Tag Archives: persuasion
The Bailout and Persuasion Tactics. . . .or, “If I’ve Learned One Thing, It’s Never One Thing” Part 2
Key Influentials and Mind-Changers
It gets even more interesting when you look at the lawmakers who did change their minds and their reasons why.
Our survey showed that undecided lawmakers are more likely to change their minds if they hear from people they trust. We call those people “key influentials;” personal friends, local elected officials and opinion leaders in the legislator’s district.
At least 10 of the lawmakers who changed their mind and voted “yes” on the second vote said they were influenced by phone calls or other communication from constituents or opinion leaders all of whom could be defined as “key influentials.” Several of those lawmakers said they changed their minds after talking to presidential candidates Barack Obama or John McCain, certainly…
The Bailout and Persuasion Tactics
I’ve read with interest some blog postings and news accounts of the votes by the U.S. House of Representatives on the 2008 $700 billion Wall Street rescue plan. Some were straight news accounts, other heralded that the vote results were directly correlated to citizen grassroots input and nothing else. As one who promotes the grassroots persuasion “lifestyle,” you’d think I’d be doing a victory dance at these “insights.” Au contraire, it reminded me how attributing influence success to one tactic is a faulty way to evaluate success (or failure). It leads to flawed influence strategy. If I’ve learned one thing, it’s never one thing that leads to influence success. You have to have lots of tools in the toolbox, and…
Assessment: Do You Have a Persuasive PAC?
Do you have a persuasive PAC? Find out by taking our assessment.
Advocacy Isn’t Persuasion
We always strive to go beyond the existing conversations on grassroots influence and not just move the bar, but raise it relative to grassroots persuasion. Because advocacy is an activity rather than a result, we wanted to focus on what should be the ultimate result of advocacy: persuasion. Is there a pattern of behaviors that “everyday” people use that changes the minds of those “up” the food chain?
No matter your current station in life, all of us will be in the position of having to influence “up” the food chain. I was curious if there is a set of behaviors that tend to result in upward persuasion success. So, I interviewed not just people who “had a good meeting” with…
