Kurt Mortensen
Mortensen earned a bachelor’s degree in Communications/Advertising from Brigham Young University in 1992 and an MBA in Marketing and Consumer Behavior from the University of Pittsburgh in 1993. Then, realizing he hadn’t learned the critical skill of persuasion in college, he set out to educate himself. He attended scores of negotiation and sales seminars, read thousands of studies on human behavior and social psychology, and listened to every audiotape or CD on persuasion-related topics he could find. He sat through innumerable sales presentations, consumer intercepts, and surveys. He sought out top professional persuaders to learn what makes them tick, and monitored their impact on audiences as well. He also scrutinized telemarketing scripts, witnessed closes, and endured offensive old-school tactics. After a decade of amassing research and assessing results, Mortensen founded the Persuasion Institute to share his findings. Since its inception, the Persuasion Institute has administered over 20,000 Persuasion IQ assessments and changed countless lives through the Persuasion IQ Mastery Course. In his latest book, PERSUASION IQ: The 10 Skills You Need to Get Exactly What You Want (AMACOM; June 12, 2008), Mortensen puts the secrets of persuasion within easy reach of anyone with the desire and drive to fulfill his or her greatest potential.
Mortensen is also the author of other programs: Perfect Persuasion, Power Negotiation, Persuasive Presentations and Millionaire Psychology, among other books.
He is currently a part-time instructor in the Department of Theatre and Media Arts at BYU where he teaches a course on public speaking.
