For your persuasion to be effective you must identify and find common ground that is familiar to the person or group that you hope to move.

Ask yourself these questions:

• What common ground exists?
• What shared experiences are readily available as middle ground?
• To what groups or organizations do they belong?
• Who do they hate or revile universally?
• Who do they love?
• What experience do they all hope to have?

By understanding what is familiar you can join them in the middle ground of shared experience or desire.

The simple truth about familiarity as it relates to persuasion is this: the more familiar we are with people, places, events, products services or situations, the more likely we are to view them through a schema that is either immediately good or bad, depending on our previous experience.

Finding familiar ground will help the persuasive process. It is much easier to persuade someone with whom you’ve bonded, with whom you have a relationship, than someone you’ve just met. But beware, it is also very easy to be persuaded by that person, so be sure you are not giving ground when you should not.

Get to know the people you hope to persuade. The more personal you can become with them the better. Learn what their likes and dislikes are; understand their schemas as they relate to sales, persuasion, your product, your industry and anything that might give you a little bit of an edge later. Be certain that you understand their pain and the problems they are hoping to solve.

When you are out networking spend a little time and write down at least one thing about the person you met on the back of their business card. From there you can organize the cards according to importance and make follow-up phone calls.

Always get to know something about every person you hope to persuade. In this case, it is better to receive (information) than to give. The person with the most information about the other holds the biggest set of cards in the game of persuasion.

Try to move all of your persuasive conversations from a shared commonality to a new shared experience that you’ll create together.