There are people out there trying to sell you something and I'm one of them

Am I selling Jesus? Yes. It might sound crass, but it's true. And I think everyone should buy because He's awesome. So I was interested to read an article last week entitled, "Science reveals what you need to do to talk people into anything."

My first thought was this was going to be a lame article. But as I read it I think they hit on a couple of really important things.

Interviewers who spoke moderately fast, at a rate of about 3.5 words per second, were much more successful at getting people to agree than either interviewers who talked very fast or very slowly.

Related to this was that exaggerated changes in pitch didn't help. It was all about words per second and natural tone. I think this is right. Why? Because it denotes genuine excitement about what you are talking about. Too fast and someone is "trying" to sell you something. Too slow and they are bored themselves. 3.5 words per second and they are appropriately enthusiastic.

When people are speaking, they naturally pause about 4 or 5 times a minute. These pauses might be silent, or filled, but that rate seems to sound the most natural in this context. If interviewers made no pauses at all, they had the lowest success rates....

I experienced this problem on Sunday. The preacher (for all the good things he did) sounded scripted. I bet he'd memorized the "speech" and as a result it didn't communicate as powerfully as it could have. I remember in the middle of the sermon, he invited someone else to give a testimonial. The guy came up and said something then paused to figure out (or at least pretend to figure out) what to say next. And I noticed the pause because it was the first and only pause in the entire sermon.

It's amazing how hard and complicated it can be just to sound natural. ^-^