Feeling horny. Reflections on questions inspired by a Middle East taxi

by Peter Watts

Asking your audience a question can cue them back into your presentation, but if the audience aren’t expecting it, a silent collision can result.

I’ve just had a similar near-death experience here in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, only it wasn’t in front of an audience, it was in the back of a rush-hour cab where my driver was using his horn the way that a regular driver might use their turn-signal:

Beep Beep….. I might be turning right

Beep Beep….. I might be turning left

Beep Beep….. I’m not turning at all, but there’s a side-street coming up, so what the heck

Beep Beep….. There’s a large SUV hurtling straight towards me down this dusty side-street and I’m going to play chicken with it, just so long as the British guy in the back doesn’t attempt to leap from the cab

Beep Beep….. I’ve just put on the central locking, so take note British guy: Fear of imminent and messy death is no justification for trying to avoid the fare by jumping out of a moving vehicle

The guy spoke fluent horn and all the other road-users seemed to understand it. He had a Old Testament ability to keep on miraculously parting the traffic, and once I came up out of the airline brace position, I realized that there was a definite schema to all the tooting; a schema that can be applied to asking your audience a question.

He was using the horn to warn other vehicles that he was about to come zipping around them, straight between them, or in the case of that jeep in the side-street, straight at them!

He didn’t just spring the impending collision, he pre-announced it so they could get out of the way. It was fair warning that he was about to do something nuts!

In presentations, the same skill is useful whenever you are about to spring something nuts on your audience, such as a question.

There’s several reasons presenters put questions to the audience:

• It shows that you are confident
• It shows that you want a two-way communication
• It can build rapport
• It can win you thinking time
• It can be used to re-focus people’s attention onto a key point

It’s a valuable tool, but the downside is that many presenters have had the experience of asking an audience question only to be greeted by a puzzled silence.

The silence isn’t caused by the audience being unable to answer your question. It’s caused by the fact that they weren’t expecting a question.

Even the most attentive audience members don’t listen continuously. They tune in and out, and at any given moment, no matter how brilliant a speaker you are, a chunk of those folks are momentarily contemplating other things. When you unexpectedly hit them with a question, the people who had temporarily tuned-out will instinctively glance nervously at the folks to either side of them, and as that ripple of uncertainty spreads, the audience decide that silence is the best option.

From an early morning rush-hour perspective, my cabbie had this completely figured out. He was using the horn to cue other drivers into the fact that he was about to do something unexpected; like drive straight at them! They therefore needed to be paying attention and ready to react.

Your audience don’t expect a question to come straight at them. They too therefore need to be paying attention and ready to react.

Your Beep-Beep will take the form of a simple statement.

Pause for a moment, and then say: “I have a question for you…..”

Now pause again, and look at the audience. You will see people visibly sit forward as they tune into you. Every ear in the house becomes focussed. Ask your question now and you’re much more likely to get an answer.

Simply because everybody heard you.

When you’re about to do something crazy unexpected, like ask a question, use the horn.

For credibility, hit the tables

by Peter Watts

To persuasively get your presentation point across, there’s a lot to learn from studying the ethos of casinos.

Oxymoron there? Maybe in the classical sense of “ethos”, but in terms of presenting, when we mention “ethos” we’re talking about credibility. The more ethos you can build in the eyes of an audience, then the more logic or “logos” they will assign to you, and the more logos you have, the more inclined they are to accept your argument. No matter how flimsy it might be. More on that later!

It’s possible to have a watertight argument, but not persuade the audience. Casinos meanwhile have a completely illogical argument, and yet persuade their audience to part with bucket-loads of cash, and this little piece of presentation power is called the ethos-logos loop.

Looked at logically, we know that when we walk into a casino, the odds are against us. The best way to walk out a millionaire is to walk in a billionaire. We know this. And yet still people gamble at the casino. What workings are at play?

Gambling relies on a logical fallacy. Author Jay Heinrichs refers to this as the fallacy of hasty generalization.

“If this person won a million bucks, then you can to.”

Sure you can, but the odds are monumentally against it.

