Instructor’s Manual to Accompany
BUSINESS COMMUNICATION
Developing Leaders for a Networked World (2e)
By Peter W. Cardon
Chapter 10:
Persuasive Messages
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Teaching Note
Hello Fellow Instructor,
In this chapter about persuasive communication, you’ll find that I’ve incorporated more types of
persuasive messages than traditional business communication textbooks. I’ve also included a deeper
discussion of psychological principles related to persuasion.
Having tried many approaches to teaching persuasive communication and talked to dozens of
instructors over the years about their experiences over the past decade, I’ve found that business
students face a few basic obstacles to improving their persuasiveness. First, they often don’t appreciate
that change usually takes a long time and rarely occurs without attention to workplace relationships.
They sometimes assume they can change minds with a single written correspondence. Second, their
instincts are often to enter argumentation mode, assuming they can win over the other side with strong
and forceful positions. They’ve often been trained in this approach or observed this approach in mass
media.
This chapter gives us an opportunity to emphasize the need for personal credibility and the role of
managing workplace relationships during the persuasion or change process. I encourage you to discuss
credibility and relationships at every chance for this topic. I believe the students will respond well to you
sharing your own experiences about the time and attention needed to persuade others in an
organizational context.
Please contact me anytime – to share your experiences, your ideas, and your reactions.
Best of wishes,
Peter W. Cardon, MBA, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Center for Management Communication
University of Southern California
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @petercardon
Facebook: facebook.com/cardonbcomm
Web: cardonbcom.com
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Chapter 10 Summary and PowerPoint Notes
SLIDE 10-1
SLIDE 10-2
This chapter covers the following topics: the
relationship between credibility and persuasion;
components of persuasive messages; tone and
style; internal and external persuasive messages;
mass sales messages; and effective and fair
persuasive messages.
SLIDE 10-3
LO10.1 Describe the relationship between
credibility and persuasion.
LO10.2 Explain the AIM planning process for
persuasive messages and the basic components of
most persuasive messages.
LO10.3 Explain how the tone and style of
persuasive messages impact their influence.
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SLIDE 10-4
LO10.4 Create compelling internal persuasive
messages.
LO10.5 Compose influential external persuasive
messages.
LO10.6 Construct effective mass sales messages.
LO10.7 Evaluate persuasive messages for
effectiveness and fairness.
SLIDE 10-5
While credibility is critical to all business
communications, its importance is heightened for
persuasive messages. By definition, persuasion
implies that you are communicating with someone
who does not think or feel the same way as you do.
So, your goal is to help your audience members
identify with and find merit in your positions. If
they question your credibility, they are unlikely to
carefully consider your ideas, requests, or
recommendations. Persuasion is becoming more
difficult as we live in a time of increasing mistrust.
Michael Maslansky, one of the leading corporate
communications experts, has labeled this the posttrust era (PTE). In this chapter, we sort through
some of the basic principles of persuasive writing
and identify effective strategies for the PTE.
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SLIDE 10-6
Persuasion involves extensive planning: analyzing
your audience to understand their needs, values,
and how they are influenced; developing your ideas
as you wrestle with the complicated business issues
at hand; and creating a message structure that
most effectively reduces resistance and gains buyin. Many effective business communicators spend
weeks and months learning about their target
audiences, gathering information, and piecing
together persuasive messages.
SLIDE 10-7
Dr. Robert Cialdini, a marketing psychologist, has
spent his career studying how people are
influenced in business and marketing
environments. He has identified six principles of
persuasion: reciprocation, consistency, social proof,
liking, authority, and scarcity.
Reciprocation is a principle of influence based on
returning favors. As defined by Cialdini, “We should
try to repay, in kind, what another person has
provided us.
Consistency is based on the idea that once people
make an explicit commitment, they tend to follow
through or honor that commitment. In other
words, they want to stay consistent with their
original commitment.
