A Diary From the Day Job - Vol. 1 Ed. 43
May 12, 2021 5:16 am
World Builders' Guild Newsletter
Sometimes, my day job looks a lot like a worldbuilding to an extent. I bet yours does, too. You have to manage a huge amount of variables, complete important designs, and communicate your strategy. Putting together all the pieces is challenging on the easiest of days.
Better communication + higher persuasion technique = building tons of valuable stuff.
This includes worlds. Every skill you acquire that brings you closer to delivering on the vision of your world to people who would benefit most from it is a skill worth cultivating.
If you can’t persuade, you can’t launch. I know what you’re thinking.
You’re saying, “Matt, you’re talking about manipulation.”
No, I’m not. Persuasion is not manipulation.
It’s the ability to read people, assess the room, and use verbal and behavioral techniques to produce a result. It works. You know it works because you’re exposed to advertising almost every minute of the waking day. Advertisers figured out how to make you make decisions without you knowing you’re making them. Free will is a myth.
Grip it and rip it. (Photo by Kane Reinholdtsen on Unsplash)
I’m not even advocating you become a master of the persuasion game. I want you to be aware of the techniques that you can use to win someone over during a discussion or negotiation. I want you to be aware when other people are using persuasion techniques on you. Most of the time you can’t stop it even when you know it’s happening. That’s how powerful it is.
Here’s a technique to get you started: people are visual thinkers. Imagine you’re giving a demonstration and you want to connect a design concept in the product to a business goal. You’d like the VP of product to give you a bigger budget. You could use sterile lab coat statistics. For example: “We estimate that customers will click the Submit button 25% more often using this treatment resulting in a 10% higher conversion rate.”
Yawn fest. They will ignore that completely.
Try some more visual language: “We consider this treatment successful when the customer hammers the Submit button more frequently to the tune of 25%. Our conversion rate takes a rocket ship ride past 10% year over year.”
You can imagine the customer feverishly tapping the Submit button and dollar signs strapped to a Space Shuttle.
Bonus points for Dogecoin/"to the moon" memes.
To future worlds,
Matt Ventre
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