So as a presented proposition, casinos have really weak logic. They overcome it by manipulating that ethos-logos loop:

If an audience perceives you as being credible (ethos), they become more inclined to accept your logic (logos). And as they accept your logos, they become even more inclined to believe that you’re credible

Round and round it goes; an unfortunate little persuasion loop in the human brain that gambling establishments have known about since the first dice rolled across a table.

The logos the casino wants you to buy into is the idea that someone, somewhere, is winning big, and it could be you! It’s a weak argument, but the ethos-logos loop suggests we might buy into it, given a sufficient dose of ethos to power the loop.

How does the casino do this, and how can we do the same in presentations?

Clear Rules

Casinos come with rules, and they emphasize those rules. Croupiers for example work under rules about how each and every poker cards is dealt from the shoe.

Rules indicate ethos. There are policies, there are procedures, they are transparent, and they are the same for everyone. Even the classic sidewalk “Shell Game” scam starts out with an apparently thorough demonstration of the “rules” in order to indicate ethos.

In your presentation: Look to timing, agenda, and audience questions

The closest thing to a book of rules in a presentation are the agenda, the stated duration, and how you intend to take audience questions. Once you’ve put those rules on the table, it’s surprisingly important to stick to them. Deviation means you break your own rules, and when you break the rules, your ethos breaks too.

Pay-off stories

Walk into a casino and you’ll see flashing displays of how many millions of dollars have been won that day. Even individual machines boast their pay-out levels. This is another logical fallacy in play. It’s one-sided information. What you don’t see is how many thousands had to be paid into the machine in order to achieve the payout.

In your presentation: Share pay-off stories

By sharing examples of how your product, your service, or your message has helped others, you boost credibility through saying “this happened for these guys; it can happen for you”.

Cognitive Consonance

The one-sided information presented in all those flashing pay-out displays works because it matches the hopes and beliefs of the audience as they walk in. They want to see how much is being won. They’re not so interested in knowing how much is being lost!

Audiences are pre-inclined to think in certain directions, and they look for information that confirms their pre-held beliefs.

In your presentation: Head for the common ground

Even if you want to shake an audience up, it’s not a good idea to confront pre-set world views too early in a presentation. All you achieve is an uncomfortable dose of dissonance, and rather than doubt themselves, the audience will prefer to doubt YOU!

Start by stating common ground that you have with the audience. Where you already know that they buy into certain areas of your message, emphasize those areas.

Shared views emphasize ethos. Disagreements reduce it.

Cheer Leaders

Listen to all those cheers you hear from the gambling tables around you. Each cheer says that yet another member of Joe Public just won big. If they are winning, then it could be you. A logical fallacy again; we don’t know how many people lost, or if the person who just got the cheer only experienced a reprieve during their landslide to a massive loss. We just hear the cheer, and that’s all we need.

In your presentation: Boost-up the cheer leaders

The important thing about cheer-leaders is that they have to be independent. They have to be fellow members of Joe Public.

That’s why independent benchmarks, customer testimonials, awards, and press reviews are gold within sales presentations. Where you’ve got them, flaunt them. Just make sure they are relevant to your message.

Casinos have a lot to teach us about presenting. They’ve spent many, many years, perfecting their craft.

If careful manipulation of ethos boosts the wobbly logic behind gambling, then imagine what it can do when applied to the positive logic of your next presentation.

Analogy: emotionally powering your sales logic

by Peter Watts

Analogy is to a sales presentation what 3D surround sound is to a movie. By syphoning desired characteristics from one argument into another, you don’t just describe your case to an audience, you invite them to live in it.

The foremost tool of persuasive description, analogy can be used for logic, or for passion. At it’s simplest, it takes a known entity, the source, and transfers the characteristics of that source to a second entity, the target.

“Caffeine is to coffee as alcohol is to beer”

It follows the structure A is to B as C is to D. In a well chosen analogy, multiple descriptive goodies can be transferred all at once from source to target:

Point 1: Analogies siphon desirable characteristics from a known source to an unknown target

Example: If this laptop were a car, it would be a Cadillac

My favourite definition of analogy is “an inference that if two or more things agree with one another in some respects, they will probably agree in others”.

