The Lost Art of Persuasion

I picked up a freebie copy of SOHO business magazine to have a look at "The Lost Art of Persuasion", an article on sales presentations. It's an "advertorial" for the author's book on the subject, but it has some great ideas on how to improve your presentation style. The article isn't on the online version of the magazine, but it's available verbatim on another site.


Can health professionals learn from sales and marketing techniques? Aren't we trying to impart serious information rather than influence a decision about what brand of widget to buy? A lot of us have been brainwashed into thinking this.

There's a stereotypical format for presenting medical/scientific information. It's formal, dry and serious:

Here is my hypothesis, these are the methods I used to test my hypothesis, these are the results of the testing, and these are the conclusions I have drawn from the results.

Here is slide after slide giving the exact words coming out of my mouth.

Is anyone out there still awake?

It's an unusual presentation that breaks out of that dreary mold.

And that's my point! If you attend a scientific presentation where the speaker engages and excites (surprises!) the audience with something (anything!) different, you remember that presentation. You talk about it. That speaker influenced you.

If uninspiring presentations are a part of the medical/scientific culture, how will we improve? Who will show us a different way? Check out Presentation Zen for links to videos of some inspiring presentations (of course, it's the presenters who are inspiring). The speakers demonstrate many of the techniques from Paul LeRoux's article.