Emotions sell. We know, but we don’t always act on it. I suppose this is handy most of the time. Daily life in a world where everyone act on their feelings all the time, would probably feel a lot like being a potato in a pot of furiously boiling gulasch.

But sometimes we do need to exhibit emotion. Selling is one of those moments.

Speakers put their merchandise in the windows of bureaus and directories (like we spoke about last week ), much like a baker would do with his doughy masterpieces. While speakers can’t use the scent of freshly baked bread to lure in customers, we can paint pictures and convey emotions with words.

We thought we would ask a machine what wordy scent makes money for speakers.

We were right in that emotions sell. But we found something surprising too.

I’m so excited..

The machine hummed away for a bit, and I got a cup of coffee. While doing so, I wondered whether it would be an issue that the machine only looked at data for US speakers. I agreed (with myself) that this would be alright as long as the readers knew. Now you know.

As I came back to the machine, the humming was over, and the answer was pretty clear. Speakers usually describe their work in an excited tone-of-voice.