In the case of a laptop computer and a Cadillac, there could be any number of correspondences such as build-quality and performance for example. Once that connection is set-up between source and target, other attributes then continue to flow down the pipe: prestige, luxury, high-end components, smoothness.

It’s a little like siphoning water out of a barrel. Once you’ve got the flow going, it tends to keep on going, with attributes moving from source to target.

Point 2: Analogies deliver logic and emotion in the same punch

Example: Hitler’s Berlin Olympics of 1936 = Putin’s Sochi Olympics of 2014

Analogy can be as much a tool of pathos, or the appeal to emotion, as it can be a tool for logic.

In response to state approved oppression of gay Russians, a growing protest movement is calling for the 2014 Winter Olympics to be moved from Russia to either Canada or Norway. One of the foremost voices in that campaign is actor and writer Stephen Fry, and in this open letter to the British Government he uses analogy to make his case:

“I write in the earnest hope that all those with a love of sport and the Olympic spirit will consider the stain on the Five Rings that occurred when the 1936 Berlin Olympics proceeded under the exultant aegis of a tyrant who had passed into law, two years earlier, an act which singled out for special persecution a minority whose only crime was the accident of their birth. In his case he banned Jews from academic tenure or public office, he made sure that the police turned a blind eye to any beatings, thefts or humiliations afflicted on them, he burned and banned books written by them. He claimed they “polluted” the purity and tradition of what it was to be German, that they were a threat to the state, to the children and the future of the Reich. He blamed them simultaneously for the mutually exclusive crimes of Communism and for the controlling of international capital and banks. He blamed them for ruining the culture with their liberalism and difference. The Olympic movement at that time paid precisely no attention to this evil and proceeded with the notorious Berlin Olympiad, which provided a stage for a gleeful Führer and only increased his status at home and abroad. It gave him confidence. All historians are agreed on that. What he did with that confidence we all know.”

Fry’s use is emotional and multi-layered, with spin analogies between the two Olympic events, between persecuted Jews and persecuted gays, and most significantly, between an Olympic movement that turned a blind eye in 1936, and appears ready to do the same in 2014.

The piece also points out that for a analogy you don’t need to stick slavishly to the A is to B as C is to D formula. Fry gives us the “C is to D” part in his first paragraph, and then doesn’t hit us with the “A is to B” until half way through his second. Click this link to read the original letter and see how magnificently Fry uses analogy to make his case.

Point 3: Make sure your source will appeal to your audience

Example “If this service was a restaurant, it would be an all-you-can-eat buffet.”

In this final example, a Product Manager describes their new service by using the analogy of an all-you-can-eat buffet. Immediately anybody hearing the analogy will get not just the impression of a pick-and-mix array of offerings, but also a powerful impression of the type of customer that would be attracted to the service. The analogy extends outwards so that the hearer can visualise the service users, namely people who go to their local buffet, and like to load-up. It’s quite possible therefore that customers preferring to order a la carte would be put-off by the analogy.

This is the final point about analogies in sales presentations. Your source must be as suitable for the audience as it is for the target that you want to apply it to.

Related articles

• An Open Letter to David Cameron and the IOC (stephenfry.com)

Syncrisis turns attack into advantage

by Peter Watts

“One man’s meat”, as the old saying goes, “is another man’s poison” and by the same token, one brand’s insult can become another brand’s praise. It’s all down to how you frame the debate.

Take “ObamaCare” for example!

Please don’t hang-up! No matter which side of the political debate you find yourself sitting on. My purpose is neither to praise nor to condemn, but to explore how the term ObamaCare demonstrates that when under attack, your best line of defence can be to enthusiastically agree with your attacker.

At the outset of the health care debates the Republican Party seized an early initiative by re-branding President Obama’s Affordable Care Act as ObamaCare, a title as catchy as the title Affordable Care Act was bland.

The President’s team initially tried to ignore the tag of ObamaCare, but the more the White House tried to ignore it, the more dominant the phrase became within the media and the country. The White House’s own deny and defend strategy started to fuel the Republican offensive.

