5 Ways to Make Your Results Sound Better

Have you ever had to deliver negative or perhaps just lack-luster results in a meeting? Well hear are 5 tips that might make your life easier. They won't change your results or make things better, but it might change the framing. I mean, numbers are all about "how you feel." Right? It's just the way you make me feel?

1. Twice as much vs. 200% of prior

This is a great way of saying the same thing. However, on initial read you may think 200% sounds more impressive. "Sales doubled from last year" vs. "Our sales for 2019 are 200% of our 2018 results."

2. 100% more vs. 200% of prior

This one is great because 200% clearly sounds like more, but you are saying the same thing. For the 100% more, you are saying take the prior 100% and add another. For the 200%, you are doing the math and adding them together, sounding more impressive and perhaps more accurate. "Our sales increased 100% from prior year" vs. "Our sales for 2019 are 200% of our 2018 results."

3. 20 fold increase vs. 2,000% of prior

Which is better will depend on the situation, but personally, when people start saying things like 2,000% trend, I have to wonder why they haven't changed from percentiles to numbers. Consider, "Our five year goal is a 20 fold increase" vs. "Our five year goal is 2000% growth."

4. Take 20% of the initial 20% off vs. 64% off

This is the classic elementary math school problem, but it is worth mentioning. (1-20%)*(1-20%)=64%. The trick here is to have people do bad mental math and assume 20% off "plus" 20% off is 60%.

This can be a fun one to play with as you increase the percent off. Imagine a store wide out of business sale that is 10% off everything, 20% additional of red tag items, and take 30% if the item is a shirt, and take 15% more on top of that is you have a store credit card! Uh... Thats actually (1-10%)*(1-20%)*(1-30%)*(1-15%) = 42.8% of the original price. That's great, but not that 10%+20%+30%+15% = 75% off I'd initially guess, or 25% of the original price.

Consider delivering the news: "Sales fell 10% in January, an additional 20% in February, 30% in March and 15% in April" vs. "Sales fell 75% in the first four months." (On second thought, both sound pretty bad...)

5. Joe paid 50% more Bob vs Bob saved 33% compared to Joe

This one is interesting for marketing and whenever I see it being used ineffectively I cringe. To prove this one, assume Joe pays 150 and Bob pays 100. $150/$100 -1 = 50% more. 1-$100/$150=33% saved. The former way of stating this makes it seem like Joe is much worse off than the second statement.

Note that if you said Bob saved 50%, he would actually pay $75. The difference between Joe paying 50% more and Bob saving 50% is $25 to Bob.

Applying this practically, let's take Geico. 15 minutes can save you 15% or more. So for a $1,000 policy, you save $150, to a new price of $850. The could also say, you are potentially paying 18% more (=$150/$850) than you should be. Not as catchy, but 18% sounds bigger than 15%

Final Thoughts on 5 Ways to Make Your Results Sound Better

Math is wonderful at being able to clearly express quantities in an objective fashion. However, when expressing relative quantities, or the relation between two numbers, there are a lot of ways to say the same thing. This often creates confusion and can lead to some elaborate mental gymnastics and disingenuous framing. In all these scenarios, you should use whichever presentation of results that is easiest to understand and most relevant to your audience. If you find yourself in a company or working for a manager pressuring you into disingenuous framing, consider if that is the environment where you want to work.