Sales and Sales Management Blog

Over the past couple of days I’ve conducted a mini survey of about 60 business owners and senior managers of corporations on their impressions of Barack Obama and John McCain from their appearances at the Saddleback event last Saturday evening.

The purpose wasn’t to determine who won and who lost in terms of content.  My intent was to get their gut reactions to whom they felt was most honest and most importantly, who they would most likely buy from based only on that evening’s event.

Naturally, this is a highly subjective survey and one where the respondent’s reactions cannot be completely separated from their previous opinions of the men or from their political leanings.  Even though in no way am I claiming this to be a scientific study or anything more than just a small glimpse of how a few dozen business people reacted to these candidates, the brief survey does indicate that the way we communicate influences the perceptions of our prospects.  I did, however, speak to men and women from various parts of the country, some self-identified Republicans, some Democrats, and some Independents.

My questions were simple and dealt with how these men and women reacted to how each man delivered his message, not the message itself, and why they believed they reacted as they did.

The overwhelming majority felt that McCain did a better job than Obama.  They felt he was more honest, sincere, and trustworthy.  Almost every one of them thought that if these two men had been sitting in front of them in a selling situation they would have bought from McCain instead of Obama.

Why?

The root difference appears to be the communication styles of the two men–one created a sense of confidence and assurance in the listener, the other didn’t.  McCain’s short, quick, forceful responses came across not only as honest but as though he had a grasp of the issues and knew what needed to be done.

Their emotional reaction to Obama was very different.  His answers were not only considerably longer but his speech was halting and much slower.  There was less a sense of self assurance, less of an impression that he was in command of the situation.

Is it fair to base one’s decisions on the way we deliver our information-on our speech patterns?  Not really.  But how we say what we say does have an impact on how our content is received.  Is McCain more confident and in control than Obama?  Probably not, but his delivery style on this evening was, according to the majority of the men and women I spoke to, more likely to move them to purchase from him than Obama.

Some of us, me included, have a natural delivery style much closer to Obama’s than McCain’s.  We might find it helpful to work on speeding up our speech pattern while setting forth our ideas in a more forceful, self assured manner that creates a sense of confidence and sincerity in our listener because how we say what we say is just as important-maybe more so–as what we say.