The Obama team had placed themselves into a classical rhetorical bind that many presenters can find themselves in, where an opponent has successfully defined the terms of the debate and managed to negatively define your position. If debate were chess, then this would be check, and there’s only one route out: a technique called syncrisis.

In his book “Thank you for arguing”, Jay Heinrichs describes syncrisis as being a form of verbal jujitsu that takes an opponent’s attack and turns it on it’s head by redefining the terms of the insult.

For example, one brand might decide to attack another as being boring. On the surface nobody likes to be thought of as boring, but if however we redefine  “boring” as meaning tried and tested, reliable, and thorough then actually maybe we rather like boring. Maybe boring becomes something to be proud of!

In this way a pejorative becomes co-opted as a compliment.

Realizing that the Republican’s had stolen the media agenda the White House used syncrisis to re-take possession of the term ObamaCare. The break-out came in a 2012 speech in Denver when President Obama stated:

“The Affordable Care Act…. also known as ObamaCare. I actually like the name ObamaCare…. because I do care.”

It was the first time he had used the term in a speech, and ever since, he and his team have been steadily working to not run-away from the term ObamaCare, but to embrace it.

For die-hards on either side of the debate, ObamaCare will always be devoutly good or appallingly bad. Those folks aren’t the people that the warring camps need to influence though; it’s amongst the undecided where battles and elections are won or lost and techniques like syncrisis, that reframe an argument,  can neatly turn your opponent’s attack into your own emphatic positive.

It takes a speaker who has their wits about them, but if you find yourself, your brand, or your message attacked, then the best form of defense can often be embrace.

Presentation Ethos, Mr Burns, a Dental Nurse, and Me

by Peter Watts

Credibility in public speaking is associated with the level of ethos that you command with your audience, customer, or patient.

Ethos is founded on reputation, it’s founded on the title before your name or the qualifications that trail after it. It’s bolstered by visible accoutrements such as your premises, your equipment, or your uniform. It’s your past track record and your client list. Ethos is that diploma you keep framed on the wall. When ethos is visible, ethos is easy. Once you’ve got the titles and the trappings, then you can ride on them. Right?

Wrong.

Most of all, ethos is similarity. It’s can people like you? People buy from people. Are you a likable human, or a cold diploma?

Allow me to illustrate, because I just met this phenomena in the flesh in my Dentist’s office. Or rather, I met her eyes in the flesh because every other bit of anatomy was covered in surgical-wear, and a gloved hand was sticking some cold whining torture tool into my gum-line. How’s that for all the accoutrements of ethos with none of the likability?

About ten minutes into treatment, I must have angled my jaw into the perfect position for oral penetration, because unexpectedly, from under my tormenter’s mask came a creepy but perfectly phrased “Excellent”. Joann the Hygienist had just delivered a grade A impression of the Simpsons character Mr Burns.

Treatment had to stop immediately. I was experiencing an overwhelming urge to respond with a Burns quote of my own:

“Release the hounds.”

Complete strangers till 15 minutes earlier, Joann and I had just established a level of intimacy born of our shared enjoyment in a TV character. Once that connection was established, all Joann had to do was slowly steeple and then drum her fingers together for me to become instant dental putty in her hands (fellow Burns fans will know what I mean!)

In this coincidence of connection, I was experiencing ethos at first-hand. While Joann had all the visible elements of ethos, the Burns connection suddenly gave us a shared cultural reference point. It gave us an aspect of similarity, and we are most readily inclined to favor and believe those who we regard as being similar to ourselves.

Doctors are held up as a prime example of ethos, and yet, how many Doctors find themselves getting sued?

As Malcolm Gladwell explored in his book “Blink”, there is an inverse correlation between the amount of time Doctors spend on social orientation with patients, and the likelihood of their later being sued for malpractice. Malpractice suits are the ultimate expression of the collapse of ethos. Ethos is collapsing through a lack of social connection.

Joann and I connecting over Mr Burns was maybe an extreme example, but the fundamental point remains. For complete credibility, connection is as important as  qualification.

Leap the first frontier: Connect early with your audience

by Peter Watts

To make an audience like and trust you early in a presentation is a holy grail. The new Star Trek movie shows us how.

