Steve Jobs was unquestionably one of the true business visionaries of the modern age. He was the creative genius who cofounded Apple—and spearheaded the development of the mouse-controlled personal computer, the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, and the iTunes music store. Known as the “father of the digital revolution,” Jobs transformed the way people interact with technology on the most basic level. The powerful phone/computer/camera/jukebox you hold in your hand today is a direct result of his tireless work in product design and development and consumer marketing.1
For all of the work he did harnessing the design and technological advancements in Apple’s products, Jobs’s ultimate genius was in communicating exactly why a breakthrough product like the iPhone was something everyone both wanted and needed. He was able to get across both the technological superiority and the basic simplicity of Apple’s devices in a way that avoided hyperbolic tech-speak. He explained how products like the iPod and iPhone would transform the average person’s life in truly seamless ways.
Instead of intimidating customers with the prospect of having to learn how to use a complicated piece of hardware, Jobs communicated with them in a fundamentally different way. He explained—in language anybody could understand—how Apple’s products could solve problems big and small. He introduced reasons to own an iPhone that hadn’t even occurred to most of the people who ended up buying them.
Jobs did it in his highly anticipated annual presentations at Apple’s new product launches. He walked around the stage casually in front of simple images on a large screen, speaking seemingly extemporaneously for forty-five minutes about the new products and how they fit into a user’s life. He was famous for taking viewers down a simple path—introducing a big problem that hadn’t been solved by the market, and then introducing the simple, elegant, impeccably designed solution.
But it wasn’t a matter of a highly charismatic, natural speaker getting up and wowing the crowd in an off-the-cuff way, the way Bill Clinton notably does. Jobs was intensely private—and famously prickly in meetings with his team. He wasn’t afraid to confront those who didn’t live up to his standard. The natural, flowing presentations that launched so many iconic products were actually highly scripted, and they were the result of practice and repetition. The main objective was to make consumers wonder how they had ever lived without the latest iPhone or iPad.
To say his efforts were successful would be one of the biggest understatements of all time. When Jobs returned to Apple as CEO in 1996, the company was losing money and contemplating bankruptcy. In 2014, more than 200 million people were using iPhones, and Apple had a profit of $40 billion on sales of $182 billion—making it the most profitable publicly traded company in the world.
As Jobs would say about his exhaustive design sessions for the iPhone—preparation and communication makes the difference.
Jobs and Coach Wooden came from very different worlds, but on that point they would have agreed wholeheartedly. After Coach Wooden retired from UCLA in 1975, he spent most of his time close to his condo in Encino, California, attending games as a spectator and giving talks to different groups around Los Angeles. In 1989, Tom arranged for Coach Wooden to speak at the Edward Jones General Partners’ Meeting. Before Coach’s speech, the two got together, and they ended up talking basketball, as they often did. During the conversation about Wooden’s famous high-post offense, Tom wanted to show that he could still handle the X’s and O’s like he did back in his own coaching days.
“I haven’t coached for seven years, but I can still draw up that play,” Tom said.
Coach Wooden nodded, and said he’d like to see it. Tom took a piece of paper from his briefcase and diagrammed the high-post offense. When he was done, Coach Wooden took the paper and looked it over carefully.
“How long did you say you had been out of coaching?” he asked.
“More than seven years,” Tom said.
Wooden complimented him on his work, but then slid the paper back across the table. “That’s really pretty good, but you left out one of the most important points,” he said.
Tom was floored. He looked at the paper again and retraced his steps. He was convinced he had diagrammed all of the necessary movements. After a minute or two of not seeing the missing component, Tom slid the paper and pen back to Coach Wooden.
“You left out a very important detail. When the high post catches the ball, the guard must take two steps toward the goal to set up the play,” said Wooden, adding the mark to the paper. “Tom, little details make big differences.”
In that moment, it became even clearer to Tom how dynasties are created—by communicating the details.
Fifteen years after he had coached his last game, Wooden was still emphasizing the subtle detail of the guard’s two-step cut—something that even the dozens of college and professional teams running his influential offense to this day haven’t grasped.
Watch virtually any NCAA game today, and you’ll see Wooden’s high-post offense being run, but you won’t see the guard make that critical movement to sell it to the defense.
To consistently win at the highest level, you have to be able to communicate effectively, with details.
What does the high-post offense have to do with communication skills?
Everything.
