Conversation creates Consensus

You’re an innovator, facilitator, teacher, and trainer. You understand and make effective use of group discussion.

Your groups could be sales or marketing conversations. But equally, they may offer counseling, coaching, collaboration, or support.

You strive for good results, high conversion rates, strong relationships, increased adoption, and greater penetration.

You can see the spontaneity of word-of-mouth confirmation and validation within the conversation but you have yet to learn how peer persuasion, peer advocacy, and peer experience practices might be deployed to help your group outcome exceed your current goals.

It’s time to dig deeper. Let’s continue.

As we stated, groups serve a variety of purposes. They provide a platform for sharing information, experience, and knowledge among participants. They offer support and understanding. They facilitate change and transformation.

These conversations foster camaraderie, trust, and understanding, especially where team cohesion is essential. They can generate ideas and explore creative solutions to common challenges.

A group’s strength lies in leveraging its participants’ diverse perspectives and expertise. The discussion is practical, with an ability to make collaborative decisions that consider multiple viewpoints.

A host can employ various strategies to lead a group toward its stated goal.

At the outset, the moderator will provide clarity and direction for participants by outlining specific goals and objectives. Establishing ground rules helps to maintain order and focus. The key to any successful group session depends entirely on the facilitator’s skill and expertise.

The host is the motivator, encouraging participants to contribute. They ask open-ended questions, invite members to share their thoughts, and ensure that nobody dominates the dialogue. Equally important, they listen for and encourage diverse perspectives, leading to richer discussions and better outcomes. In the right environment, participants are comfortable expressing differing opinions and perspectives.

A keen sense of time and a focus on intention will prevent the discussion from veering off track or becoming bogged down in irrelevant details. The periodic summary of key points and insights helps ensure everyone is on the same page and keeps the conversation moving forward.

Since constructive criticism is essential for growth and improvement, an effective host will encourage participants to offer their thoughts on ideas and proposals under discussion.

The host can help facilitate a productive group discussion that effectively achieves its goals by employing these strategies.

But what of that outcome? Was the facilitator able to maximize the group dynamic?

Consensus creates Change

Allow us to demonstrate how the effective use of participant advocacy (solicited WOM) achieves a faster buy-in and a higher conversion rate within the group.

As a group counselor or coach, your skill set starts the conversation, sets the guidelines, and builds a consensus, leading to a change in mindset and the unique yet mutual transformation you seek for each individual.

That alone is often not enough.

Why?

The adoption cycle has two major segments; the second part is as important as the first.

Once the claims have been made, confirmation and verification are needed. Typically, any suggestion of confirmation is viewed as biased or irrelevant.

As the discussion stands, conversion and adoption have been left to chance. Some participants may change their opinion, some will not, and others will find themselves ‘on the fence.’

That said, the final answer does lie within the group. Now, it’s time to bring peer advocacy to the forefront of the conversation.

Here’s how.

Our starting point is a tighter, more relevant definition of the group’s task and a sound understanding of the conversation’s route to reach that goal.

The host’s task is to characterize the mission as being from the right source, relevant to the participants, viable and credible, offered in a context to which the players are receptive, and, most importantly, presented in the correct order.

A facilitated advocacy commentary follows between the participants, expressing their support for the group’s discussion goals.

With this objective confirmation and verification, there’s an elevated consensus when the call to action is received, allowing the group to accelerate its agreement and maximize the transformation.

Change leads to Transformation

Whether you measure success in continuing abstinence, emotional salvation, sales dollars, market share, or product acceptance, peer advocacy can help you attain your group goals. With a replicated ability to foster allegiance and change behavior, peer persuasion can make you a better group leader.

Your meeting began as a generic discussion that identified a number of specific needs. It reviewed certain alternate products, programs, and services currently available to address those needs. The group participants have been encouraged to provide a frank assessment of the strengths and weaknesses that they perceive in each of those alternatives. As a trained facilitator, following a program outline that has been evaluated and proven effective, you elicit a group consensus that no single methodology or offering has fully addressed the total requirement. The discussion then provides opportunity for careful emphasis of a viable solution that provides for all the pertinent features and benefits that address the previously recognized, yet unfulfilled, needs.

As host, sensing the presence of one or more advocates at the meeting, you guide the conversation by prompting the supporters to provide specific answers to their peers’ concerns, objections, and insecurities with regard to the selected resolution. Further, you encourage the believers to validate and confirm the positive aspects and desirable endorsements.

“… at no time is the group sold to … or preached at …”

Prior to the close of the session, each participant is polled and the changes in his or her perception and the likelihood of their acceptance or recommendation of the group’s goal are noted. By encouraging the product advocates to share their experiences first, the mood is typically positive and up-beat. By the time the undecided, the fence sitters, and the non-users reply to the poll questions, each characteristically undertakes, in the presence of their colleagues, both a mental and a physical commitment toward the further use of the offer.

The buy-in becomes quicker, the transformation more complete.

The process is repeatable, scalable, and reliable.

So there it is, empowering the peer experience to transform your group outcomes.

Need to learn more, for yourself, for your group, for your company?