How many times have you been to the movies and almost trampled as everybody rushes to be first out of the theatre the moment that the end credits roll? Few of us stick around to watch those final frames, hence the number of films where all the important names now appear at the beginning of the movie and not the end.

What we’re seeing is the behaviour of an audience who have just sat through the shared experience of a presentation (or film), and remained nicely isolated as solitary individuals. Nothing has touched them as a group to produce a shared action other than dash-for-the-exit. If this movie had been a sales presentation, then it’s outcome would have been polite handshakes and “don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

Star Trek produces a different outcome, and I saw that  that actively demonstrated as the end-credits rolled. As the original 1960’s Star Trek theme music pumped 1960’s sci-fi Americana out of the Dolby surround-sound, not a single audience member moved so much as an inch from their seat.

The music is re-mastered, but unmistakeable. Audience: spellbound. By the time the first person stood-up to leave, the popcorn cleanup-crew were standing at the front and brandishing brooms like cattle-prods.

Whether it’s a movie or a presentation, every audience has invisible bonds that connect them together as a group. Glancing around the Thursday night movie crowd, the common bond appeared to be age. We were almost all old enough to remember from childhood the original TV Star Trek, and that theme music was reaching out and holding us.

When you link to a common value, you build trust and rapport with an audience. That link then provides the vital connection that bonds you to that audience as a credible presenter.

The concept is called ethos, and amongst its various components such as knowledge, reputation, and integrity, is the aspect of similarity. How similar are you to your audience, and can you link with them by slipping in amongst the common connections that hold them together as a group.

Some similarities are visual and obvious, such as how the audience dress and behave amongst themselves. Are they formal or informal? Outgoing or reserved? The NLP technique of mirroring tells us to establish rapport by consciously reflecting those factors back at the audience, thus projecting an image and behaviour pattern that is reassuringly familiar.

Other links are more subtle. The questions you are looking to answer are:

• How does my message or product relate to the audience
• How do I relate to my audience
• How do my audience relate to each other

The more answers that you can identify, and the more that you can weave strands of similarity into your presentation, the more the audience will see you as being “one of us”.

Find ways as part of your planning process to speak with prospective audience members beforehand, or speak to others who have presented to this audience in the past. At the very least, Google for nuggets such as values, mission statements, or news articles that reflect the people that you’ll be presenting to.

It isn’t necessary to find common links that connect to all 100% of the audience in order for the magic to work. The teenage couple sitting immediately beside me, keys in hand and legs in athlete’s crouch starting-pose, clearly wanted to leave, but because the rest of the audience were transfixed, they too stayed in place. Clearly they were thinking that if everybody else was paying rapt attention, then they should too.

This is the beauty of ethos; connect with enough of the audience and even those outside the immediate chain will fall under its spell through the power of peer pressure.

If you can identify and merge with the common bonds that link a group together, then they will see you as being “one of us”. You will have met the audience where they’re at, and there can be no stronger place from which to boldly go, where no presenter has gone before.

Now why is my grammar-checker insisting that I have a split-infinitive?

 

Links:

For more inspiration on making an early connection to your audience, try these four ideas from Presentation Pro, Dr. Michelle Mazur

Opinion is a persuasive tool

Audiences, be they customers or colleagues, act when presentations are delivered with the fist-punch impact of belief. They remember presenters who deliver not just the facts, but the flavour of their opinions.

I’m pleased and delighted to be able to say, that as of this month I’m going to be writing for the business website ManagingAmericans.com. My first piece is live on their blog today. It’s all about opinion, and why it’s a good idea to not just have one, but to be out loud and proud about it when you want to persuade an audience.

I’ll be talking about why so many presenters are reluctant to stray from the facts-only format, and then examining three easy ways to use opinions within your next piece of persuasive speaking.

Please drop by the blog by clicking here. Come share your opinion!

Sales presentation outline

by Peter Watts

Here are eight ideas for creating a sales presentation outline that targets your sales message onto this specific customer, in this specific moment.

No two customers are alike, so time spent customizing your outline will infinitely raise your chances of success.

1. Link to the sales cycle

What stage of their buying cycle is the customer currently in?

