The Art of Woo

August 20, 2007
Snell and Moussa, both on the Wharton School faculty, aim to help readers get attention and sell their ideas through strategic relationship-based persuasion, or “woo”—or “winning others over.” The authors consider wooing to be one of the most important skills in a manager's repertoire; while the concept may seem simple, mastering it is an art. The challenge is in striking a balance between what the authors identify as the “self-oriented” perspective—where focus is on the persuader's credibility and point of view—and the “other-oriented” perspective, which focuses on the audience's needs, perceptions and feelings. Drawing on their experience in teaching executives to negotiate, the authors examine the most important moments of influence and provide a four-step process to achieving goals: survey your situation, confront the five barriers, make your pitch and secure your commitments. They offer a practical guide to improving one's wooing skills, highlighting successes and failures from history and the present day. An entertaining and useful guide to acquiring the power of woo, this book will help readers beyond the professional realm.

March 1, 2008
Shell ("Bargaining for Advantage"), director of the Wharton School Executive Negotiation Workshop, and Moussa, a principal of CFAR, Inc., a management consulting firm, provide a fresh new approach to selling ideas with this focus on helping listeners find their strengths as persuaders. Eschewing traditional sales and negotiation tips and tricks, the authors instead develop their material around their principle of winning over others (WOO) to your ideas without coercion using relationship-based, emotionally intelligent persuasion. Borrowing from Stephen Covey (seek first to understand, then to be understood), the authors present a pragmatic approach to relationship-based persuasion, explaining their strategic process for getting people's attention. Beginning with a demonstration of how to use WOO to sell ideas, they explain their four-step process and the six main channels of influence, including authority, vision, relationships, interests, and politics, used to solve problems. The material is relevant for managers and front-line staff, and there are numerous real-world examples of how WOO can be helpful in requesting raises, increasing departmental budgets, and, of course, handling direct sales. The rich solid narration by Alan Sklar helps maintain listener interest in this material, combining business principles, the psychology of behavior, emotional intelligence, and organizational dynamics. Recommended for university libraries supporting a business curriculum and larger public libraries. [Comparative newbie firm Tantor Media has a diverse inventory of programming. See the Q&A with its CEO on p. 126.Ed.]Dale Farris, Groves, TX

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