¡°I didn¡¯t have 3000 pairs of shoes. I had only 1600 pairs.¡± Imelda Marcos

Everything¡¯s relative. A million dollars sounds like a lot of money to someone who \rmakes an average salary, but it¡¯s a drop in the bucket to a Warren Buffett or a Bill \rGates. Running a hundred metres in a few seconds seems like a miracle to ordinary \rmortals, but a track and field athlete will work hard to shave even more off that \rtime.

Yet presenters often quote statistics without benchmarks, so the audience doesn¡¯t \rknow how to evaluate them. Is $10,000 a lot of money? Well it is for a bicycle. It¡¯s \rnot much for a house, unless that house is in a small village in a third world \rcountry, where it might be exorbitant. If you quote numbers this way, you will lose \rthe audience while they try to decide whether $125,000 is good, bad or indifferent \rin this context. Your statistics lose their power.

In a presentation skills workshop for a group of lawyers, one participant was \rpracticing his delivery of an address to the jury in an upcoming trial. He was asking \rfor damages in the amount of $750,000, and hoped the jury would consider it \rreasonable. It¡¯s quite a large sum, and most ordinary folks think of that kind of cash \ras a lottery win. He needed to put it in context for them.

He might, for example, ask the jury to suppose they were thirty-five years old and \rearning a salary of $40,000 a year. By the time they reached the age of sixty-five, \rallowing for reasonable increases, they could expect to have earned a certain \ramount. (He would do the arithmetic and insert the actual sum.) That amount would \rbe what is called their ¡°expected lifetime income¡±. However, if they were involved in \ran accident and suddenly unable to work any more, that amount now represents \rtheir ¡°forfeited lifetime income¡±. That is what happened to this claimant, and the \ramount he would have lost was $750,000. So in fact, counsel was asking no more \rthan the amount the man would have earned, had he not met with this unfortunate \raccident.

Don¡¯t you think the jury is more likely to agree when given this background \rexplanation?

Here are three ways to put figures in context for your audience.

1. Compare them to something to which they can personally relate, as in the \rcourtroom example.

2. Compare them to a similar situation. If a new manufacturing process takes fifteen \rminutes, mention that the old one took two hours, so we save 1-3/4 hours.

For \reven more effect, tell them how much time this will save in an average shift or on a \rcertain number of product units. Go further and translate that time into money and \rthe statistic will now be a strong argument for change.

3. Create vivid word pictures to illustrate size: That¡¯s the equivalent of five football \rfields. That¡¯s enough to fill ten Olympic-size swimming pools. If laid end-to-end \rthey would stretch from New York to L.A. and back again.

Statistics can be great persuaders, but only when the audience has the means to \revaluate them.

Helen Wilkie is a professional keynote speaker, workshop facilitator and author, \rhelping companies save their money and people save their sanity through better \rcommunication. Her latest book is "The Hidden Profit Center¡ªa tale of profits lost \rand found through communication." For more articles and other information, visit \rhttp://www.mhwcom.com While you're there, sign up for Communi-keys and \rreceive monthly communication techniques directly from Helen.