It is all about the story.

Olivia Mitchell posted a blog on June 2 titled,  “Why the stickiest idea in presenting is just plain wrong.” In this post she stated the following:

The stickiest idea in presenting and public speaking is that the meaning of your message is communicated by:

• Your words 7%
• Your tone of voice 38%
• Your body language 55%.

These figures are based on a formula first proposed by Albert Mehrabian in 1967. Despite being wrong, this idea is still being propagated 42 years later.

I was exposed to these statistics early in my sales career.  As an sales engineer, I knew that the laws of thermodynamics were just that, and laws do not lie.  Naively at that time, I believed that if one’s argument was supported by physics, than how could any logical person disagree and buy from someone else?  Boy, did I get a rude awakening.

I witnessed customers buying my competitor’s product based on the most insane arguments and reasons.   I quickly learned that there were many other factors at play during the presentation process other than logic.  In fact, that little pendulum inside my head swung the other way and for a while, I actually believed that truth only accounted for 7% of the sales decision.  I actually believed that if someone could call a black duck, yellow and if it was said with enough passion, conviction, determination and confidence, then the client would believe that the duck was yellow.

Fortunately I decided to keep telling the truth. (Good choice!)  What I spent the rest of my career learning was how to tell the truth while making  it entertaining and memorable.

Olivia’s post is timely since I will be spending the next several weeks talking about content.  Yes, that so called 7% area that sadly, many believe has little impact on the results of a presentation.  I agree with Olivia that words are very important and have more power of influence than 7%.

What I think has been happening in the corporate setting is that the words have all been jammed into the PowerPoint slide and maybe that is why the 7% figure is sometimes believable.  Think about it, after being exposed and tortured by a presentation loaded with bullet points and text, the brain has a defense mechanism that shuts itself down.  If you look good and your “Blah, blah” sounds good then hey, you must be good!

I have followed Cliff Atkinson’s “Beyond Bullet Points” approach for a while now and I feel it has many advantages that I will point out starting next week.  If  you have not read Cliff’s book, I strongly suggest you do.  There is some terrific stuff for the presenter newbie.

See you next week.

Hang in there, this is going to be a journey.

M.J.

Tags: communication, Corporate Presentations, corporate story telling, Presentation Preparation, story telling