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SLIDE 10-8
Social proof is a principle of influence whereby
people determine what is right, correct, or
desirable by seeing what others do.
Liking is a principle of influence whereby people
are more likely to be persuaded by people they
like.
SLIDE 10-9
Authority is a principle of influence whereby
people follow authority figures. The number of
celebrity endorsements in advertising is evidence
of how authority can impact persuasion.
Scarcity is a principle of influence whereby people
think there is limited availability of something they
want or need, so they must act quickly.
SLIDE 10-10
Most people justify their business decisions based
on the soundness of ideas, not feelings. Savvy
business communicators, however, understand the
importance of injecting emotion into their
persuasive messages. While they appreciate the
place of reason in business and consumer
decisions, they understand that resistance to ideas,
products, and services is often emotional.
Conversely, they are aware that their target
audiences often possess strong emotional
attachment to competing ideas, products, and
services. Thus, effective communicators find ways
to appeal to the core emotional benefits of
products, services, and ideas.
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SLIDE 10-11
Some components of persuasive messages are:
 Gain attention.
 Raise a need.
 Deliver a solution.
 Provide a rationale.
 Validate the views, preferences, and concerns
of others.
 Give counterpoints (optional).
 Call to action.
SLIDE 10-12
Most business writing is direct and explicit. It is
direct in that you begin with a main idea or
argument and then provide the supporting reasons.
It is explicit in that nothing is implied; statements
contain full and unambiguous meaning. When you
write directly and explicitly, you help your readers
understand your message and you show respect for
their time.
SLIDE 10-13
Compared to other business messages, persuasive
messages are somewhat more indirect and
implicit. They are sometimes indirect in that they
provide the rationale for a request before making
the specific request. They are sometimes implicit in
that the request or some of the rationale for the
request may be implied. In other words, sometimes
the reader needs to read between the lines to
grasp the entire meaning. Implicit statements
politely ask people to act or think differently. Also,
explicitly stating some types of benefits is
considered poor form—for example, matters of
financial or career gain in internal persuasive
requests.
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SLIDE 10-14
See Table 10.1 for examples of attention-getters
that Haniz might use for some of her
communication tasks concerning marketing
initiatives at Horizon Credit Union.
SLIDE 10-15
The tone for persuasive messages should be
confident and positive, yet at the same time avoid
exaggeration or hype. This can be tricky! You will
no doubt need to make some trade-offs. The more
confident and positive you make your message, the
more you risk being perceived as pushy or
exaggerated. As you reduce confidence and
positivity, you risk your product, service, or idea
being perceived as weak or unexciting. One benefit
of asking colleagues to read your persuasive
message before you send it is that they can help
you decide if you have achieved the right level of
confidence and positivity without sacrificing
believability.
SLIDE 10-16
Creating messages that speak directly to customers
and colleagues requires that you use language that
helps your customers and colleagues feel the
product, service, or idea is just for them. One of the
primary strategies you can use to personalize
persuasive messages is your selection of voice—
either you-voice, we-voice, I-voice, or impersonal
voice (as introduced in Chapter 2). Table 10.2 offers
guidance on choosing the appropriate voice.
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SLIDE 10-17
One of the primary strategies you can use to
personalize persuasive messages is your selection
of voice—either you-voice, we-voice, I-voice, or
impersonal voice (as introduced in Chapter 2).
Table 10.2 offers guidance on choosing the
appropriate voice.
SLIDE 10-18
Another method of personalizing a message is to
make your statements tangible. In a business
communications context, making the statement
tangible implies that the readers can discern a
message in terms that are meaningful to them. This
allows the reader to sense the impact on a personal
level. You often can achieve a tangible feel by
combining you-voice with specificity. See Table
10.3 for examples of messages that Haniz is
working on for the credit union.
SLIDE 10-19
In persuasive messages, you have somewhat more
license to write creatively. Focus on using actionoriented and lively words to achieve a sense of
excitement, optimism, or other positive emotions.
