Persuasion

The people we speak with, or to, are under no obligation to actually listen to what we are saying. With so many choices available for information and content, it’s very easy for people to “change the channel” away from you and your message, and divert their attention to a message more relevant to them. As […]

Our work at The Latimer Group is all about helping our clients build strong and powerful communication skills. And to do that effectively, we have to be able to help them assess two things: current strengths and weaknesses, AND a path towards improvement. One without the other just isn’t that helpful. Skill development, in any […]

The hardest thing for any subject matter expert (an “SME” in business vernacular) to do is to explain his or her area of expertise in simple and clear ways. When we are “in” it, when we are living the topic every day, when we know a lot about a certain topic, it often can be […]

Anyone who has ever worked with The Latimer Group, or read or listened to any of our content, will easily recall one of the primary tenets of our work – great communication requires that you understand who you are speaking to. We discuss this constantly — anyone who designs and delivers a message without being […]

Your audience will only remember a small percentage of what you say. Some studies suggest it will be less than 20%. Fact. Other studies suggest that the average adult attention span is now about 8 seconds. Bummer. So what do you do about it? We could simply surrender, and assume that this is the new […]

There is a theme that comes up in every workshop we teach… we live in a really noisy world. The world is indeed very loud, with a seemingly endless competition for mindshare and attention. And everyone we speak to is drowning in too much information, too many meetings, too much access, too little time. This […]

Does your message stand out? Do you make it easy for your audience to remember what you say? Does your message make an impact on the mind of your listener? You need to care about this, because there is so much competition for the mindshare of every audience. There are so many things that come at each of […]

We spend a lot of time here coaching people on how to communicate in order to get the outcomes they want. And in some cases, the outcome is a sale of a product or a service. But in many cases, the outcome is the “sale” of an idea or a plan. The vast majority of persuasion […]

If you have the power to advocate for the things you believe in… If you can make the compelling case for the idea… If you can influence the decisions and behaviors of others… If you can build consensus and persuade… You have competitive advantage. Period. Full stop. In the 21st century business world — where […]

At the risk of oversimplification, there are two macro “messaging problems” that come up a lot in our work. Problem #1: the speaker knows what they want to achieve, has a general goal in mind, but has not put enough thought into the details of the message and how they will achieve the goal. They […]