You will be able to present data with rounding, a comparison and a named source.
A speaker puts up a slide and says, "In the survey, 24.3 percent of respondents indicated dissatisfaction with the current process, compared with 18.7 percent in the previous cycle, while 41.2 percent were neutral." By the time the second number arrives, the first has gone. By the third, most of the room is reading the slide instead and has stopped listening.
Numbers are some of the strongest evidence you can bring to a talk, and some of the hardest to hear. On a page, a reader can stop, look again and compare. Spoken aloud, a figure goes past once. This lesson covers four habits that make numbers land when they are said rather than read. All the figures below are made-up examples.
The first habit is rounding. Nobody remembers 24.3 percent from a single hearing, but most people remember "about one in four". That is accurate enough for a spoken point: 24.3 percent sits very close to a quarter. Keep the exact figure on the slide or in the handout for anyone who wants it, and say the rounded version out loud.
The second is to give the number something to be measured against. A figure on its own rarely means much. Is S$38,400 a year a lot? It depends. Saying "about S$3,200 a month, or roughly what we spend on the office cleaning contract" gives it a size people can feel. A good comparison uses something the audience already knows the scale of: their own budget, a familiar cost, the size of their team.
Arjun's survey of clinic front-desk staff found that 52 of 214 people said rebooking calls took up the most time in their week. That is 24.3 percent. He says, "About one in four front-desk staff told us rebooking calls take more of their time than anything else." The precise count is in his appendix.
A number on its own is a snapshot. Most audiences want to know which way it is moving. Up from what? Compared with whom? Over what period?
"Our missed appointment rate on Mondays is 11.8 percent" tells the room very little. "On Mondays, 11.8 percent of appointments are missed, against about 6 percent on other weekdays" tells them something. Arjun went one step further and said, "Mondays lose almost twice as many appointments as any other day." The two rates he compared were 11.8 and 6.1 percent, which is a ratio of about 1.9, so "almost twice" is honest. "More than twice" would not be.
Check your comparisons with a calculator before the talk, not in your head on the day. Round in the direction that keeps you honest, and if a comparison only works by stretching the rounding, choose a different one.
Every number in a talk should come with its source, either said out loud or written on the slide. "From our booking system, January to June." "From the Ministry of Manpower's published statistics." "From a survey of 214 front-desk staff we ran in May."
The source does two jobs. It tells the audience how much weight the number can carry: a figure from your own system means something different from a figure in a news article. And it protects you. If someone asks where a number came from, you have already answered, and if it turns out to be wrong, you can say exactly where it came from and check it.
If you cannot name a source for a number, do not use the number. A figure that has been repeated around the office until everyone believes it is a common trap. So is a statistic you remember from a talk you heard years ago. If you would need to say "I think I read somewhere", leave it out and make the point another way.
The fourth habit is restraint. Each main point in your talk can usually carry one number well. Give the audience three or four at once, and none of them will stick.
Go through your outline from lesson 2.4, Outline your talk on one page, and look at each point. Which single number does the most work? Keep that one in what you say. The others can sit on a backup slide, in the handout, or in an answer if someone asks.
The same applies to slides. A slide filled with figures invites the audience to read rather than listen, and they will each pick a different number to look at. Module 4 covers how to build a chart around one number in lesson 4.2, Charts that show one thing.
Here is one point from Wei Ling's talk before and after the four habits.
Before: "The pilot cohort achieved independent picking status at an average of 23.6 working days versus a baseline of 33.8 working days."
After: "New hires in the pilot were picking on their own after about 24 working days. Under the current training it takes about 34. That's roughly two weeks sooner. Those figures are from our own training records for the eight people in the pilot and the cohort before them."
The difference is about 10 working days, which is two working weeks. The after version is longer, but every sentence is easy to hear, and nobody has to do arithmetic while listening.
Your talk probably has a few numbers that carry the argument. In the activity you will pick the three that matter most and write out how you will say each one aloud.
Take the three most important numbers in your talk and rewrite how you will say each, with rounding, a comparison and the source.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).