Here are two great tips from author Dave Lakhani on how to make your communication and marketing more compelling and persuasive.

The first is to create a strong ‘persona’ that people will identify with and the second is to back it up with an emotional story.

Following these tips can enable you to build a clearer and more effective positioning for yourself and your business that makes it easier to attract more customers and charge higher prices.

1. Creating Your Persona: Be clear about who and what you want to be seen as.

That includes details such as the way you look and the clothes you wear. People like predictability so you need to be consistent in your appearance.

It also includes how you describe yourself, perhaps including a tagline.

If you are an effective persuader there is no confusion about who you are and what you do.

2. Creating an Emotional Story: This is not about making something up, it’s about revealing who you are and how you have come to do what you do.

You need to pick one or two elements of your real personal story and keep repeating them so that people see who you are and find it easier to identify with you and build rapport.

Dave says people hesitate to share their stories because they fear others will find them uninteresting. But stories told with some emotion can become compelling and will be retold. The best way to do this is to practice and you’ll discover what people react positively to and you’ll find yourself opening up more.

Not only will others take more notice of you but you’ll get a clearer idea of your own strengths.

In this video interview, Lakhani - author of “Persuasion: the art of getting what you want” - explains these in more detail.