“It ain’t what you say, it’s the way that you say it”?
‘What we say matters little compared to how we say it, no matter what medium we use to convey the words. To communicate with influence it is important that we are able to use language that engages the hearts and minds of our listeners.’
Sue Knight (NLP at work, 2nd Edition) here explains the importance of influence in any kind of communication. When it comes to advertising, I’d have to disagree that the subject matter is of little consequence – after all, the message is why we open our mouths in the first place, and deserves to be carefully strategised and crafted. It’s obvious though that talking in a truly engaging way is an art form. In everyday life, charisma comes more naturally to some than others; in business we strive for it.
How do we get people to listen? The simple answer is to use the right language – not just clear and concise language, but the same language as our audience. I don’t mean English, Spanish or Italian, but fact that we need to aim for immediate understanding.
We all know what it’s like to venture into the doctor’s, smell that overpowering medicinal aroma and sit in a sticky leather seat – and then divulge all your ‘private information’ to help the Doctor to find out what on earth is wrong. He or she listens; the medical mind takes over and envisages the physiological processes, what reactions are taking place and what pharmacotherapy could be used. He or she needs to translate this into a way that I, the patient, can understand, relating to my personal knowledge of the body.
Having a Pharmacology degree, it’s not too challenging to express myself in medical language, so that doctors can usually tell me quite quickly what is wrong and what could be done. But if I keep very silent – perhaps like many other patients – I see a difference in how I am spoken to and what is said.
My point is that communication is a tricky thing and that’s why we invest heavily in order to get it right. We need skills and experience to explain both technically and promotionally how things work and who could benefit. That is the only way the consumer- doctor, patient etc. – can retrieve enough information to drive their decision on whether to buy or not to buy, to use or not to use, the product.
