Strategy. Innovation. Brand.

Your frame of reference or mine?

You go to a department store and buy $300 worth of stuff.  To pay for it, you present a general purpose credit card.  The clerk tells you that you can save 10% immediately if you apply for a department store credit card.  From the clerk’s perspective, it’s a very logical argument — save $30 just by doing a little paper work.  Your perspective may be different — it’s one more card to manage, one more bill to pay each month, and so on.  If you’re like me, you’ll decline the offer.  The long-term hassles outweigh the short-term benefits.

What we have here is a frame-of-reference issue.  The clerk’s frame of reference is much narrower than yours.  The clerk’s argument is very logical; indeed, it’s airtight.  But your frame of reference allows more information in and you decline the offer.

To be persuasive in an argument, your communication skills should include the ability to argue logically within your audience’s frame of reference.  To do that, you need to know your audience better than your business or product. Learn more in this week’s video.

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