Use strong nouns and verbs to add to the
excitement of the message. Across the entire
message or thought, the action-oriented and lively
language should emphasize a central theme. See
Table 10.4 for examples from documents Haniz is
working on for two of her projects.
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SLIDE 10-20
As you display more confidence in your idea,
product, or service, you can more effectively
influence your audience. Effective persuaders
provide compelling and simple reasons for action.
They should show confidence in these ideas, as
illustrated in Table 10.5, again with examples from
two of Haniz’s projects. Emotionally, the writer’s
confidence allows the audience to gain confidence
in the message.
SLIDE 10-21
Effective persuasive messages avoid statements
that may be perceived as pressure tactics. Hard
sells are increasingly ineffective in a PTE, especially
in written format. Compare Haniz’s less effective
and more effective persuasive statements in Table
10.6, all of which you will see again in her messages
located later in the chapter.
SLIDE 10-22
Avoiding superlatives gives you the best chance of
persuading your audience. Consumers perceive a
too-good-to-be-true statement as an attempt to
convince them of “the merits without making a
rational argument.” Such statements are
ineffective “because they suggest an inherent bias
that ruins the integrity of the communicator.”
Table 10.7 highlights the kinds of phrases that are
increasingly ineffective with today’s skeptical
consumers.
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SLIDE 10-23
Table 10.8 contrasts messages from Haniz’s
projects that persuade with and without
exaggeration.
SLIDE 10-24
Internal and external messages contain many
common elements. Nevertheless, internal and
external persuasive messages differ in some ways
(see Table 10.9). Internal messages more often
focus on promoting ideas, whereas external
messages more often focus on promoting products
and services. Also, internal persuasive messages
tend to be slightly more direct and explicit, and
they tend to be based on logical appeals. In
contrast, external persuasive messages tend to be
slightly more indirect and implicit, and they tend to
be based on emotional appeals.
SLIDE 10-25
Christine, with the help of Haniz, constructed a
letter to warm board members to the idea of
adding new financial products and using more
online and social networking tools to better reach
younger members. In the less-effective message
(see Figure 10.2), Christine is generally positive.
However, she shows little confidence in the new
ideas. The message generally contains short, dull,
and nontangible comments.
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SLIDE 10-26
Even if you are not in a marketing position, you
may participate in developing mass sales
messages—messages sent to a large group of
consumers and intended to market a particular
product or service. In Figure 10.10, you can see a
mass sales message that Haniz and her colleagues
created to promote the credit union’s auto loans.
In this message, the central selling theme is price.
Better Horizons Credit Union’s auto loans cost less
than dealer financing.
SLIDE 10-27
A secondary benefit of mass sales messages is that
even when consumers do not respond with
immediate purchases, these messages can raise a
company’s brand awareness. Consumers may keep
the company in mind when making a purchase at a
later time.
SLIDE 10-28
Most effective sales messages contain a central
sales theme. Like other messages, sales messages
are strongest when they contain a coherent,
unified theme that consumers can recognize
quickly. Your colleagues and the clients who know
you will grant you a window of 30 seconds or so to
provide your main point, but recipients of mass
sales messages may give you only a few seconds.
Thus, your sales message should stick to a single,
recognizable theme that resonates within seconds.
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SLIDE 10-29
Always carefully review your persuasive messages,
particularly because almost all of them will be highstakes communications. They can potentially
provide you with more professional opportunities
and enhanced credibility, or they can close off
future opportunities and diminish your credibility.
Likewise, because you are a representative of your
organization, your persuasive messages may raise
or decrease customer loyalty, revenues, and brand
value.
SLIDE 10-30
Persuasive messages can be intentionally designed
to manipulate colleagues and customers. In a
business communications context, manipulation
involves attempting to influence others by some
level of deception so you can achieve your own
interests. You may be tempted to use manipulation
to elevate your career, get a bonus for exceptional
performance, or pad your ego for being right. By
applying the FAIR test, you can avoid sending
persuasive messages that manipulate others. This is
especially important in the case of sales messages
because any misrepresentation of your product or
service is unethical.
