Chapter 10, Problem 1CA

Summary Introduction

To determine:

The consultant’s message below and identify instances in which the writer’s credibility might be questioned.

Context- Human resource department of a company decided to hire a consultant to assist an employee welfare project. The company wants to keep the cost of employee benefits under control and provide fair benefits to employees. The company wants to know the available insurance options, wellness programs, retirement plans, counseling, educational benefits, and everything else relating to employee benefits.

The following message was received from a consultant interested in working with the company.

Consultant’s message- “I am considered the country’s foremost authority on employee health insurance programs. My clients offer universally positive feedback on the programs I’ve designed for them. They also love how much time I save them—hundreds and hundreds of hours. I am absolutely confident that I can thoroughly analyze your needs and create a portfolio that realizes every degree of savings possible. I invite you to experience the same level of service that has generated such comments as “Best advice ever!” and “Saved us an unbelievable amount of money.”

Introduction: Writing to convince others is really important in the current business environment. So a writer should show persuasion ability when writing. Changing the attitudes, beliefs, and actions of a particular audience is known as persuasion. When writing persuasive messages, many factors such as audience demographic factors, psychographics and motivation should be analyzed. Credibility is vital in persuasion.

Answer to Problem 1CA

Solution: Writing a credible message is the key in order to convince an audience. The writer should show that he/ she knows that what is talking about and should provide good evidence. The message should not be misleading.

Explanation of Solution

When writing persuasive messages, the credibility is very important to convince the audience. The message should show the receiver that the writer knows what he/she is talking about and the message is not misleading.

In the message above, the consultant has highlighted his abilities however, evidence have not been provided. Providing good evidence is vital to increase the credibility of the message. If not, the client organization will not consider hiring this consultant. Also, it is not sufficient to tell the client the best abilities of the consultant only. The consultant should show via the message that he knows about employee benefits programmes and worked for various companies providing the best benefits to the client organizations. Again providing good evidence is really important which is missing in the above message. Without evidence, telling only the best will perceive as a misleading message by the client organization.

“Best advice ever!” and “Saved us an unbelievable amount of money.”- This claim will not persuasive as the consultant has not provided an example/ evidence of the best programme he conducted.