Much of what we know today about selling we learned from this man.
It’s amazing how much sales wisdom must be relearned every day.[1]
I’ve just finished reading Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy, which is a delightful book that contains lessons in many areas besides advertising. In this article, I want to focus on just one paragraph which even today constantly bears repeating:
“Dr. Gallup is a fountain of useful information on how people react to different kinds of commercials. He tells us that commercials which start by setting up a problem, then wheel up your product to solve the problem, then prove the solution by demonstration, sell four times as many people as commercials which merely preach about the product.”
Let’s deconstruct that second sentence and apply it to sales calls.
Start by setting up a problem. This is the essence of solution selling, which is too often forgotten. Too many people talk about “solutions” without once referring to problems. Beginning with problems shows the customer you care, and that you took the time to research and understand their situation. “Setting up” a problem also includes getting the customer to articulate the problem themselves, and elaborate on your initial understanding. The next step is to make sure you quantify in some way the cost or impact of the problem to the customer. We all have problems but only finite resources and attention to devote to them, so the itch has to be urgent before someone will scratch it. If you omit this step and jump right to the solution, they won’t appreciate the full value.
Wheel up your product to solve the problem. In a sixty second commercial, you have to go right into explanation mode, but this only allows you to explain the one benefit. In a sales call, you have the time to get the customer involved in wheeling up your product by having them articulate the benefits. Also, with more complex solutions, one size does not fit all, so to the extent you can tailor your presentation to their unique needs expressed in the problem phase, the better off you are.
Prove the solution by demonstration. The key mistake often made here is that demonstrations go into too much detail, because the salesperson is in love with everything the product can do. Your job here is only to prove the solution to the customer’s pressing problem. It’s too easy to talk past the close, bore the customer or open up potential objections when you go off into unnecessary tangents.
Sell four times as many people. I love it when sales practices are backed up by research! How rare is that?
[1] In his book, Ogilvy says “Keep your opening paragraph to a maximum of eleven words.”
Any commodity that is rare and useful it is bound to be very valuable. That is why in today’s frenetic world, attention is the new literacy.[1] It’s good to pay attention, but those who have the capacity and skill to invest their attention most productively will have a huge advantage in business, relationships, and life in general.
We all know how difficult it is to maintain focus for very long on one particular topic. In this age of continuous and ubiquitous connection, there are so many stimuli competing for our limited attention that very few of us feel like our attention fully belongs to us anymore.
Linda Stone coined the term, continuous partial attention, to describe our tendency to constantly be on alert for anything that might be more pressing than what we are doing right now. You experience it when you talk to someone. Although you know you should focus entirely on the person across from you, you are classically conditioned to respond to the chirp of your phone which announces an incoming message. At least the pigeons in Skinner’s boxes got a worthwhile reward for their mindless actions—yours is probably spam, but you’re powerless to resist anyway.
You see it when you try to sit down at your desk and focus on that project you’ve been putting off (such as this article). You know that you don’t hit your creative zone until about thirty minutes into it, but you just can’t resist stealing a glance at the screen, or getting up to walk around the house for a few minutes. When you give in to the interruption, it takes several minutes to get back up to cruising speed.
How much does it matter? I believe it matters a lot. Control of your attention is a hugely critical factor in the quality of your life and the arc of your success for the simple reason that your attention is the gateway through which all inputs that affect you enter your mind. Even when the inputs have entered within your mind, attention dictates how your mind uses them.
Where and how you invest your attention make you who you are. In short, you are the sum of what you invest your attention in. By improving your skill at investing attention, you will learn more, get more done, and improve your relationships.
There is no scientific proof of the old myth that we use less than 10% of our brains, but I believe that myth is still useful as a metaphor. I’d like to rephrase it by saying that we use less than 10% of our attention productively.[2] Most of the time our minds run on autopilot, passively taking in what’s around us and having a lot of cycle time available for unstructured musing and ruminating. It may be a song lyric playing over and over, or daydreaming, or worrying about whether you’re going to get that next deal. Very rarely are we thinking actively, deeply and constructively about an issue, so how can we even remotely approach our best work?
Attention is the foundation of all our other mental skills. For example, a lot of people complain that their memory is not that good, but I suspect that it’s more due to inattention than to memory. For example, I decided several years ago that I would master the art of quickly memorizing people’s names when they come into my classes. I pride myself on being able to take in and retain (for the duration of the class only, I admit) up to about 30 names. When people ask me how I do it, I tell them that it is almost entirely about listening to them when they tell me their name. At that moment, their name is the most important thing to me—not how I come across to them or what I want to say next—just their name.
