Scoble has written a really good piece on persuasion. If you haven' t already read it, you should go over and do that. As I finished the piece and thought about it, I realized that to persuade me, you need a pair of qualities.

First, you need to have honesty: [via m-w.com]

a: a fairness and straightforwardness of conduct b : adherence to the facts

Without honesty, you cannot have trust, and without trust, your ability to persuade is limited. Saying your product can do something it can't is fundamentally dishonest. Admitting that your product has weaknesses as well as strengths is honesty in action.

Second, you need to have humility [again, via m-w.com]:

not proud or haughty : not arrogant or assertive

I'm not talking about being a doormat here. But when Scoble talked about the

"our product/idea/meme/service/etc is the best and the rest are crap" point of view

that's not humility that he's seeing. That's arrogance, and it's very off putting. The ability to admit your limitations as a person, and as a company are signs of humility.

Honesty and humility are the foundation for persuasion. After you have these two, you can add passion, excitement, and the willingness to go an extra mile. If you can do these things you'll persuade me. I'm willing to pay a bit more money to deal with individuals and companies that can learn to treat me this way. Not only will you persuade me to buy your product, but you'll make me a customer for life.

And of course, remember that you can persuade both for and against. Intuit persuaded me against their entire product line with the TurboTax DRM situation last year. They persuaded me not to buy TurboTax last year. And they lost a customer for life.