Introduction
The success or failure of any business is heavily anchored on the persuasive messages that encompass both the internal and external communication processes. Whether you are attempting to persuade your boss to initiate new business ventures in Europe or Middle East or encouraging prospective customers to try your products, you will more or less use the same techniques of persuading.
This entails all the efforts to alter the attitude of the targeted audience, their beliefs and actions. The techniques employed in persuasion are a cornerstone of both marketing and selling, but even if these don’t form fields of your specialization you will still need the techniques for the general advancement of your career.
Effective and successful professional clearly comprehend that persuasion is not all about trickery or rather influencing people to make decisions that are not to their best interests; rather, it allows your audience to see the choice that are available and help them make the decision to agree with you.
In this report, the focus is on identifying the preferred tone and the organization for the persuasive message. One question that conspicuously forms the basis of the research work is whether the North American system and guidelines of effective message writing applies to the audience from the Middle East countries.
The report presents a summary of the findings from the research conducted through a number of sampling and analytic techniques where the type of organization, tone and style of persuasion preferred by the audience in the Middle East region is identified.
Methodology
The research work was preceded by data collection that entailed seeking information from a sample of ten respondents who generally represented the entire Middle East region. Data collection was through questionnaires that were issued to ten different individuals from different age groups.
However, in three instances, direct interviews were employed as the respondents were semi illiterate and they preferred this method. When using the questionnaires. A sample of four persuasive communication messages were issued to the respondents where each one of them was expected to analyse them by comparing any two samples at a time and rank them relative to their acceptability. This ranking was based on a scale provided in the questionnaire.
The information gathered from the respondents was then analysed using the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and the results tabulated. The Analytical Hierarchy process (AHP) is a decision making technique that is used in the determination of the relative importance.
It was developed by a mathematician by the name Thomas Saaty. This method breaks down the decision making-making process into a series of pair-wise comparisons then converts the subjective assessments of the relative importance into a set of overall scores or weights.
Results / Findings
The findings from the questionnaires were tabulated as shown in the table below:
Figure with pie chart showing the percentage acceptability of the samples communication messages under study
From the ten individuals who took part in the survey process, it is worth noting that most of them preferred the second sample of persuasive message communication.
This was followed by a significant of them the sample two, then sample three and finally sample four.
Sample 1
From analysis of the effectiveness of communication in this sample, it is evident that it lacks the emotional and logical aspects required. The message is very plain and is simply all about demanding for assistance but not much of emotional appeal is attached with it.
Sample 2
This sample stands out to be an almost perfect example of persuasive business communication. This is so because it begins by clearly stating the problem in question. Just with the first statement, audience is already made aware of the magnitude of the challenge that the author is trying to address. Secondly, the communication clearly makes the audience understands who they are and their motive behind the move for the communication. It anticipates the questions that the audience may be having and answers them prior to avoid future delays in cases where the audience may want to seek clarification. The sample further gives the benefit that the audience may reap by choosing to support the program.
Conclusion
From the findings above, it can be concluded that for effectiveness of the persuasive business communication, both the logical and emotional aspects must attain some level of balance. Too little of e motion might make the audience to care less about your message. On the other hand, too much of emotions might make the audience feel that you have not thought about the tough business decisions that have to be made in that particular situation.
As such, a number of factors have to be put into consideration in order to achieve the optimum balance of both the emotional and logical principles behind the communication. This includes the actions that you aim to motivate, the expectations from the audience, the extent of resistance you are required to overcome and finally how far as an individual you feel empowered to sell your idea.
Emotional appeal
Emotional appeal is critical in any form of persuasive communication where it invokes the feelings, anchoring the arguments on the needs and the sympathies of the audience; however, an appeal of such a kind must be subtle. For example, you can employ the emotions surrounding certain words. Words such as freedom, comfort, free and values have a tendency of evoking strong feelings.
The choice of words of this type compels your audience to think in a certain mind frame thus helping in making them accept your message. However, in the business environments, emotional appeals aren’t obviously effective standing by themselves. Instead they have to work with logic reasons behind them. Therefore, this brings us to our next factor deduced to be important in persuasive communication in business. This is the logical aspect of it.
Logical Appeal
Logical appeal invokes the reasoning bit of persuasive communication. In any form of argument that is effective in convincing the audience, a claim has to be made but must be supported with reasons and evidence. While logically stating your argument, an analogy, induction or deduction may be used to bring out the logic. With analogy, reasoning is from particular evidence to the next one. On the other hand, induction reasoning entails working from specific evidence to a conclusion that is more general. For example, to persuade your team to change from a certain mode of production process, you could state that every other company that has adopted the new strategy has ended up increasing their profits and so it must be a smart idea. Finally, deduction reasoning involves working from a generalized point of view to specific one.
Finally, there are a number of things that any form of persuasive business communication should try to avoid in order for the effectiveness to be attained. First, hasty generalizations should be avoided at all costs. Plenty of evidence has to be given before a conclusion is made. Secondly, circular reasoning should also be avoided.
This form of reasoning is a logical fallacy where one tries to support his reasoning by simply using other words instead of giving new ideas. Thirdly, avoid attacking the audience or the opponent. The focus has to be on the real question being addressed other than the people whom you want to assist you in tackling the issue.
Moreover, avoid underestimating an issue which is complex. This is done by ensuring that all factors are presented with the magnitude that they deserve other than relying on some few choices. Finally, mistaken assumption of cause and effect should be avoided at all costs.