Good operations must have strong persuasiveness. Here are three tips for you.

Whether in our daily life or work, dealing with people is always inevitable. Mastering certain communication skills and logic can often make us more persuasive and achieve twice the result with half the effort. Just as the purpose of a product is to solve the needs of users, the first thing we need to clarify in communication is the other party’s pain points. It is always more effective to prescribe the right medicine than to try all kinds of medicines.

Operations , a role that requires dealing with development, products, marketing, and business from time to time. All kinds of cross-departmental communications will ultimately have only two results: either convince others or be convinced by others. Obviously, we want to be the one who convinces others, because only in this way can our project move forward and everything can develop according to the trajectory we planned: get promoted, get a raise, become a CEO and reach the pinnacle of life.

So in our daily communication, what skills can we use to improve our persuasiveness and help our operations? Today we will talk about tips on how to improve your persuasiveness from three aspects.

1. Understand people’s hearts and pain points

Selfishness is human instinct. Whether it is our daily communication with friends or cross-departmental communication at work, a big part of the reason why we cannot reach a consensus on many opinions is that our respective interests are different. This leads to different views and focus points of different interest groups on the same issue. Therefore, the first step we need to take before persuading others is to understand what they are thinking. Only by knowing this can we find the pain points and prescribe the right remedy.

So generally speaking, from which aspects can we look for this breakthrough point?

1.1 KPI

Almost all companies will set various KPI assessment indicators for their employees. Especially in cross-departmental communication, since the KPIs of various departments are very likely to be different, if we blindly communicate without knowing that there is a conflict between our own plans and the other party's assessments, it is very likely to lead to communication failure, or the other party may agree on the surface, but actually enter the "dragging" tactic of waiting for the schedule.

Let’s take an example.

Right now, it is basically the time period for operations colleagues to strive for various KPIs, after all, it is related to the big issue of whether or not there will be year-end bonuses. Unfortunately, the growth of active users this year has not yet reached the target. Our operations team racked their brains and finally came up with a plan to increase DAU through a "check-in" mechanism, and used their eloquence to convince the leader to agree to this case.

OK, the implementation of the "sign-in" mechanism undoubtedly requires the help of technical people. I thought that relying on this old face, the technology could be developed as quickly as possible. Who knew that the technical GG accepted our needs on the surface, but never took the next step. Every time I went to see him, he would just say, "Wait for the schedule, I'll give it to you as soon as there is a time available." He can wait but we can't. If we wait any longer, our year-end bonus will be gone. But we can't force him to do it either. I had no choice but to ask my leader to come forward to communicate. Later I found out that their KPI this year was to shorten the page response speed by 0.2 seconds. Once your "check-in" mechanism was launched, the response would be delayed by 0.5 seconds.

How can we play then? The technical guys worked hard for a whole year to complete the target, but it was ruined by your one request. In order to have enough money to have a good new year, I can only delay you and talk about it after the new year. So this is an unsolvable situation, and it’s useless even if your leader steps in. If we had known that this was the other party's KPI this year, we would definitely not have formulated this activation plan, and we would not have wasted so much time on useless work. Therefore, only by knowing both yourself and the enemy can you win every battle.

1.2 Goals and Values

As the saying goes, "If you don't share the same ideals, you won't want to work together." We can also understand "goals and values" as the so-called Tao. When both parties in communication have the same ideas, there will be considerable room for negotiation, and they may even be willing to make temporary concessions and compromises to achieve a win-win situation. When two people are not on the same channel and their values ​​are completely incompatible, then even if your plan is perfect, it is impossible to achieve final cooperation.

Take my previous experience working in the OTA field as an example: at that time, there was a form of buyout cooperation in the field of online hotel booking. In simple terms: the hotel sells a certain number of rooms to OTA at a price 20%-50% lower than the market price in exchange for OTA's 100% absorption of this part of the room volume.

OTAs can use this to guarantee room availability during peak seasons, while hotels can guarantee a minimum annual profit. It sounds like a good solution. But the reality is that if this plan is really implemented, there will be very few hotels willing to cooperate. The main reason is that hotels only want OTAs to buy inventory during the off-season because they don’t have to worry about selling during the peak season.