SLIDE 10-31
Use Figure 10.14 as a guide as you discuss with
your colleagues whether your persuasive messages
are fair.
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SLIDE 10-32
After studying this chapter, you should understand
the following topics: the relationship between
credibility and persuasion; the components of
persuasive messages; tone and style; internal and
external persuasive messages; mass sales
messages; and effective and fair persuasive
messages.
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manner. This document may not be copied, scanned, duplicated, forwarded, distributed, or posted on a website, in whole or part.
Suggested Approaches and Solutions to Learning Exercises
In these suggested approaches and solutions, you’ll find key points to look for in students’ responses.
10.1
Chapter Review Questions (LO 10.1, LO 10.2, LO 10.3)
A. Persuasion is needed only when others question you, your organization, your products or
services, and/or your ideas. In other words, you need to persuade only when a gap in trust
exists or when your audience doubts your credibility. Students should be rewarded for
explaining the nature of the post-trust era and how various persuasive strategies build trust
and enhance the writer’s credibility.
B. Applying personal touch shows that you value others and understand their needs. Most
people are more likely to be persuaded when they know you care about them individually.
Tangible statements show that the message focuses on the needs of the audience. Actionoriented language provides excitement and enthusiasm for your products, services, or ideas.
Expressing or otherwise showing confidence helps audience members sense the value of a
product, service, or idea. Offering choice is a crucial strategy in the post-trust era.
Colleagues, clients, and customers expect to have choice and are likely to dismiss products,
services, or ideas that feel like hard sells. Finally, positivity helps gain attraction to products,
services, or ideas for their merits rather than the deficiencies of competing products,
services, or ideas. Students should be rewarded for explaining other ways in which tone and
style build trust.
C. The AIM planning process for persuasive messages involves extensive planning.
Understanding your audience involves carefully identifying their needs and wants,
understanding how they best learn and process information, and understanding which
methods of influence most impact them. Developing your ideas carefully means that you
understand your products, services, and ideas thoroughly—their relative advantages and
drawbacks compared to competing products, services, and ideas. Setting up your message
structure involves ordering an attention-getter, a need, a solution, a rationale, appreciation,
counterpoints, and a call to action. Students should be rewarded for providing concrete
examples and elaborating on various principles (such as Cialdini’s principles of influence).
They should also be rewarded for making distinctions between direct and indirect
persuasive messages and between internal and external persuasive messages.
10.2
Applying Key Terms (LO 10.1, LO 10.2, LO 10.3)
Reward students for thorough and accurate summaries and relevant examples.
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This works well as a group exercise in class. You might consider assigning various terms to different
groups.
10.3
Communication Q&A Discussion Questions (LO 10.1, LO 10.2, LO 10.3)
A. Adams emphasizes listening as a way to get to know candidates, clients, and their respective
positions and goals. She further stresses that the goal of listening is to make the other
person feel not only heard but also understood. She also listens to the style of the people
she speaks to and tries to match it. She does not specifically address the level of her efforts,
but her examples make it clear that she expends a great deal of energy listening to others.
B. Crafting a short pitch is more time intensive than a “data dump” because it involves listening
for concerns and making only the points that best address them. This requires discipline,
perceptiveness, and preparation. Adams believes that a person making a pitch should not
talk too much and can make shorter persuasive statements by listening and identifying the
needs of the other person. Student responses about the application of these principles to
their own projects will vary. Reward students for carefully constructed and nuanced
responses that are self-reflective and goal-directed.
C. In several of her responses, Adams stresses the importance of understanding the other
person’s position. She listens carefully to look for unmet needs that she can address by
mentioning the strengths of the candidate or position she is promoting.
D. Student responses will vary. Reward students for carefully constructed and nuanced
responses. Also, reward students for self-reflective and goal-directed comments.
