Implying or suggesting the other party has made a mistake will only force him to dig in his heels to defend his position and insure he doesn’t lose face. Asking someone to change her mind is the equivalent of pouring concrete around her feet: she will never change her position.

Instead of asking for a change of mind, you need to ask for reconsideration, based on new facts, facts that just happen to address the very points cited as being behind the no. Blame yourself for not having understood the situation in the first place. Say you made a terrible error in failing to include certain information. Explain that you forgot to provide all the necessary information.

Americans revere justice and the appeals process. We love the notion that last-minute revelations of new information can keep an injustice from being committed. It’s so ingrained that it has become a recurrent motif in American literature, television, and film. Most people will be happy to play a part in such an exculpatory adventure. If you come to someone as a supplicant, offering new information, he will almost certainly agree to listen and see if the new facts could change his reaction.

And if the decision was actually originally based on emotion, rather than facts, he will be under tremendous emotional pressure to now make an objective decision. Having been forced to give a factual reason for his emotional decision, and then having been offered new exculpatory facts, it will be very hard for him to say no again. Being provided with new facts also makes available a face-saving way of reversing one’s emotion-based decision. But even if he does say no, he will now be forced to provide yet another factual reason, which can, of course, be appealed with new facts. Repeated emotional nos cloaked in fake objections can only go on so long before the charade becomes apparent . . . and legally actionable.