You should have no trouble figuring out what he’s saying
One of the favorite statistics cited by communication “experts” is that only 7% of the meaning from spoken communications comes from the actual words spoken. As the story goes, 55% comes from facial expression, and 38% comes from body language, tone of voice, etc.
It has been around ever since Albert Mehrabian cited those statistics in a book entitled Silent Messages, published in 1971.
These experts use it to stress the importance of paying attention to non-verbal signals, whether you are the listener or the speaker. It’s a good statistic to cite because it’s appropriately surprising and it lends an air of science and precision.
The problem with the statistics cited is that it’s mostly false; in my own very unscientific estimate, it’s probably about, oh, let’s say 7% true.
If it were actually true, then when I was in Italy last week, I should have had no problem understanding 93% of what the taxi drivers told me (I didn’t). Plus, I could save a ton of money not buying headphones to watch airplane movies. If it were actually true, then listening to an educational podcast or talking on the phone garners you less than half of the message. And of course, you probably would not be able to understand this article unless I filled it with emoticons, which I refuse to do. It’s so patently untrue that when I read or hear that from someone, I automatically disqualify them as a credible source.[1]
But most people aren’t that simplistic. Some who cite the study come closer to the truth by qualifying it to the part of the message that contains feelings and attitudes. And that definitely makes sense in a lot of communications. If I ask someone how their meeting went, and they answer “great”, I can instantly tell whether they are sincere or sarcastic. In that situation, 0% of the message came from the actual meaning of the word; they could have answered me in Swahili and I would have understood.
But of course it gets more ambiguous as messages get longer, and it definitely does not apply when the speaker is deliberately trying not to show their true feelings. It also does not apply when someone is explaining factual or technical information. If I ask someone for directions, their facial expressions won’t make much difference in my understanding.
So, what did Mehrabian actually measure, and what did he say? Three female speakers were recorded saying one word, “maybe” in either a like, neutral or dislike tone of voice, and then 17 subjects listened to the recordings and were asked to infer what the attitude of the speaker was to a third party to whom they were presumably speaking. A follow-up study was then done with 30 subjects, using nine different words grouped according to the same three attitudes, and the results of both studies were combined to arrive at the statistics cited.
It’s fascinating to me that a study using 10 total words, 47 subjects, conducted in 1967, is still so influential today. As my friends on Sports Center would say, “C’Mon, Man!” (and you can imagine my tone of voice as I say it).
[1] Note: I do not mean to imply any disrespect to Mehrabian or his study, just to people who try to sound scientific without checking their facts.
Got any new ideas for sale?
I’ve had the privilege of working with many outstanding sales professionals in my years of training, but the ones who stand out are the sales intrapreneurs, those who go above and beyond consultative selling to create and deliver superior value to their customers and their own companies.
We admire the consultative salesperson. Regardless of whether you call it consultative selling or challenger selling or something similar, it’s seen as the pinnacle of sales professionalism and skill: the valuable elite who create value for their customers by going beyond what they want or think they need; who solve problems the customers don’t yet know they have; who bring new ideas and insights to improve their business.
But, as important as consultative selling is, it still carries an important limitation. It implies a one-way flow of information: the seller has superior insight and knowledge and imparts that to the buyer.
But the extensive sales literature seems to overlook the fact that customers may just possibly be as smart as we are, or might have a bit more insight into the problems than we give them credit for. They may actually know about needs that we’re not aware of.
Or sometimes during the creative exchange of ideas between buyer and seller a need emerges that the seller is not prepared to fill. Maybe they don’t offer the right solution, or maybe because it’s a newly discovered need the solution does not even exist.
What happens in that case? Does the salesperson wish the customer good luck with their problem and just walk away? That would be the prudent thing to do; why spend time chasing something that doesn’t exist?
But while it may be prudent in the short term, there are two problems with walking away. First, once a need is known somebody will eventually figure out how to fill it and steal your customer. Second, there is a lot of value that is being left on the table.
Enter the intrepreneurial salesperson, the rare individual who refuses to accept the risk and cost of walking away from the customer’s needs. The intrapreneurial salesperson turns his or her consultative skills internally, brings fresh and challenging insights to management, acquaints them with undiscovered problems or opportunities, develops internal champions, and agitates for change. The intrapreneurial salesperson thinks and creates.
They work just like an entrepreneur, the person who sees a need and finds a way to fill it by creating the right solution. Intrapreneurs do the same thing, but do it within their own company. Entrepreneurs work for themselves, but intrapreneurs work for their employers. They work internally to develop new products, services, processes, offerings, and capabilities, which remain the property of the company they work for.
Keep in mind that a sales intrapreneur is not just resourceful. There are salespeople who know how to get things done internally for their customers, such as pushing up delivery dates or securing sale engineering resources. That’s a great talent to have, but it does not make one an intrapreneur. Intrepreneurs create something new.
When they succeed, they may simply win a difficult deal, which is a good thing. Or, as in several cases I’ve seen, they may even create a whole new product category or market, which is a great thing.
Every intrepreneur, regardless of their function within a company, is a salesperson—they have to be, to get their idea accepted—but remarkably few salespeople are intrapreneurs. We’ll look at why that is in the next article in this series.
Let me tell you how great I am.
If I had seriously begun this article with that line, would you have kept reading?
Hearing people speak about their core competence is like listening to the boring high school friend who can only talk about how great he was back in the day. No one listens, no one cares, because it is totally irrelevant to their lives in any way.
So, you’re very good at something; so what?
People don’t care what you do; they care what you do for them. The only reason your company even exists to be in position to develop a core competence is to make a contribution to customers in some way. No one cares how good your mousetrap is if they don’t have mice, or if the one they have works well enough.
Remember the old saying that an expert is someone who learns more and more about less and less until finally he knows everything about nothing? Although not as extreme, that’s the risk you run into when you focus exclusively on your competences and not your contributions. Focusing on core competence keeps you looking internally, but needs exist externally.
You have to keep looking externally to stay you grounded in economic reality. For example, Sony still puts out excellent products, but it is a shell of its former self because it has not kept up with what consumers want and how they buy. Contributions keep you relevant, so that people want to hear what you do. If you can talk about that first, they will want to know more about your core competence.
So why not start with that—instead of talking about how great you are, why not talk about how great you can make your customer? Core competence focuses on how you do things, but the why always has to come first. The most important question, as Niraj Dawar reminds us in his book, Tilt: Shifting Your Strategy from Products to Customers
What do you contribute to your customer’s business or personal bottom line? What do you contribute to improve their personal experience? Do you make them more profitable, do you make them look good, protect them from harm or risk, make their lives easier?
When people ask you what you do, they are just following social conventions, but that’s not really what they want to know. The urge to be polite prevents them from asking what they really want to know: “What can you do for me?”
So, next time someone asks you what you do, save them the trouble and answer the question they wanted to ask.
I had to learn that message myself. For years, when people ask me what I do, I would answer that I am a corporate trainer. Now, I tell them that I make people more persuasive. It definitely makes for longer conversations!