10.4 Should You Use Persuasion Sparingly? (LO 10.1, LO 10.3)
Students should be rewarded for thorough and clear reasoning about their views. Ideally, they will refer
to principles in this chapter, such as addressing needs and using counterpoints, and to principles from
other chapters, including credibility, emotional intelligence, and teamwork.
10.5
Character and Persuasion (LO 10.1, LO 10.7)
Students should be rewarded for thorough and clear reasoning about their views. They should be
rewarded from explaining their views in terms of the credibility model in this book as well as welljustified conceptual frameworks of their own.
10.6
Analyzing a Sales Message (LO 10.6)
Responses will vary. Reward students for carefully constructed and nuanced responses. Also, reward
students for providing specific and valuable recommendations.
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10.7
Analyzing the Better Horizons Promotional Message (Figure 10.6) (LO 10.5)
Responses will vary. Reward students for carefully constructed and nuanced responses. Also, reward
students for providing specific and valuable recommendations.
10.8
Persuasion Self-Assessment (LO 10.1, LO 10.2, LO 10.3, LO 10.7)
Responses will vary. Reward students for carefully constructed and nuanced responses. Also, reward
students for self-reflective and goal-directed comments.
10.9
Selling an Idea to the Better Horizons Board (LO 10.4)
Students should be rewarded for carefully constructed messages that apply the principles of persuasion
from this chapter.
10.10 Promoting the Financial Planning Cruise to Better Horizons Credit Union Members (LO 10.5)
Students should be rewarded for carefully constructed messages that apply the principles of persuasion
from this chapter.
10.11 Writing a Sales Letter for the New Better Horizons Special Rewards Card (LO 10.5, LO 10.6)
Students should be rewarded for carefully constructed messages that apply the principles of persuasion
from this chapter.
10.12 Creating a Message to Promote Joining a Student Club (LO 10.4, LO 10.5, LO 10.6)
Students should be rewarded for carefully constructed messages that apply the principles of persuasion
from this chapter.
10.13 Writing a Sales Letter for Your Computer Store (LO 10.6)
Students should be rewarded for carefully constructed messages that apply the principles of persuasion
from this chapter.
10.14 Writing a Sales Letter for a Credit Union that Targets University Students (LO 10.6)
Students should be rewarded for carefully constructed messages that apply the principles of persuasion
from this chapter.
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10.15 Writing a Sales Letter for a Bank that Targets University Students (LO 10.6)
Students should be rewarded for carefully constructed messages that apply the principles of persuasion
from this chapter.
10.16 Persuading University Students to Start a Retirement Account (LO 10.5, LO 10.6)
Students should be rewarded for carefully constructed messages that apply the principles of persuasion
from this chapter.
10.17 A Message Do-Over for a Persuasive Message to a Colleague
Responses will vary. Reward students for carefully reasoned and justified evaluations of the existing
message. Students should be rewarded for carefully constructed rewrites that apply the principles of
persuasion from this chapter.
10.18 A Message Do-Over for a Sales Message
Responses will vary. Reward students for carefully reasoned and justified evaluations of the existing
message. Students should be rewarded for carefully constructed rewrites that apply the principles of
persuasion from this chapter.
10.19 Review the “Commonly Misspelled and Confused Words” section in Appendix A. Then, rewrite
each sentence to make any needed corrections.
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
F.
G.
H.
I.
J.
We want your advice on the effects of this monetary policy.
She said the team lacked complementary skills, which was one reason for such low morale.
Your order is all ready, so please pick it up sooner than 6 p.m.
His key insight was that the new policy had no effects at all.
This initiative will ensure that all employees will not lose their retirement options.
It’s okay to accept credit cards. (no change needed)
The principle behind this guideline is that we trust our employees.
Since she’s already accepted the offer, let’s proceed as if she’s a current employee.
We provided complimentary items to all attendees except for employees.
Please appraise her performance and then send her advice.
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