February 2010--Rise in Need for Persuasion Skills

The art and science of persuasion has become an important competency for many companies.  We have seen a rise in requests from the clients we work with to help them build this skill in their employees. For example, four organizations have put their persuasion skills to use for:

1) helping their pharmaceutical sales representatives persuade physicians to give them longer meetings to learn more about their products;

2) developing a common language and practice framework for the company to streamline their internal interactions and build trust with customers;

3) enhancing the influence skills of its technical supervisors so that issues with direct reports and customers could be resolved more effectively thus increasing productivity;

4) improving foundation officers' ability to be mroe persuasive with potential donors when asking for large gifts.