One Simple Shift will Supercharge your Persuasive Abilities

If you’re the type of person who wants to be more persuasive, or just get others to consider your ideas more carefully, this post is for you.

The Setup

A few days ago, an email hit my inbox.

The sender was unknown (it was a cold email), but the subject line was compelling.

And yet when I began reading I noticed a classic “mistake” found in many emails and messages so I quickly moved my mouse over the trashcan icon and “click” delete.

It’s possible you too are making the same mistake when you send emails, texts, or LinkedIn outreach.

The Possibility

Statistics from?LinkedIn?and?Hubspot?show that it’s getting tougher to cut through the email and InMail “noise”.

Now, you can keep writing emails and messages the same way you’ve been doing it; and maybe you’ll be just fine.

But what if you could leverage a simple, yet powerful, tool to tilt those odds in your favor?

The Persuasive Alphabet

In the persuasive alphabet, “u” comes before “i”

Most people however, write their outreach in a particular style which we call “I Facing”, and this is why their messages rarely see a response.

If you want to be more compelling in your correspondence, try developing “U Facing” statements.

Here’s an example so you can see the difference between the two:

“I Facing” statement:

I saw you have a [generic product] company, and put a lot of content on your website. I have a lot of clients in your space and do design work for them. I’d love to speak with you about becoming one of your freelance designers, and deliver you some great results in the process.

Now watch as we reformat this same message into a “U Facing” statement.

“U Facing” statement:

The content on your website makes it seem like you’re the type of business who wants to work with quality, affordable graphic designers.

You’d recognize some of my clients as they’re in your same industry. Would you be open to hearing about the results they're seeing, and discover if you could get similar results from us, too?

The difference is staggering.

From the very first letter of the first example, you know it’s a pitch.

In the second, you may “smell” a pitch, but it’s all about…you.

And we’re inclined to be interested when information is being presented to us about ourselves. Regardless of the source.

OK, so how do I get started?

Try writing an email as you normally would, and then spend a moment looking to flip sentences and paragraphs from “I Facing” to “U Facing”

A/B test this a bit and you’ll see that the U Facing emails deliver significantly better results.

Now, go make something amazing happen today!

A version of this blog post originally appeared at: https://blog.gregoryoffner.com/1-awesome-tip-to-supercharge-your-persuasive-abilities-845a3c0212d9