Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Student Activity
1. Locate a professional (sales representative, recruiter, fund-raiser) who conduct persuasive
interviews on a regular basis and spend a day on the job with this person. Observe how this
person prepares for each interview, select strategies, opens interviews, develops needs and
solutions, close interviews, and adapts to interviewee.
2. Select three persons in different career fields (e.g., sales, medicine, athletics, lobbying,
recruiting, advocacy) who have extensive experience in persuasive interviewing. Probe into
how they prepare for and try to persuade three of the following types of interviewees,
indecisive, hostile, close-minded, skeptical, shopping around, highly educated. Which do
they find most difficult ? what are their most effective strategies for each ? which value and
emotional appeals do they use most often and why ?
3. Identify an acquaintance or family member who is known for driving hard bargains. Go with
this person to a persuasive interview; it need not be a sales situation. Observe the role this
person plays in the opening, how this person handles the need or desire, the information
this person obtain, objections and questions raised about the solution, and how this person
negotiates a final decision. If this interviewee threatens to go to a competitor or a person
higher up in organization, how does the interviewer react ?
4. Keep a long over a two-week period of the telephone and e-mail solicitations you receive.
How well are these adapted to you as a person and to your needs, desires, and motives ?
Which values and emotions do they use as triggering devices ? How ethical are they tactics ?
Which types of evidences do they employ ?How do they react when you raise questions or
objections ? how do they close the interviews ?