Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Your level of influence will increase with your employees, customers and personal relationships when you can articulate your ideas in the shortest amount of time with clarity. When it takes too long to get people?s attention their interest wanes and you lose the opportunity for captive listening.
There are several reasons why people use too many words and their thoughts are not crisp or clear. Here are the top three culprits:
1. People think while speaking. This leads them to use too many words and often go off on tangents. You are best served to pause for a couple of seconds, get your thoughts together and stay on point.
2. People forget their purpose. When one responds to a question/comment without first thinking about their purpose (goal), they often get off point. Ground all of your statements and comments against your purpose – what you are trying to accomplish?
3. People forget the KISS Principle. The longer your message, the longer it takes for someone to understand your point. Less is more! Think about your message. Write it down if you want to. Then strip away all unnecessary words and comments not germane to your point. Also, do not complicate the message by showing how smart you are. The best selling ad lines and messages are the one?s that follow the KISS Principle- Keep It Simple and Stupid!!!
The #1 tip to increase sales and personal influence is to be concise, clear and to the point.
For more tactics and strategies on how to increase your sales and influence, read this book
Lead, Sell or Get Out of the Way!