Basketball plays are like a language. They comprise a common set of information the people in a group use to communicate with each other. When everybody knows the play, they can move in concert. The group of five playing together can do much more than five individuals can working alone.
Likewise, you can have the best, most useful information in the world, but if you can’t share it effectively, what good is it? Apple’s products could have been groundbreaking, but the company’s fight in the marketplace would have been much harder if Jobs hadn’t done such a masterful job of communicating them for the consumer at launch. It doesn’t matter what kind of business you’re in—sales, technology, administrative, creative—the ability to communicate with the people around you is a critical skill.
If you aren’t a natural speaker or communicator, you’ve probably watched some of the speeches people like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Winston Churchill were able to give and thought to yourself, They’re doing something I couldn’t possibly ever learn. In this, you are mistaken. You might not be able to copy their natural charisma, but you can certainly develop many of the same skills.
Studies have repeatedly shown that a vast majority of the impact from a presentation comes from the style of delivery—not just the words themselves. If you can learn to project self-confidence, you can become a terrific speaker. You don’t have to be “supernatural” to connect with a client or move a team of five (or fifty, or five hundred) into action. You merely need to learn how to be confident when you communicate. And believe it or not, it is actually much easier than you might think.
All you need to do is understand some communication basics. Most people who struggle to talk to a group or give a basic presentation have a very basic problem: they are terrified. And being terrified keeps them from being prepared. For that matter, not being prepared can make giving a presentation much scarier than it should have been. The fear of failure can then become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s a vicious cycle, with fear, lack of preparation, and low confidence intensifying one another.
Whether you’re talking to a group of a thousand or making your pitch to an audience of a single person, the idea of speaking in front of people can simply be nerve-wracking. Even if you have a handle on what you want to get across, the thought of potentially making a mistake or otherwise looking foolish can be almost paralyzing. But turning this vicious cycle around is essential. As we’ve said before, the things you focus on expand—both good and bad. So, if you focus on how frightened you are to get up in front of people, or you think about all the mistakes you could conceivably make, what do you think will happen to those thoughts and concerns?
In this chapter, we will show you how to be prepared—which then will cause you to feel prepared and ready for what you’re going to face. The good news is that with these techniques, you can turn the vicious cycle into a virtuous one: you can banish the fears with preparation and practice, and all that preparation and practice will lead to success and greater confidence. And the same rules work whether you are doing a large group presentation or planning a one-on-one meeting.
Preparation comes in three easy steps:
1. Write it.
2. Slow it.
3. Triangle it.
What does that mean? We’ll explain.
STEP 1. WRITE IT
When Tom joined American Funds—the third largest mutual fund management organization in the world—in 1999, he was required to do what all other employees delivering the American Funds message must do—attend a two-day speech class, where they gave dozens of presentations. Every presentation was videotaped and analyzed by communications consultants and other experts.
It was a grueling exercise, and the way most tried to “beat” the test was to use extremely detailed notes. They tried to fill every two-minute talk with as much information as possible. They figured, There must be SOMETHING in there somebody could use. I’ll just give it all to them.
It’s totally natural to not want to come off as if you don’t know your subject—especially in a pressure situation. So the totally natural response is to talk more and talk faster. Which is exactly wrong. Unfortunately, the more you say, the less believable you often become.
Unfortunately, the more you say, the less believable you often become.
Even people in jobs that require tons of talking and presentations usually don’t get this part right. Mutual fund companies have representatives called “wholesalers” whose job it is to present the different fund products to investment advisors and explain the benefits and features of the particular funds. A high-level advisor can be managing tens of millions of dollars for clients, and he or she usually prefers to work within a set range of funds he or she knows extremely well.
So there’s a lot of competition for that valuable real estate among the wholesalers. But when you watch some wholesalers having a conversation with an advisor, you’d think the wholesaler was getting paid by the word. They speak to clients every day, yet they continue to blanket each client with a machine-gun volley of words. Unfortunately, the more you say, the harder you are to understand—the harder you are to follow. Think about it: the longer you speak, the more you must begin commenting on the less important points of your presentation. Unfortunately, people have a tendency to remember what you say last.
It’s worth repeating—the more you say, the less believable you often become.
We’ve hit on the concept of channel capacity enough times by now that you should know what we’re going to say next: there’s a limit to what people can process in one sitting, and a limit to what they can comprehend within a string of sentences.
The best presenters are literally ruthless in organizing what they will say. They identify only the most important information that needs to be communicated, and they get rid of everything else. How does that work? They write a script. It’s only after you get your thoughts organized to the point where you can go through and delete the less important parts that you’ll start to feel ready to communicate.
