Someone emailed us a business article today. It was titled “The Worst Way to Start a Presentation,” and talked about how most business presentations start off very dryly, with stats and statistics about the presenter’s company. But the way to make any presentation more interesting—heck, any interaction more interesting—is to start off talking about the other person and their interests. And it cites some research from dating site OKCupid:
Perhaps you’ve heard of a free online dating site called OkCupid. Now, I married my high school sweetheart, so I’m not there trolling for dates, but I am impressed with their statistical research. OkCupid has a very advanced statistics shop called OkTrends, where they study the hundreds of millions of OkCupid user interactions. In one study, they looked at the kinds of words men use in their opening messages to women in order to learn what does (and doesn’t) generate a reply. If you’re not familiar with how online dating works, basically, you check out people’s profiles on the website, and if you like what you read, you send that person a message and hope you get a response. (And then, maybe after that, you meet for an actual date, like we used to do in the old days).
You can just imagine the cheesy messages that the study revealed don’t work (i.e. women did not reply to the man’s message). But you know what phrases generated HUGELY POSITIVE responses? “You mention,” “noticed that,” and “curious what” all got fantastic responses. (Statistically, messages with those phrases get double the normal response rates).
Basically, if a guy appears to have read a woman’s profile, and shows knowledge and interest in the things she’s interested in, he’s got a much greater chance of hearing back from her. A good message would sound like this: You mention that you like cooking and I noticed that you traveled to Italy. I’m curious what your favorite region was in terms of cuisine? That’s the kind of guy we fathers might let our daughters date. (I also have a son, and when he hits dating age, he will be forced to read all of this research).
We have talked quite a bit about dating here at the Good Men Project, from how to meet girls without resorting to pick-up gimmickry, to our recent almost-rant by a female wanting to pay for her own dates. The lesson in all of them is pretty much the same. Less narcissism. More action.
Oh, and if you want to use dating advice to make a killer business presentation, here’s the full article.