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Archive Archive for January, 2008

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Postscript to Debunking the myths of non-verbal communication

Posted by

Ian Brodie on January 24th, 2008.

My post on debunking the myths of non-verbal communication has been picked up by a lot of google searches for “percentage non-verbal communication”, “what % of communication is non-verbal” and the like.

For those who haven't read the original article, have a look and you'll find that the often quoted figure of 93% is just pure hokum (well, it's an accurate figure for one very specific example taken repeatedly way out of context).

For those keen to understand what the “real” figures are for the percentage of communication that's non-verbal – have a think about it for a second.

Really, the question is meaningless.

What does “percentage of communication” actually mean? Do you mean the percentage of the actual message that was heard and understood? Or do you mean the percentage of intended emotion that got through? The concept of a “percentage of communication” is so oversimplified that it ceases to have meaning.

In addition, there are so many different types of communication that it's impossible to give a single figure or average that has any meaning. Even if you could figure out a “percentage of communication that was non-verbal” it would be so radically different for example, for a lecture on mathematics to an impassioned speech on third-world poverty that to give an overall figure would be misleading.

So here's my answer anyway:

Q: What percentage of communication is non-verbal?

A: More than most people think, but less than trainers in non-verbal communication would have you believe.

Onward!

Ian

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High Prices really do influence Perceived Quality

Posted by

Ian Brodie on January 19th, 2008.

Wine There's an excellent article in this weeks Economist. It explores a study by Dr Antonio Rangel of the California Institute of Technology which found that if people are told a wine is expensive while they are drinking it, they really do think it tastes nicer than a cheap one.

It's not that they just say it tastes better, Dr Rangel and his colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging to show that the parts of the brain associated with pleasure were stimulated more by the wines thought to be higher priced (they were actually the same wines). And this happened with experienced wine tasters as well as everyday drinkers.

Of course, you could argue that we've known this for years – but it's good to see it backed up by hard science. And it's good to see that it's a real impact on perceived quality (which can therefore influence sales) rather than people just saying they think it's better (which won't have such an impact on sales).

This also ties in well with other approaches often taken to improve sales such as the use of testimonials and referrals. In each case, lacking hard, definitive information about the quality of a product, the customer uses secondary sources: the opinions of others or in this case, the price of the product itself.

Of course, this doesn't work in all situations. If one store prices an i-phone higher than another for example, customers won't assume it's higher quality. They have other, more concrete ways of assessing the (relative) quality of a product – in this case, they're identical because they're the same product.

This gives us useful clues as to where referrals, testimonials, and premium quality pricing can be most useful. If it's difficult for customers to objectively evaluate the product's value themselves, then they will search for other clues as to it's value. It's then when referrals and testimonials – and a premium pricing strategy – come into there own.

Conversely, if your product can be simply evaluated and accurately valued by a customer then you may be better off investing your time on other things than getting testimonials and references. And you may have little choice over how you price the product.

Onward!

Ian

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Selling

Debunking the myths of non-verbal communication

Posted by

Ian Brodie on January 9th, 2008.

93 Percent? 93% of communication is non-verbal. Everyone knows that.

I've lost track of the number of times I've heard this in sales training sessions or read it in books, articles and blogs. Sometimes the stats are qualified further, for example:

“One study at UCLA indicated that up to 93 percent of communication effectiveness is determined by nonverbal cues. Another study indicated that the impact of a performance was determined 7 percent by the words used, 38 percent by voice quality, and 55 percent by the nonverbal communication.”

The trouble is – it's not true.

Let's think about it for a minute – how can you possibly get 93% of the communication without the words? If you watch a foreign-language film, and watch the body language and listen to the vocal tones – can you really understand 93% of it? I certainly can't.

The truth is that the experiments at the source of this myth (carried out by researcher Albert Mehrabian in the 70's) were focused on some very specific areas of communication – namely the communication of feelings and attitudes – not communication in general.

As Mehrabian himself points out:

“Please note that this and other equations regarding relative importance of verbal and nonverbal messages were derived from experiments dealing with communications of feelings and attitudes (i.e., like-dislike). Unless a communicator is talking about their feelings or attitudes, these equations are not applicable”

In addition, the construction of the experiments was not an accurate reflection of real-world communication conditions. In one of the central experiments, for example, participants were read out single words (either positive words like “thanks”, neutral like “maybe” or negative like “don't”) in either positive, negative or neutral voices. In another, the words were combined with photographs of people looking positive, negative or neutral.

Participants had to judge whether the words were positive, negative or neutral based on the combined word/tone or word/picture combinations – which is where the statistics came from. It highlighted how the tone of voice or the facial expression often overrode the meaning of the word when it came to conveying a positive or negative feeling.