It can certainly feel overwhelming to sit down and script out an entire presentation. But it’s so worth it. By scripting your presentation, you are preparing, and by preparing, you will be banishing the fears you have about presenting. By preparing your message, you are also ensuring that you are saying only the most pertinent things—the things you want the client to really focus on and hear. You will find that your clients will listen and respond so much better than when you were winging it.
Start by mapping out the first five minutes, and then attack what you have written with the delete button.
Don’t think for a second it won’t be hard. It’s really tough, but deleting is one of the most important parts of communicating effectively. You need to follow the simple rule that each presentation should have only one main point and a maximum of three subpoints. Loading more information in than that is asking for trouble. By making this part of your presentation razor-sharp, you’re getting your message across in the cleanest, most efficient way.
Once you’ve finished the first five minutes, transition to the closing five minutes. By finalizing your talk, you’re providing the destination for the rest of the presentation. Everything you say will be designed as a lead-in to bringing it home this way. Again, be very liberal with your “delete” button.
We’ve all sat in on brutally long, muddled presentations that wander from point to point. Either the presenter had a laundry list of information that he or she needed to get through, or there was a set amount of time on the clock that he or she needed to fill. There is no quicker way to get people to check out than to start droning on in a presentation that doesn’t seem to be building to a main point or conclusion.
To drill this home, start thinking to yourself, What if I only had five minutes total to speak? What would I say? What about three minutes? One minute?
Practice the one-minute version of your talk, and you’ll know you’re getting to the core of the material.
Once you have your first five minutes and last five minutes mapped out, it’s time to fill in what goes between. Remember, your goal is to include only the most important information. The ever-popular TED talks shoot for succinct presentations that touch on only the most pertinent information. TED presenters are thought to be some of the greatest speakers on the planet.
Once you figure out what content you want to include, it’s time to bring the presentation to life with stories. Anecdotes and stories are what the audience will most remember. Be sure your stories have details that connect the audience to your topic and also build your credibility. We try to follow the rule that there should be one story for each point or subpoint. When your stories are in, you are ready to move to the next step.
STEP 2. SLOW IT
Once you’ve produced your script, it’s time to learn how to deliver it.
By far the most common mistake people make is to deliver presentations too fast. It is important to remember that you’ve been thinking about what you plan to say for a long time—and, presumably, you’re an expert on it. But everyone else isn’t as far down the road as you are. This will likely be the first time they hear a lot of what you are trying to tell them, and they need time to digest it as you proceed.
Pace is the biggest indicator of confidence, and the best way to slow your pace is to purposefully use pauses. Every pause serves as an inverse catalyst. Your pace will be slower after each pause you use. Hearing your pace quicken should be your mental cue to take another pause. Don’t be afraid to take three-second, five-second, and even seven-second pauses in between bits of information. If you don’t slow down and simply pause between your thoughts, much of what you are saying is going to be lost. And the more information you cram into the intermittent thirty-second bursts of attention that the average listener can offer, the bigger the chance the person won’t retain any of what you’re saying.
It isn’t a race, and it isn’t a contest to prove how much you know. You can do much more to show strength and confidence—and attract your audience’s attention—by pausing than you can by actually speaking. And when you project that confidence outward, it’s actually absorbed by the people receiving the message.
It’s how the greatest speakers of all time have communicated with their audiences. The idea is to figure out what the goal really is for the meeting and to serve that goal in the cleanest, most efficient way possible.
Plenty of coaches at the most elite level have strategic genius. But the best game plan in the world doesn’t work if the players either can’t follow what you’re saying or have tuned you out.
One client of ours had been an extremely successful Olympic coach for several individual athletes, and had been hired by a large university to run its program in that sport. The coach was extremely knowledgeable, but had never worked either in an academic setting or with scholarship athletes in a team setting.
When the team assembled for the first time in training before the next season, the new coach handed all the players giant notebooks detailing every aspect of their training, along with a complete schedule for everything they needed to do every day until the first game of the season. During each practice, the coach would call players out and quiz them on the information in the book—and embarrass them if they stumbled on the answer.
There’s no question that a few of the highest-achieving members of the team thrived on the discipline and hard-core guidance they got from the new coach. But the rank-and-file team members quickly got lost, and the overall team results weren’t what the new coach—or the administration—expected.
