Company making cuts – using gentle persuasion (7)
I believe the answer is:
coaxing
'persuasion' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'company making cuts' is the wordplay.
'company' becomes 'co' (abbreviation).
'making cuts' becomes 'axing' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'co'+'axing'='COAXING'
'aeur using gentle' is the link.
I am not very happy about this link. Some or all of it may be part of another bit of the clue.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Another definition for coaxing that I've seen is " Inveigling, cajoling".)