Of course, in the real world, we typically don't communicate in single words. And we're typically not just trying to communicate feelings either. But what has happened is that these important – but limited – findings from the experiments have been taken out of context, repeated, misunderstood, repeated, confused, etc. – up to the point where “93% of communication is non-verbal” has become accepted as reality.

So what does this mean for sales people?

Well, there's no doubting that non-verbal communication is important – but don't take the 93% rule too seriously. The words you use really are vitally important – they're the core of your communication.

Your non-verbals serve mainly to support what you're saying by conveying your feelings – your passion, your empathy, your truthfulness. How do you make sure your non-verbals provide the right support?

Well, critically – don't fake it. Despite what some trainers may try to convince you of, it really is almost impossible to try to “technique” your way through body-language. Non-verbal communication is so complex – too complex to try to act out or replicate – yet most people are really good at reading it, so they will pick up any fakery very quickly. Instead – make sure you really believe in what you are saying – and the correct non-verbal communication will follow naturally.

And of course, if you find yourself on a training course, or reading an article, and you read the phrase “93% of communication is non-verbal” – then think twice about the credibility of the trainer or author. They haven't done their homework properly on this – so what else have they skimped on?

Onward!

Ian

Postcript: Further thoughts on this myth

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Strategy

“Find Your Style” to Transform Your Business Development Success

Posted by

Ian Brodie on January 4th, 2008.

We all have our own unique style Finding a selling “style” congruent with your personality and your experience is a crucial determinant of your business development success.

One of the best pieces of advice I received early in my sales career was from a consulting industry veteran who urged me to “find my own style” in order to sell effectively. I've found the advice to be as relevant today as it was over a decade ago when I was just making the transition from managing large consulting projects to selling them.

One of the stages all professionals must go through in their careers is to learn to build relationships with senior client executives. To move from being a “do-er” to a trusted business advisor.

In my case I struggled early on to adapt to this. The role models and teachers I had were great – highly effective relationship builders. But I just couldn't seem to do the things they did. The techniques they used just didn't seem to work for me.

Luckily one of my mentors gave me the clue to finding my own style. “Look at those other guys.” he said, “You can't do what they do or say what they say because you're not them. You don't have the same experience or the same capabilities. You have to achieve the same outcomes in different ways. Ways that work for you”.

When we talked over what he meant, he highlighted two main areas:

Adapting the words you use to fit in with your natural language patterns
Making sure your personal positioning – your source of credibility – is based on your actual experience and capabilities.

When it comes to language, I see mistakes most often when it comes to scripts – for example for cold calls, or elevator speeches. These can be really helpful to focus communication and avoid the umms and ahhs that creep in to our speech when we're under pressure. But many of the scripts I've seen include language that I can't imagine anyone other than a character from a 19th century novel using.

For example: “In researching your firm prior to calling you today, I noticed that….”

Really, does anyone you know speak like this? Do you?

Exactly.

The idea is great – show you've done your homework. And most of the cold-call scripts people showcase contain great thoughts and are well structured and proven in the field.

Don't change those aspects. But please, please, before launching them on your own potential customers, adapt the language so it fits with your style.

I don't mean major changes. If you've got a good script don't change the structure or the key words – especially if you're new to sales. You run the risk of changing the very elements that make the script work.

But do make sure that you can use the words naturally – they fit with your way of speaking. If you wouldn't say the phrase “in researching your company prior to this call” in real life, then it won't sound natural. Try “When I was researching your company before this call”. You keep the structure and the critical words like “research” – but gain a naturalness which will shine through.

The other key area where your style is important – probably even more than with your language – is what I call your “source of credibility”.

One of the crucial criteria for effective sales is that the customer trusts that your product really does do what you say it does. When the product or service you sell is complex or intangible, customers rely very heavily on their impression of you yourself for that trust and credibility – since they can't see, touch or easily “test drive” the product itself.

You need to think through why your customer should trust your opinion and your advice – and position yourself in that way. In my case, I was trying to copy successful business developers whose source of credibility was their many years experience as senior executives in business, or the fact that they were part of the same “old boys network”.

But the strategies they adopted and the words they used didn't work for me – because I didn't have the same source of credibility. I couldn't talk to senior executives about the business challenges they faced as if I had faced the same ones running my company – because I hadn't.

But what I did have was many years as a consultant successfully helping clients overcome similar challenges. I was able to use this track record as my source of credibility – my invitation to the “top table conversation”. And from there I was able to build strong business level relationships with senior executives – relationships that led to major sales.

Similarly, any business developer needs to build on their own source of credibility. By thinking about what qualifies them to talk with authority about their product or service they should get an excellent start.