Persuasion Theory

Recently in another class of mine called persuasion theory, we have been discussing things that closely align with sales, such as debating and negotiation. For our last class assignment, we each got put into two sides of Sally’s agent or the opera house. Sally used to be a famous opera singer but as time went on and she got older her popularity decreased which seemed to be common in the situation. Sally was in a show that she had been practicing for months now, and it turns out that the lead opera singer quit or simply vanished. Now the opera house is in a bad situation with no lead singer. Sally had actually played that lead role before when she was a little bit younger. The job of Sally’s agent was to get her that role no matter what. Sally did not care about the money she just wanted the role. The past lead singer was said to get $24,000 for the role but when Sally played it years ago, she got around $20,000 which was more than enough for her. The Opera House had a job to get someone into that role immediately, they were willing to group to $46,000. Neither side knew what the other one wanted, that Sally would have done it for free or that the opera house would have done it for $46,000. We had to debate within our groups a lot of teams ended around the $28,000 mark and they both came clean at the end of what they would have gone for. It really seemed that it depended on who went first, and I got to use it and see sales tricks in action. A lot of groups included add-ons such as her audition room or a “triumphant return” PR stunt. It was very interesting to see how everything worked out in the end and how simply asking for something could work out for your benefit since most people are kind and helpful.