How to Coach Yourself and Others How to Influence, Persuade and Motivate | Page 380

Examples
Examples can really make your evidence come alive. We love to relate to
examples that bridge the gap between logic and our personal lives. Your
prospects understand examples at a deeper level because they are based
on common experiences and interpretations of meaning. Examples can be
real or hypothetical and can include quotations, personal accounts,
physical evidence, empirical studies, or published reports.
Compelling Evidence
As you prepare your message, understand that we humans aren't capable
of absorbing all of the information you can gather. We are hit with data all
day long and most of the time we don't absorb it. In fact, we are very
selective in what we allow ourselves to retain. When we hit information
overload, we turn our minds off and retain nothing.
A study on comprehension of television messages produced very
revealing results. After watching commercials and other forms of
messages, an amazing 97 percent of viewers misunderstood some part of
every message they saw. On average, viewers misunderstood about 30
percent of the overall content they viewed.[3] Information is just poured
out too fast. The evidence that you choose must be selective, precise, and
powerful. You can't afford to bombard your audience with too much
information.
When creating the logical side of your message, you have to understand
the concept of the number seven. This is also known as channel capacity,
which is the amount of room in our brains capable of storing various
kinds of information. George Miller, professor of psychology at Princeton
University, wrote, "There seems to be some limitation built into us either
by learning or by the design of our nervous systems, a limit that keeps our
channel capacities in this general range."[4] There is only so much room
in your prospect's brain to absorb logical numbers and information. This is
why phone numbers only have seven digits.
Spend the time necessary to fully research the types of evidence you want
to use to strengthen your arguments. You already know that using the
right evidence from the right sources greatly increases the credibility of
your message. However, the opposite is also true; poor or irrelevant
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