Our goal was to help the coach preserve the quality of the guidance he was giving to the players, but to manage the stream of information so that the players were accountable for what they needed to know, but reassured by the basic fairness of the level of expectation. The first step was to “delete” almost 70 percent of the original team notebook. The second step was to help the coach learn to communicate at a slow enough pace—one fundamental idea per day, often covering the same fundamental day after day to ensure full understanding. Over time, that translated into a set of core, nonnegotiable principles that became the repeated focus of every practice.
Most speakers and coaches are afraid of repetition, but the best communicators have learned to use repetition.
Most speakers and coaches are afraid of repetition, but the best communicators have learned to use repetition.
Dozens of studies have shown that when you’re trying to give people information that you want them to retain, offering more than two or three discrete things is a huge mistake. This basic human reality drives how we schedule every single seminar we do. We take people through one or two facets of training, offer some guidance in real-world scenarios, then break and give the attendees a chance to digest and practice the information before we move on to the next phase.
You can’t expect to offer people half a dozen pieces of information and expect them to somehow synthesize it on the spot and make a well-informed decision about it. In fact, if you do put your colleagues, clients, and potential clients in that position repeatedly, you’re going to find you have far fewer of all three over time. Slow down and you will find yourself a whole lot more on target with your audience.
In addition, you will find that slowing down is actually much easier for you as a speaker. You will be able to think about what you are saying as you are saying it. Doing so will make it much easier to follow your script and maintain your confidence.
STEP 3. TRIANGLE IT
The whole goal of presenting in a group, either with clients or in your office setting with colleagues, is to deliver your message in a way that gets the receiver to take action.
A basketball team runs its offense through a set of plays. When those plays get added to the playbook, how do you think the players on the team learn both the plays and how to move together on the floor? Does the coach hand out the playbook, explain the play one time, and hope for the best when game time comes? Or does the coach break down the play into components and explain each player’s part, and then supervise as the players repeat the play again and again in practice, so that it becomes second nature?
The answer is obvious in a basketball setting. Why does it seem so much less obvious in the business world?
A very effective method for practicing communication is something called the “success triangle”: for the three days before your big presentation or meeting, spend three separate three-minute segments per day mentally rehearsing what you want to say and how you want to say it. We advise people to ritualize the triangle training by spending the three minutes each day just prior to each meal—breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
If you have more time than three days before, by all means expand the practice into as many days as you can. But look at the success triangle and the three-day window as the ideal minimum requirements. If for some reason you have less time than that—maybe you’ve been called on to fill in tomorrow unexpectedly—don’t sweat it. You can still get most of the benefit of preparation. Get in as many of the three-minute segments as you can, but be sure to give yourself at least sixty minutes of break time in between.
A personal injury attorney client of ours was terrified about an upcoming case. Although our client was very competent and quite prepared, it was her first time presenting a case in front of a jury. For three days before the trial opened, she spent three minutes three times a day visualizing herself in the courtroom with the judge and jury, slowly going through the first minute of her opening argument word by word.
When the trial started, the attorney was actually surprised by her confidence level and the smoothness with which she presented. Her client eventually won the ruling, and the attorney so impressed her supervisors that she got on the fast track to become only the second female partner in the firm.
This triangle technique is the same one that professional athletes use to visualize how they will perform in an event. You’re just using it in a different setting. When you visualize the actual situation you’ll be in, and rehearse the exact words you’re going to say—and how you want to feel when you’re doing it—you’re preparing yourself for game day. You’ll be ready for any surprises.
It’s important to point out that there’s a big difference between “practicing” and mentally rehearsing with the success triangle. Practice can be useful, but not necessarily as effective as mentally rehearsing. If you’re trying to develop a skill you don’t have—like learning how to hit a golf ball—structured practice at a driving range is going to help you. But if you’re a good player, basic practice is often little more than exercise. You’re not simulating game conditions, or putting yourself in the same frame of mind you will be in when it’s time to compete.
Anybody can hit it long and straight on the practice tee, when you have an unlimited bucket of balls next to you and there’s no penalty for missing. Mentally rehearsing with the success triangle is different: it puts you right there, in the situation. You’re “pre-creating” the pressure of game day, so you can feel it, experience it, and be prepared for it.
Mentally rehearsing with the success triangle is different. You’re “pre-creating” the pressure of game day, so you can feel it, experience it, and be prepared for it.
