It can mean both to attempt to convince, and to succeed in convincing.

它既有试图说服之意也有成功说服之意。

youdao

Habit will render faults which we have been accustomed to regard from youth, beautiful. In vain will a stranger attempt to convince us that we are in error.

习惯会使我们从小看惯了的缺陷变成美好的事情，外地人欲使我们承认自己犯错只会枉费心思。

youdao

The President uses a statistic that every honest analyst knows is misleading to attempt to convince women that our workplace is inherently sexist and that women are all victims.

FORBES: The Gender Pay Gap Got Worse, Not Better, In 2012--And It's Great For Women

Several White House officials leaked the identity of Wilson's wife to reporters, in an attempt to convince them that Wilson was part of a CIA move to distance itself from the White House.

NPR: Lewis 'Scooter' Libby Found Guilty of Lying

In the end, we got us a fairly simple case of Tomsha-Miguel writing a phony-baloney letter from a make-believe congressional aide to herself, and then sending this fantasy correspondence to her unsuspecting client in a oddball attempt to convince him that she had resolved the IRS problem.

FORBES: Why You Should Not Forge Congressional Letterhead In An IRS Dispute