Jill Foster: Persuasion is key

With our persuasive speeches approaching very quickly, it was almost a sigh of relief to have Jill Foster come in and give us some pointers on persuasive speaking. She has such a bubbly personality, with lots of energy, that it is hard not to be awed by her.

Jill started off by telling us about an obstacle from her past. Foster had once worked in corporate sales for Borders book store. This job title made her have to interact with customers quite often. Just upon returning from vacation, a mistake was made with a huge customer. The customer would receive half of her order a day late, and when Jill informed the customer of this, she went off, and even started to curse and swear at Jill! Through her persuasive genius, Foster sat down with the customer and figured everything out. But, Jill's persuasive genius can not take all the credit, upon fixing the problem Jill had to refer back to four main questions.

1. What point of view do you represent?

2. What was his/her point of view, and how did it affect the conversation?

3. How did he/she phrase it? What was at stake in the conversations?

4. How did your emotional resolve persuade the outcome? How did it detour from the outcome?

With these key four points, you will be able to figure out your audience, whether it be one or one hundred. If you can master these four points, you will be able to state your view/idea more efficiently, and respectively. Foster also mentioned that persuasion also comes in handy when the audience is in a emotional state. Referring back to the angry Borders customer, Foster handled her anger and irritability, with calmness.

In conclusion, I feel that Jill Foster was an amazing speaker, with love for her persuasive ways. The four key points will really help me when it comes time for our persuasive speech, because now I know how to relate my topic back to my audience. The one thing that i respected most about Jill was that she started off by telling us an obstacle that she endured in her professional field. It is very intimidating having an experienced speaker come in, but after hearing that story, it showed me that we all start our passions somewhere.

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