Ed West, an international communications consultant, explains how to make any message persuasive. He uses a "message house" tool that distills content into three or four key takeaways with supporting evidence, and opens with what he calls a "James Bond start" to grab attention. He also profiles audiences into four thinking styles and advises tailoring your message to match how they process information.
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Ed West runs a company called FoxWest, and he is a communications consultant and helps big brands like Deutsche Bank and Syngenta to communicate and to become more persuasive with their words. Thanks, Jim. So, well, what we suggest is that for any communication that anyone gets involved in, they've got to do 2 things for it to work. They need to get a clear message across. Which hopefully people will understand and buy into. And they need to get a positive sense for them, for their personalities, for their professional competence. Because if you understand the message, but you don't buy into the speaker, that doesn't work. You buy into the speaker, but you don't understand the message, that doesn't work either. So in its simplest terms, that's what you've got to try to do. So it's not a case of dumbing it down, but it is making it simple and accessible. So I often use this very simple message house type tool. It's thinking about what's your objective? Who's your audience? If they walk away remembering 3 or 4 things, what should they be? What's the evidence we're going to use to bring it to life and make it compelling? And then we should have an attention grabber, a good start. I term it a James Bond start. Every James Bond film starts with an action sequence to grab people's attention. So consider having a James Bond start to make people sit up and want to listen. And if they walk away remembering 3 or 4 things, they're not going to remember much more than that. So if you can do that, You'd probably succeed. But that's quite difficult when you're put on the spot, when you're under pressure, you're not feeling yourself. Controlling nerves and the adrenaline is a big part of that. I think also recognizing that the nerves and the adrenaline, it's natural. And it's not necessarily a bad thing. So what I can use, a profiling tool called the HPDI, Which stands for the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument. And it measures how people think. So you've got detailed thinkers, you've got detailed feelers, you've got big picture thinkers, and you've got big picture feelers. So it separates you into 4 different quadrants. You want to be tailoring your communications to their thinking preferences. So I think it's bullying yourself on the messaging side and thinking about, because we all know so much and we're all passionate about it. So if you can drill it down to just 3 or 4 things that you need to implant in people's brains that is going to make it compelling, what should they be?