The research is overwhelming. Using a technique like the success triangle is at least seven times more effective than rote practice alone. In other words, visualizing a presentation, using the triangle, for nine minutes per day is the equivalent of standing in front of the mirror for an hour and reciting it word for word. It works, and it saves you time.
GOING ONE ON ONE
You might be reading this and thinking to yourself, “It’s great to know, but in my role, I don’t do much speaking in front of other people.” Regardless of how much “public speaking” you’re doing, you still have to interact with people on a one-to-one basis in the business world. The skills we’re taking about help build confidence, and confidence is the single most important ingredient for communication success, whether you’re talking to a group of 150 people or 1 person across the table from you in a sales meeting.
Affirmations and positive thinking are great, and your confidence is going to really grow when you start using the concrete tools of preparation to sharpen the points you want to make. All of the same principles we’ve been talking about when it comes to “public” speaking still apply, but when you’re in a closer setting, such as a one-on-one meeting or a small group, a few more factors come into play. You need to be able to stay calm, listen, and control the energy level in your voice.
Let’s take those one at a time.
When it’s just you and another person on a call, or you’re sitting two feet from somebody and you’re trying to get and keep that person’s undivided attention, you have to be tuned in to a finer level of detail than when you are doing a presentation to a larger group.
In a presentation, you’re controlling the show from start to finish, and repetition and preparation are your friend. You know the route you’re going to take, and the words will be familiar territory. In a conversation, that’s still true to a certain extent—you need to know your stuff—but you’re also responding to what the other person will say. It’s like tennis. You can have a good scouting report and know what the other person’s game is like, but you still have to run down each shot and return it.
Because you’re interacting back and forth, you need to be as tuned in to what’s coming from the other person as you are comfortable with what you’re delivering. To do that, you need to be able to stay calm. If you have a high-stakes conversation on your plate, you simply aren’t going to perform as well if the running thought through your mind, as it’s happening, is, “Just don’t screw this up.”
It isn’t any different from learning to perform a physical task under competitive pressure, like athletes do. The single best method of staying calm is to control your breathing by using the centering breath we have already talked about. In the sixty seconds before the beginning of a presentation or meeting, be sure to take at least one centering breath (inhale for six seconds, hold for two, exhale for seven). While the other person is talking during the conversation, find times to take additional centering breaths. You don’t need to announce what you’re doing, and believe it or not, your deep breathing will be undetected by your counterparts.
It might sound strange to talk about a relaxation technique like breathing when it comes to a conversation, but it really works, and it’s an extremely valuable tool to know. Not only does it help you get your heart rate under control, but it allows you to become a much more effective listener. It redirects nervous energy into a more positive, productive place.
Any salesman with a few months of experience on the same job can recite the benefits of a given product off the top of his or her head. Knowing the information isn’t the separating factor by itself. It’s knowing the information that way, but also having the ability to deliver the information in a manner that causes the other person in the conversation to take notice and to interact. The fact is, you’re doing more to establish a true conversation when you slow down your end of it. Roughly 20 percent of communicating is speaking, while 65 percent is listening. Yet, when it comes to communication, a vast majority of instruction is aimed at how to speak more effectively. Rarely are you prompted to learn to listen better. Most of us fall into this common communication trap at one time or another. We get so caught up in planning what we’re going to say next that we don’t pay full attention to what the other person is actually saying.
This situation will often lead to a choppy series of interruptions, where each person thinks what he or she has to say is more important than what the other is saying. If you are interrupting someone, there is no possible way you are truly listening. Interrupting sends the distinct message that you really only care about what you are saying. The opportunity for listening and learning is getting lost. By slowing down, you also allow yourself to be a better listener. You have more time to think about what you’re saying, more time to say it correctly, and more time to listen to what the other person is saying.
Your voice is also an important tool when you’re in a one-on-one situation. When presenting to a large group, you have the advantage of practice—and maybe even a microphone. You can get your message crafted and practice delivering it at the right speed with the right voice energy. When it’s a more intimate setting, you’re balancing getting your message across with being responsive to the other person. That causes many people to start to speed up. They talk faster and faster—or louder or softer—and by the end of the conversation, the voice energy they hoped for wasn’t there.
You can improve your presentation by consciously evaluating your voice and the speed of your delivery. Instead of trying to set the record for the amount of material covered in one call or conversation, change your approach to value calmness, positive energy in your voice, and the act of leaving conversational room for the other person to evaluate each thing you’re saying.