Sustained attention is also critical to reflection and creativity. You have to spend quality time with a problem or a topic if you want to get that flash of insight that enables you to see the answer. You don’t have to be thinking about it all the time; in fact, those flashes usually come when you’re not thinking consciously about it. But you do have to spend time thinking about it to plant the seeds that will bear the fruit of insight.
Being in the moment is the only way to squeeze every ounce of juice out of life. If you’re here but not here, you’re not getting the full benefit of either where you are physically or where you are in your thoughts.
Your attention also determines the quality of your personal relationships. It is a cheap yet priceless gift that you can give to others. I know I need to be reminded of that on occasion. My wife once said to me: “I can’t believe you actually teach a module on listening,” to which I replied, “I try not to bring my work home with me.”
Think back to the last time someone gave you their deep and undivided attention for more than a few minutes. It felt pretty good, didn’t it? How often have you given the same to someone else? Or reflect on the opposite situation: you meet someone at a function and they don’t even look you in the eye when they shake your hand because they’re too busy scanning the room to see if there is anyone more important they should be talking to. How does that feel?
The good news to all this is that attention is a skill that can be improved with technique and practice, and that will be the subject of the next article.
[1] I love this phrase, and as near as I can tell, it was coined by Howard Rheingold.
[2] This figure of 10% is only a personal estimate; I don’t know of any research that has calculated the true percentage.
Today marks exactly one year since I launched Practical Eloquence blog, and I would like to take this opportunity to summarize and stress four key themes that weave throughout every one of the last 97 articles. They apply equally to presentations, to selling, and to any personal communication in which your goal is to persuade or influence others.
Outside-in thinking
It’s not about you—it’s about your audience or your listener. Audience focused communicators know that the quality of the reception is more important than the elegance of the transmission. They use outside-in thinking, which looks at the persuasion process from the point of view of the other person first. What do they know and don’t know? What are their needs? Why would they say yes or no to your idea? How do they like to receive information?
Persuasion is not about getting people to see things your way; it’s about getting them to see your point in their way. People do things for their reasons, not yours. You have to begin with what the audience knows and believes. Any presentation, sale or other persuasive effort aims to take the other person from Point A, where they are now, to Point B, where you want them to end up. A bridge builder needs to know both the start and end points.
My daughter just delivered a presentation to the PR firm where she interned this summer, and it went off very well. Yet when she rehearsed it the night before for her roommate and her boyfriend (who both interned for a major consulting firm), they told her she needed to talk more about how she “added value” and made process “more efficient”. That was excellent advice—if she were presenting to their consulting firm. It was terrible advice for the audience she spoke to.
Focusing on the audience shows you care about them, and they will reciprocate that regard. Do you want people to listen to you and be interested in what you have to say? Then begin by listening to them and being interested in what they have to say. Do you want to influence them? Be open to being influenced yourself.
There are three sure fire ways to test how audience-focused your approach is:
Apply the “SO WHAT” test to everything you say. If you’re talking about your product, you can bet the customer is thinking, “so what?”
Count how many times you say “I” vs. “you”.
Pay attention to the talk/listen ratio in your conversations.
Clarity of thought:
Effective communication begins with clear thinking. Presenters spend far too much time worrying about their fonts and decorations, or their delivery skills, when most of the battle is won in terms of clear thinking. In the end, content is still king.
Dynamic and charismatic can take you far, but only for so long. As Lincoln said, you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. Even the World’s Greatest Orator is learning that he can’t just trot out a speech and automatically work his magic on the American people when they don’t see value in his ideas. Here’s what a previous president said about it:
“And in all of that time I won a nickname, “The Great Communicator.” But I never thought it was my style or the words I used that made a difference: it was the content. I wasn’t a great communicator, but I communicated great things…”[1]
In our era of information overload, clear thinking is more critical than ever. Your listeners will appreciate the value you bring by cutting through the clutter and distilling masses of data and information into nuggets of knowledge that make sense and affect them personally.
Persuasion is a process, and often a compelling presentation makes an impact on an audience—yet the good feeling may have worn off by the following week when they actually make the decision. I’m definitely not against emotional appeals, but I do think they are much more effective when wrapped around a hard core of logic and fact. Emotions wear off, but facts are stubborn things.[2]
Clear thinking begins with:
Figuring out your theme—write the headline first.
Making sure the content is sound before you worry about your stories, visuals, and metaphors.