Early in the sales cycle: Address broad issues

If the customer is early in their buying cycle, and you haven’t yet had the opportunity to clarify their exact needs, then address your presentation towards how your product meets challenges encountered by customers in that industry.

Mid-point in the sales cycle: Targeted problems and pay-offs

By now you will have had meetings with the customer and understand their specific issues. Tie your presentation into how you specifically address those issues.

Late in the sales cycle: Reassurance

When the presentation is the final stage before the customer makes their decision, it becomes more about reassurance that you are the best vendor to go with. Focus onto evidence of other successful implementations and after-sales support.

2. Know your key message

As part of your preparation, ask yourself what would be the one thing that you want every audience member to be saying as they leave the room. Write that message down, and ensure it is no longer than the length of a standard Twitter message; 140 characters or less.

Link every slide that you use and every phrase that you speak directly back to that key message.

One of my golden rules for presenting is “Never underestimate the ability of an audience to completely miss the point!”, so don’t be afraid to repeat your key message. The more ways you can link it into the presentation, the more likely it is that the audience will lock onto it and remember.

3. Link product features to key message: Three at most

Many standard sales presentation decks come with slides that list key product features. These slides can be deadly for any presenter who attempts to read their way through those lists.

Know in advance which specific features on the slide relate to the key points that you want the customer to appreciate, and address those points alone. Ideally address just two features. Address three as an absolute maximum.

4. Get ready for objections

What is the sales objection that you least want to encounter during your presentation?

Anticipate that objection and prepare an answer for it in advance. If you can deal with that objection, then you can deal with anything!

5. Ask for the business

You are there to sell, so lead by telling the customer exactly that! Use phrases such as “I would very much like to be able to welcome you as a customer” in order to demonstrate that you want their business and are prepared to work for it.

6. Prepare a clean hand-over

How will you guarantee that all who attend are left with easy ways to follow-up with you, or even better, with easy ways for you to follow-up with them?

Ideally, obtain attendee contact details and then follow-up by phone or e-mail to invite additional questions. Start a discussion!

7. Keep it short

Many sales presentations go on far too long. This means that customers tune-out and the key information you want to communicate becomes drowned in a morass of slides and extraneous details.

Nobody was ever shot for a having a presentation that was too short. Many though have lost the deal by having presentations that were too long. Be brutal in editing your presentation to bring it down to the shortest time possible.

8. Stand-out by customizing

The common factor amongst sales presentations that fail to win the business is that they are all standard presentations; a standard company slide deck delivered rote because the sales person didn’t care enough to customize for the customer.

This presentation is possibly the first time that this prospective customer has encountered the service-levels of your company, and in this presentation moment, you are those service levels.

Every moment that you spend customizing your presentation outline to reflect that customer, their industry, and their needs, is time well spent. It is time that shows you care. It is time that shows the customer they can trust you. It is time that shows you want their business.

Related articles

• Sales presentation strategy (speak2all.wordpress.com)
• Sales presentations: Understatement makes a great big statement (speak2all.wordpress.com)
• Sales arguments that build presentations (speak2all.wordpress.com)
• Sales pitch strategy (speak2all.wordpress.com)
• Top Five Sales Presentation Mistakes (heavyhittersales.typepad.com)

Auxesis and Meiosis. Because size matters

Presentation word choice impacts how customers perceive scale.

by Peter Watts

Will your customer be satisfied with the solution, happy with the solution, or delighted with the solution?

Is the cost involved for the project significant, reasonable, or modest?

We are creatures of size. Whenever something is described, our minds apply a level of scale, from small to large and onwards to gargantuan.

Effective sales presenters take control of that sizing process through their choice of words.

It’s all about your adjectives; the descriptive flavours in your speech.

Let’s take an example. Having had an accident slicing onions for the previous evening’s meal, you walk into the office with a dressing on your hand. A colleague asks you what happened. How do you describe the onion-slicing accident: Was it a nick? Was it a cut? Or was it a gash?

If you chose to use the word “nick” then you are making your injury appear smaller. The technical terms is meiosis. You are using smaller, less punchy words in order to intentionally downplay the significance. Your colleague smiles at you, and walks away.

