Whenever your abilities are challenged by someone your ego kicks in. Especially in the case of doing business, the immediate and very instinctive reaction is to make sure your prove the other person wrong. Be careful to avoid damaging the ego when employing these tactics. WARNING: When damage is caused rather than producing a challenge, you will create an air indifference in your prospect.

Sports coaches use another challenge to the ego in a team environment. For instance during football practice one of the players is not giving it 100%, doesn’t make meeting on time, or makes the same mistake over and over, the coach has the perfect ego based solution. He call a team meeting explains to the teams what been going on with this particular player. He then has every one on the team except the guilty player run some laps. The punishment is a challenge to that football player’s ego. Situations like that only have to take place once to be persuasive for each member of the team.

We very often have challenging messages geared directly at our egos. As an example in a multilevel meeting, managers may say they only want to work with the “go-getters” and “people that can take action.” Teachers may phrase it to a student like this, “I’d like for you to do the advanced assignments.” I have even seen sales representatives attack their prospect with a subtle suggestion like, “I guess you don’t have the authority to make that decision.” You should see the egos come alive.

Giving people credit for something they know nothing about is another example. When you give them credit for knowing something they know nothing about they generally will be quiet and let believe tat they are as smart as said they were. The catch here is they then will try to live up to the undeserved credit you gave them, just so they can lead you to believe they are really smart. You’ve probably heard phrases like, “You probably know…” or “You will soon realize…” These types of statements are a direct challenge to our egos.

When it comes to persuasion we are faced with a very tricky task of building up the egos of our prospects and placing our egos on hold. To be effective at persuasion you have to let go you your ego and focus on the objective at hand. You don’t want to have to deal with a bruised ego. So check your ego at the door and remember your overriding purpose is on persuasion and not you.

Want to find out more about persuasion skills, then visit Kurt Mortensen’s site. Take Kurt’s FREE Persuasion IQ test and see where your strengths lie and where you need improvement.

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