Product Description

Ever wondered what it’s like to get people to do whatever you want, whenever you want?

We all know people who are incredibly persuasive. With effortless charm, they manage to somehow gain our trust, interest and support, time and time again. Is it a gift they are born with? Is it all an illusion?

No, it’s the art of persuasion and you can learn it too.

We all rely heavily on our persuasive powers every day - whether you are trying to get people to agree with you, influencing others to make a decision, asking for something, or attempting to bring about a change of behaviour or attitude in others, your success will depend on how persuasive you can be.

Whether it's in your professional or your personal life, so much of your success in persuasion is down to a combination of self-assesment and situational assessment - being aware of what's going on inside you and being aware of what's happening around you. And the good news is that there are a set of golden behavioural rules that will boost your persuasive powers and get a positive result for you with increased regularity.

Based on years of analysing the behaviours and mind-sets of the most persuasive people around, Persuasion gives you the magic formula to master the power of persuasion – the ultimate way to achieve success in work and life.

"This book should be on every individuals bookshelf!"  Sir John Harvey Jones

A rare 'self-help' book - marvellously readable and fun. Hugely to be recommended.

Jilly Cooper

An indispensable handbook for all of us who need to get other people to do what we want.

Sir Antony Jay, co-creator and writer of BBC's Yes Minister

Persuaded? We were. Buy it.

Management Todaymagazine (voted "best of its kind")

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12044 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-11
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 267 pages

Review
It's always a delight to find a book that can be useful to so many people regardless of the type of work they do. --Common Outlook Consulting Inc, January 2009

Edge, December 2005
a witty and fast-paced journey ... there are some gems in this book

From the Back Cover

Ever wondered what it’s like to get people to do whatever you want, whenever you want?

We all know people who are incredibly persuasive. With effortless charm, they manage to somehow gain our trust, interest and support, time and time again. Is it a gift they are born with? Is it all an illusion?

No, it’s the art of persuasion and you can learn it too.

Based on years of analysing the behaviours and mind-sets of the most persuasive people around, Persuasion gives you the magic formula to master the power of persuasion – the ultimate way to achieve success in work and life.

A rare 'self-help' book - marvellously readable and fun. Hugely to be recommended.

Jilly Cooper

An indispensable handbook for all of us who need to get other people to do what we want.

Sir Antony Jay, co-creator and writer of BBC's Yes Minister

Persuaded? We were. Buy it.

Management Today magazine (voted "best of its kind")

Customer Reviews

Tremendously interesting and pretty instructive book!
This is a practical, readable and most of all tremendously interesting book from the field of communication skills and inter-personal relationships. Though it is written for general public and intended to facilitate our professional and personal face-to-face relationships, it can be extremely helpful for `business people' and all those dealing with other individuals or groups, such as tourist guides and interpreters. In the latter case, they will find the book instructive on how to carry out presentations and manage their groups more effectively.

The book describes various skills of controlling the audience's attention, among other topics. You can learn how to recognize (in)visible signs of a breakdown of attention of your audience, to `read' the body language of people in your tour groups, and to generally win more attention while guiding. You'll find here how to pick up signals as to how you are coming across, retrieve the situation if somebody is resistant, choose the right words to get results in any situation, and more.

The text of this book is written in a charming way with a lot of examples from everyday life, given in special 'boxes'. Each chapter is followed by a small test, so the reader can check out his understanding of the subject. Even though you might think of yourself as a persuasive professional, there is always enough space for further improvements. James Borg's book is here to help you in that direction, and not only in your professional milieu.

Recommended
I found Persuasion an easy and an extremely useful read. I especially liked the how-to style of the book and its specific Dos and Don'ts rather than merely presenting the concepts or ideas behind the approach. I thought most chapters were well written and genuinely useful, but while some contained real nuggets, I felt that a couple of chapters that provided little more than padding.

I do however strongly recommend this book.

Bland and full of incredibly obvious tips
Reading the latest review of this book, I literally had to leave my desk, walk over to the book shelf and check the title of the book I thought I'd read, because there was such a mismatch. But no mistake. It's just that I'm not able to associate the glowing praise of the reviews with what I have in front of me.

I bought it from Amazon with an open mind and was actually looking forward to it arriving in the post. It came and with great excitement I read the cracking testimonials from John Harvey-Jones, "Management Today" and others, and was thrilled by the way it described itself as "The world's bestselling book on persuasion".

But... it's full of hot air.

A lot of the content is stuff you will have seen before (like the stats on non-verbal messages). It also gives you cliched stereotypes of a number of different personality types. And every chapter is full of examples of "how to" and "how not to" communicate. The example conversations it gives are just, for want of a better word, lame. Here's one:

Harriet (to John): "Every time I look in the mirror all I can see is wrinkles. I look in the mirror and I see flabby arms. I see big hips. I see big thighs. I see cellulite everywhere. Oh, John - say something positive to give me hope."

John: "Err... At least there's nothing wrong with your eyesight."

Boom-boom! That's not Persuasion; that's Terry And June. If you *want* dodgy 1970's sitcomesque dialogue, this is going to be a book you'll enjoy. If you want real-life examples of how actual people communicate with each other, however, you'll have to look elsewhere.

Hugely disappointed.