There are many guides out there on how to deliver a persuasive speech, do a search on google and you get crappy results like “use good disclaimers” and “show the audience you care very much about this topic”. Goodness, shoot me already (no wait i was kidding). Anyway, here are 3 tips i combine to deliver an awesome persuasive speech, whether it be to a girl trying to convince her that Iron Man 3 is really much more worth watching than Shrek 3, or that KFC is much nicer to eat at than Pasta Mania. For the record, if you need a good book that teaches you how to give persuasive speeches, check out this book : Influence : The Psychology Of Persuasion. I can swear by this book that it has changed my life in persuading people to do things. (:

Tip 1. Use the trigger word “because” as appropriately often as possible.

You may wonder what a trigger word is, well, it’s a word when the human mind registers upon hearing, automatically triggers a certain response. Here’s an experiment cited from the book i mentioned above on how this word works.

Experiment – 3 separate tests are conducted by a woman on a queue of people waiting to use the photocopier.

Test 1 : The woman walks up to each of them and asks “Can i use the photocopier ahead of you?” to everyone in line and receives the go-ahead by 67% of the people.

Test 2 : The woman walks up to each of them and asks “Can i use the photocopier ahead of you because i’m in a rush?” to everyone in line and gets the go-ahead by 94% of the people. Sure, she had a fairly good reason – she being in a rush, you say. But wait, see the final test.

Test 3 : The woman walks up to each of them and asks “Can i use the photocopier ahead of you because i have to photocopy these papers?” to everyone in line and gets the go-ahead by 93% of the people. If you notice, the reason she gives “because i have to photocopy these papers” makes no sense since everyone in line had to photocopy the papers too! Thus, you can’t say that the successfulness of persuasion depends on the reason given.

This phenomenon is explained with the simple trigger word “because”. Humans don’t wish to hear a good reason, all they want is a reason to do things and the word that triggers that state of mind is the word “because”. So there you go, to tremendously improve the persuasiveness in your speeches, whether to watch that Iron Man 2 movie you so want or convince your parents to let you learn the useless art of Wing Chun, use the word “because” more often. (:

Tip 2. Move from left to right

Don’t worry, this was not a typo from a ballet lesson guide i was writing. Let me explain this to you, again, it’s a tip from the book “Influence : The Psychology Of Persuasion“. We humans have evolved to believe that the social norm is for things to go from left to right. Here are a few examples : We read pages from left to right, we write sentence from left to right, when crossing a road we always look left to right, when reading a book you start on the left side and finish on the right side. Basically, left to right just seems right (no pun intended).

So, how can this help you in delivering persuasive speeches? For one, you can start from the left of the audience’s point of view and make your way to the right when delivering your speech, and your powerpoint slides can have animations that come in from the left to right. Your hand actions can be from left to right (if your audience is facing you, you have to make it from right to left to cater to them seeing it as left to right). You get what i mean.

The result? The audience, whether it be an entire auditorium, or your girl/boyfriend you’re facing, subconsciously registers the left to right movement – which seems right to them – and that results in them becoming increasingly accepting to your speech, resulting in you delivering an awesome persuasive speech. Wonderful eh? (:

Tip 3. Use three points.

Again, another advice taken from the above mentioned book. If you notice, we humans have grown to accept that the magic number is three. Simply because growing up all our lives, three has been drilled into our minds as the correct number. When you were a small child, this psychological principle was hardwired into your innermost psyche. Think back. All your favorite stories had a beginning, a middle, and an end. There were three bears, and Aladdin was granted three wishes. Running races began with “Ready, set, go.” When you needed to pick up something heavy, you learned to “lift on three – one, two, three, lift!”. And if you believe in Christianity, you learned about the Holy Trinity. Basically, something just seemed right about the number three.

When two points are given, it seems one point too short. When four points are given, it seems one point too many. So as you can see from this entry, three does seem pretty right, right? (:

Now, how can this help in helping you deliver a persuasive speech? Well, like point 2 mentioned above on moving from left to right on a stage, you can couple that with starting on the left, moving to the middle, and ending on the right, all in three stages of movement. Also, you can group and subgroup all your points in your powerpoint slide to a series of three. Combine all that with the frequent use of the word “because”, and you, my friend, have an absolutely awesome persuasive speech.

In Conclusion..

So there you go, three points on how to deliver a persuasive speech, whether for business use or personal use, you can never go wrong with these 3 points. You have to admit that they are tips you’ve never ever heard before and goes a long way to whooping the crappy results that google give when you do a search on how to give a persuasive speech eh? Anyway, for more such extremely unique tips which definitely give you an edge in the world out there, check out this book . I highly recommend it as an absolute necessity in surviving in that cruel world (whether it revolves around corporate bosses or unreasonable girlfriends who don’t wish to catch Iron Man) out there. (:

Cheers people!