this works well, if someone is on the other side of the globe, or if they're in the office right next to you, and they're just too busy to meet with you and you want to, here's what I do.
I give them a presentation on video these days. You can do it just with your cell phone. I find it's infinitely more powerful than just sending an email. Everybody gets 10,000 emails a day. How many videos do you get that address you by name? If you're like most people, the answer is zero.
So that cuts through now you can send it to somebody in an email format, you can send it to them in a text format. You can make it a little fancier using a webcam. But even when I'm traveling, I'm in a hotel, I'm tired, I get someone writing to me a prospect, and I have to persuade them to hire me. I don't just send email. I will talk right into a cell phone. And I'll say, Jim, thanks so much for reaching out, I understand you're looking for presentation training for five of your colleagues, you'd like this to happen.
I go over the details, and then I tell them, how I can help them I tell them how I have relevance in their particular industry. If the person has called me or send an email and left specifics, I'll mention all those specifics. Now. If the person calls me and we're able to talk, I certainly want to try to talk to them, as long as possible, find out information, but people typically don't hire anyone. Just off one phone call. The next step is I make a persuasive video, telling them how I'm going to help them.
You'll be surprised this is helpful even within your own organization. You could have colleagues in another office, another location could be somebody on another floor, you just don't bump into them that often. And they like to have meetings structured, sending someone, your proposal, your pitch your presentation in a video format that's relatively short. I try to do this less than five minutes, often less than three minutes. It cuts through the clutter. So that's one tool in your toolkit on how to be more persuasive.
Very few people are using it. That's why it's so effective. Just make it simple talking head video. Don't worry about production. Don't worry about special effects, graphics. Just talk to people the way I'm talking to you right now.