The main purpose of OTA buyout is to get lower prices than competitors and to ensure inventory advantages during peak seasons. If you only buy during the off-season, the room won’t be sold and the buyout loses its meaning. Therefore, as far as the original buyout plan is concerned, it cannot achieve both goals at the same time. We need to find common goals for both parties so as to create room for mutual compromise in the actual negotiation process. I will not go into detail on the specific compromise solution here, as it would make the article too lengthy. If you are interested in learning more, you can leave a message in the background for private chat.

1.3 Time and efficiency

As we all know, from the development of the Internet, this has always been an industry that "respects speed". Whether it is a product that enters the market in the form of MVP (Minimun Viable Product) and achieves PMF (Product/Market Fit) status as quickly as possible through rapid iteration and update, or in the O2O field, it provides a large amount of subsidies at all costs just to quickly occupy market share, its style of doing things revolves around the word "fast". Even the Internet itself is just a tool to improve people's daily or work efficiency. Therefore, time and efficiency can be said to be the third pain point for both parties in communication.

Whether a product is attractive or not depends on how efficiently it solves needs, and whether a solution is reliable or not also depends on how efficiently it solves problems. The concept of efficiency actually does not have a fixed standard, unlike KPI which has quantitative indicators, goals and values ​​that have long been determined. But as for efficiency, we always hope that it is as high as possible, with no upper limit. So for this point, we need to make the other party feel that our products and solutions are the most efficient in certain scenarios (such as the same price, similar style, etc.), so we have to have a comparison object to highlight our advantages. This is one of the reasons why we need to have multiple backup plans when persuading others, which we will discuss in detail in the third module.

2. Present facts and data

In the process of communication and persuasion, it is important to correctly describe your demands based on facts.

What are the facts? It is an industry standard, a precedent, and a scientific judgment. Generally speaking, we need to use data to support the facts we state. Taking our operation as an example, we may use the following data when submitting a proposal:

• Dissemination (reporting and reprinting): Data sources can be found in Baidu Index and Google Trends
• Marketing : Data sources can be found on Weibo, Xinbang , and Zhihu
• App download volume : data sources can refer to ASO100 , KuChuan, and app store rankings

In the actual plan-making process, we can plan around the 5W1H rule, namely: why, what, where, when, who, and how. This basically covers the basic facts. The reason why we emphasize the importance of relying on facts is that only plans based on facts can eventually take root and be put into practice; no matter how beautiful a plan that is divorced from facts is, it will be useless if it cannot be implemented in the end. Moreover, when we speak with facts and data, we can, to a certain extent, avoid the other party's confusion and slow down the progress of communication.

Another important point based on facts is that we must identify common interests. Interests or goals are the most important fact. In the actual negotiation process, we might as well try:

1. Accept some of the other person's views instead of rejecting them outright. Give them some respect.
2. If the initial plan has too many incompatible parts, find the key points or find common interests
3. Design solutions based on this common interest

3. Multiple solutions, with comparison

Many times, it is easier for us to make decisions when there is a comparison. If there is no comparison, if you say it is good, then it is good? How can I know whether you are really good?

In fact, this trick can be seen everywhere in our daily life. You may wish to recall that every time a new mobile phone model is launched, the company will also release another model with similar performance but several levels higher price and extremely low cost performance. This model is actually a supporting product. It is precisely because of this model that the high cost-effectiveness of the main model can be highlighted, so that customers will choose to buy the model that the company promotes. Here I would like to recommend a book to you called “Freakonomics”, which tells many classic cases to illustrate how contrast exists in people’s subconscious mind and unconsciously affects people’s decision-making.

Moreover, many bosses have the habit of rejecting their employees' first proposal, even if they are quite satisfied with it. But he always feels that you can give him a better solution. And this is indeed the case. When a plan is rejected, you can indeed optimize it on this basis and provide a more perfect plan. At this time, if we can take out another better plan that we have prepared long ago and give it to him to choose when the boss says no to our previous plan, by comparing the two, will the new plan be able to make him generate an expected premium and decisively approve it?

Whether in our daily life or work, dealing with people is always inevitable. Mastering certain communication skills and logic can often make us more persuasive and achieve twice the result with half the effort. Just as the purpose of a product is to solve the needs of users, the first thing we need to clarify in communication is the other party’s pain points. It is always more effective to prescribe the right medicine than to try all kinds of medicines.

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media advertising

The author of this article @糖愫尔 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!