Key mistakes to avoid when using visual aids.

The two main ideas behind visual aids are to enhance verbal communication using images and to provide you with a source of topics and information  about your products. It is well known that what we hear we forget but what we see we tend to remember. About 10% of people learn via listening only. Visual learners are much more common. It is believed that by drawing your doctors attention to the image in visaids you have a better chance to keep it and to leave lasting impressions. Every time you will show your piece to the doctors they will immediately stop whatever they are doing and grab your visaids to satisfy their endless thirst for knowledge by literaly eating and drinking every word of the studies quoted in your materials, right? Nothing gets physicians more excited that looking at graphs from ”pivotal” studies conducted by your companies, that get tossed and squeezed by statisticians to get a drastic 3%  improvement  over your competitors, to be then able to proclaim “power of something”, right? Well, wrong. Day in and out we are presented hundreds of studies, papers, copies, visaids, quotes, references, etc. Your competition does the same thing, so unless you know what to say and exactly what value you are bringing with your visaids, do not carry them like the olympic torch. That being said, not using visaids at all or an  ”these marketing people have no clue what they’re doing” attitude, is certainly a mistake. What are the DON’Ts: 1. Do not refer to the content that you are not familiar enough or that you do not fully understand; 2. Do not show anything to your doctor until you engaged him/her in a conversation and have some form of confirmation of attention in the form of a question, head nod, comment or argument; 3. Do not refer to your materials without asking for a permission to show them; 4. Do not waste time on illustrating secondary points. One key point at a time; 5. Do not make them read fine prints or study complicated graphs unless they ask; 6. Do not shift attention from your face to your visaid , even when you have it ready and open, until after they clearly expressed their interest and permission; 7. Do not rush through the whole thing. You’ll have time at your next visit to cover the remaining points; 8. Do not close your visaid until you shifted their attention back to your face; 9. Do not leave you “stuff” behind without asking for their permission. Think about what goes through their heads when they throw your visaids to trash; 10. Do not use the same formal language that the visaids use; use your own but keep the main idea.

I welcome any comments.  Remember that black belts are not those who practice 1000 things 10 times but rather those who practice 10 things 1000 times.