Jonathan Fields.Awake@the Wheel gives us 7 critical mistakes to avoid when trying to persuade someone to your point of view.  Excerpt below: Jonathan's full post is a must read and can be accessed by clicking on the link above.

1. Don’t Attack - When you verbally attack either a person or their point of view, you immediately raise their defensive shields. . . .
2. Don’t fail to acknowledge and validate another person’s right to believe what they believe - You may want them to emerge from the conversation with a different opinion, but their experience in life has led them to the point of view they hold today. . . .
3. Don’t fail to anticipate and address objections - People feel a strong need to act and speak in a way that is consistent with their prior actions and statements. . . .
4. Don’t skip building rapport, trust, credibility - Often, especially when people have strongly held convictions, they’ll launch into an argument in support of those convictions, before allowing the person on the other side of the conversation to (a) get comfortable with who they are, (b) build rapport and likeability, which is a tremendous aid in the effort to persuade, and (c) establish enough credibility in an area to allow the other person to feel comfortable deferring to your knowledge base. Take the time to establish these elements in the conversation BEFORE launching into your campaign . . . .
5. Don’t forget to to adequate research - Be informed and prepared with the latest, most relevant information . . . .
6. Don’t shut yourself down to being persuaded yourself - This may surprise you, we’re not always right. . . . .
7. Don’t say don’t - By now, you may have realized that by simply removing the word “don’t” from each of these points, you’d end up with seven things to “do,” rather than 7 mistakes to avoid. . . . .

Rock on!