Basing your case on data rather than opinion where possible, and being candid about your weaknesses.
Preparation:
Audience focus and clear thinking don’t come easily; they take work and preparation. As my first blog post pointed out, presentations are leadership moments, so you owe it to yourself and to your audience to give it your best.
Confidence of expression is a key asset, and preparation is the best guarantor of confidence. It’s also essential to creativity: if you prepare with plenty of time you can have a day or two to let things marinate in your mind and spark new ideas.
Rehearsal also helps to clarify your thinking, because what sounds good inside your head always sounds different when you say it aloud. Even better, try them on someone else. For example, you might find something that is clear to you is confusing to your listeners because they lack a key piece of knowledge that you take for granted.
Being genuine:
Regardless of all the audience focus, clear thinking and preparation you do, you still have to execute effectively when you talk to your audience, whether it is a large group or a single person. I’ve seen too many presenters and salespeople blow it by forgetting that it’s still a conversation in which one human being connects with another. It has to be a genuine conversation.
With the exception of speeches to large audiences, there should in effect be no difference between a presentation, a sales call, and a conversation. The president of the bank where I used to work was a charismatic, confident speaker in small groups, but sounded like an incompetent fool when the group size reached double digits. You can see a similar phenomenon in sales calls where salespeople either sound like they’re mechanically reading from a script or they fire numerous questions at their prospects but don’t take the time to truly listen to the answers.
During presentations, it’s easy for your audience to be passive—like watching television. Make it a conversation with each individual in the room and, they won’t have a choice; they have to get involved because it’s a dialogue, and it’s personal.[3]
Be genuine. Turn abstractions into concrete realities.
Plain speaking. Talk to your listeners as you would talk to your best friend over a cup of coffee.
Listen. Even when you’re presenting, you should be “listening” by paying attention to the audience’s response—are they buying what you’re saying, or are they distracted or disagreeing?
Keep these four pillars as a guide, and you will become known as caring, smart, thorough, and genuine. Who can ask for more than that?
[1] Ronald Reagan, Farewell Address, January 11, 1989.
[2] John Adams first said that. Wow, I just realized that I alluded to four presidents in that section! I guess they have to know something about persuasion.
[3] It’s also one of the best antidotes to stage fright.
This is not a beginner’s book about how to craft a presentation—readers who can deliver a solid, workmanlike presentation but who want to add more impact and pizzazz will get the most benefit from it. If you want more on logos, including forms of evidence and logical structures, I would recommend Advanced Presentations by Design, by Andrew Abela.
But this is not a weakness of the book, just a difference in focus. Duarte does not discount the importance of the analytical appeal, but as she says: “Many pages in this book have been devoted to creating emotional appeal—not because it’s more important but because it’s underused or nonexistent and should be incorporated.” (p. 180)
Paradoxically, while the book focuses on the elements that are required to resonate emotionally with the audience, many of her points are backed up with solid research. For example, her treatment of the importance of contrast is supported by a scholarly paper which analyzed the applause generated in 476 political speeches, and her discussion about the over-wordiness of slides draws on the solid research of Richard Mayer.[1]
As many other presentation books do, Resonate emphasizes the importance and power of story, but it does so in greater and more instructive detail. Using story templates from myths and movies, you learn the proper form and structure of a story, so you can apply conscious competence to the creation of your presentations.
As is fitting for a book that is about presenting visual stories, Resonate uses a tool called sparklines, which are graphical analyses of the structure and delivery of presentations, so that you can see what works, when and why in a presentation. You can see how well it works by watching a wonderful TED talk given by conductor Benjamin Zander while following the sparkline on pages 50-51.
I especially liked the idea of using contrast to move the presentation along and hold the audience’s interest. In your content, contrast is used to compare what is to what could be, which is the essence of persuasion. Contrast is also used to offset and balance the appropriate application of logic and emotion. Finally, contrast in delivery keeps things fresh and introduces enough variety to fit within today’s shorter attention spans.
Many of the photos and graphic illustrations are striking and very effective. In fact, the only thing wrong with Resonate is that I could not bring myself to highlight or write in it as I do with most of my books. The book is just too beautifully put together to deface it, with excellent design and attention-grabbing photos.
There is much more to Resonate than this brief review has covered. I strongly recommend it to anyone who would like to make their presentations more engaging, powerful and memorable.
[1] His book, by the way, is well-worth reading if you would like to understand the cognitive impact of slides and give scientific justification for why you should make your slides cleaner and less wordy. (Multimedia Learning, by Richard E. Mayer.)