If you choose the word “gash” however, then you are using the technique of auxesis. Dramatic adjectives make things appear bigger. Your colleague looks horrified and enquires about stitches and hospital visits.

Same injury, different descriptive terms, different audience reaction.

This process of scaling goes on in every human interaction. When presenting, there will be times that you consciously want to influence the direction of that scaling, towards either smaller or larger.

Next time you plan a sales presentation, take a moment to experiment with one or two new adjectives. When you want to make something stand-out in lights, look for a bigger, bolder adjective to do it with. When you want something to recede and appear smaller, use a quieter and more mouse-like adjective.

If you’re stuck for ideas, do a Google search for “adjectives”. There are endless lists out there on the web. Here’s two that I found:

Keep and Share

A good basic list of adjectives that has been divided into topics.

Daily Writing Tips

This website for writers has flashier options, including the fabulous “crapulous” (which contrary to my first instinct appears to mean “immoderate in appetite”). Be a little careful with some of the more unusual adjectives.

You want the audience seamlessly scaling, not reaching for a dictionary.

Related articles

• Dressing Up Your Vocabulary with Adjectives (english.answers.com)

Sales arguments that build presentations

by Peter Watts

At the core of a sales presentation are logical arguments that lay out why your product benefits the customer.

Those sales arguments need the force of mathematical logic.

1 + 2 = 3

The best way that I can demonstrate the two routes to achieving this sort of math-magic is by sharing with you the slogan from a TV commercial that I often hear when I’m traveling in the Middle East. It’s for a tax planning company. Their sales argument is:

“Successful SME’s value our tax advice,

If you’re a successful SME

You’ll want our tax advice today”

Approach #1: The syllogism

That argument above is in a structure called a syllogism. It works in three parts:

• Premise 1: “Successful SME’s value our tax advice.”
• Premise 2: “You’re a successful SME”
• therefore Conclusion 3: “You’ll want our tax advice.”

1 + 2 = 3

Whenever I hear that commercial, I want to vault across my hotel room to change the channel. It grates on my every mental synapse. Why? Because the argument is so damned obvious. The sales message is being laid-on with a trowel and I resent being treated like a child.

That’s the problem with syllogisms. They attempt to do all the thinking for the customer, and in the process treat them as idiots.

Approach #2: The enthymeme

An enthymeme is a syllogism with a bit chopped-off. Rather than pureeing your sales argument in the liquidizer and then spoon-feeding it to the audience as if they were enfeebled, an enthymeme asks the audience to do a little of the chewing for themselves. Result: better digestion.

Let’s go back to the math:

1 + 2 = 3

Let’s say that entire sum represents a syllogism. It’s all laid out for you on the page.

Now I’m going to take away a number:

1 + ? = 3

Within moments you work out that ? = 2

That’s an enthymeme. The audience is invited to deduce the missing piece of the argument, and therefore to feel just that little bit clever about themselves!

How to apply this to sales-world?

Your first base, is to start with a full-scale syllogism. Imagine that your company is renowned for environmental business practice. You win prizes for it. The syllogism for the customer presentation might look a little like this:

Premise 1: “Responsible organizations see protecting the environment as important”

Premise 2: “You are a responsible organisation”

Conclusion 3: “Protecting the environment will be important to you.”

So far, so cheesy. Well, it’s a syllogism! 1 + 2 = 3

Now let’s create a sales presentation enthymeme by chopping out sections:

Enthymeme A: ? + 2 = 3

“As a responsible organization, protecting the environment will be important to you.”

Audience fills in the missing premise and concludes: “Responsible organizations seek to protect the environment”

Enthymeme B: 1 + ? = 3

“All responsible organisations seek to protect the environment. Protecting the environment will be important to you.”

Audience fills in the missing premise and flatteringly concludes: “We are a responsible organization.”

These little mini-structures might be sounding vaguely familiar to you. If they are then it’s because you’re recognizing the pattern from some of the better examples of television advertising. Advertisers who want to sell products recognize that by coding sales arguments as enthymemes, they are more likely to win over the audience.

That same coding will work for you. Sales presentation arguments are at their most persuasive when we invite the customer to be involved.