If you’re a fast-paced person—and even if you’re more of a medium-paced talker—it will definitely feel strange at first to slow down. But you will start to notice some amazing things when you do. The person on the other side of the conversation will begin to subconsciously attribute more authority to you and more weight to what you’re saying. When you both present meaningful content and leave openings for thoughtful responses, you’re putting yourself in special company.
Maybe you work from an office and have little face-to-face contact with outside clients. Even if so, you’re not off the hook, because the rules still apply to other kinds of communication. Think about the conversations you have over the phone. We realize that phone calls are becoming more and more scarce, thanks to the advent of text messaging. But personal connections still need to be made. And most people spend their half of the phone conversation waiting for the other person to stop talking so they can announce what they want to say. In addition, communication gets even more jumbled in a phone conversation than in face-to-face interactions, because on the phone you can’t see the other person and react to his or her body language.
The advice is the same for phone conversations as for other kinds of communication: when you’re on the phone, slow down at least 20 percent more than you think you need to. Leave some air between your sentences. Let the person on the other end catch up with you. Whether you’re giving a presentation to a hundred people in a conference room, talking to a potential client on the phone, or having a meeting with three colleagues across the table, you have to accept that channel capacity is going to prevent you from cramming those other people full of information. You must slow down to be effective.
Here’s a very simple example that illustrates that point. A financial advisor who had been through several of our training programs called looking for some advice. He had a conversation scheduled for the next day with a client who had $10 million to invest—a potential account that would have tremendously impacted his bottom line for the year. It was the biggest potential client he had ever had the chance to meet, and he was feeling very nervous.
“What do I say?” he asked us. “This guy could potentially hand me a check for $10 million. How do I open? What do I bring to this meeting?”
We started with the basics of scripting out the two main reasons he was the best man for the job and then moved on to practicing it. He focused on of how to control breathing and heart rate, so that his nervousness wasn’t written all over his face—or his voice. Then, we talked about ways to inspire the potential client to engage in the conversation, instead of just listening to a prepared “speech.”
After a minute or two of small talk to open the conversation, the advisor said to the potential client, “I know your time is valuable, and there are some questions I need to ask you.” He then paused for a few seconds. “But before I ask them, I want to assure you that anything we talk about will remain strictly confidential.” He then moved on to his two main points and closed with a very strong request for the prospect’s business.
It might not seem like a big thing, but the advisor said that the moment he stressed confidentiality, the potential client and his attorney both relaxed and sat back in their chairs. As soon as the advisor saw them relax this way, his confidence level soared. He knew they had engaged in the discussion, and he let his preparation and knowledge take over from there.
He earned the business.
The Big Why: In the business world, a person’s skill level is largely realized based on his or her ability to communicate in a confident, efficient manner.
The Inversion Test: Great communicators will experience great success. Poor communicators will experience great failure.
Act Now: Write on paper the first minute, word for word, of what you will say in the next presentation you will deliver.
Some examples from our clients:
PRO ATHLETE
(pitcher talking to his catcher before playing an upcoming opponent that the team has historically had trouble with)
The first thing I would like to say is, thank you. I don’t think I tell you enough how much I appreciate all the work you put into making me look good. I know your job is somewhat thankless, but I want to be at least one person who thanks you often for your preparation and approach (three-second pause). Let’s figure out how to finally beat these guys. I want your input. What is the one thing you most think I need to be focused on if we are going to be lights-out tomorrow night?
FINANCIAL ADVISOR
(coffee meeting with a prospective client)
Good to see you Jim. Last week when I met with Tom and Susan they both had great things to say about you. I know you’re busy, so with your permission, I’d like to skip the small talk and get to the heart of the matter. With that said, let me ask you a question, if I may (three-second pause). What is the single biggest thing you are hoping I can help with?
(This is where it becomes very important to listen. The thrust of the conversation from here forward must be centered on meeting Jim’s one biggest need.)
PHYSICIAN
(speaking to a group of twenty to twenty-five attorneys, with the goal of having them give him referral business and using him as an expert witness in medical litigation)
Let me begin by asking all of you a question (three- second pause). If your mother or your father, or one of your children, was injured, and it was possible that the injury was life threatening, would you have extreme confidence in any one medical professional? Think about that for a second (three-second pause). I would like to cover with you, in the next fifteen minutes, the three reasons why, if, God forbid, a life-threatening injury did occur to a loved one, friend, or client, you should seriously consider thinking of me and my team as the resource for providing the highest level of care.