Impressive Recall

I was annoyed with myself on Monday, when I was discussing plans with a prospect. We got to talking about their recently launched new products. They were rightly excited about them, and I wanted to know more, so started asking about each. Yet I couldn’t for the life of me remember one of their product’s names. And the pause whilst I struggled got my goat. I should have remembered the name, and hated looking as though I wasn’t all that interested, contrary to my true feelings.

It’s often the case that there’s lots of info to remember about a prospect; listings of things important to them, or a run-down of their issues. And it pays to impress them with your retained knowledge, as well as being able to recall for the benefit of maximising the conversation. In the past, with more than a few items to remember, I’ve resorted to mnemonics. That’s where you remember the initial letter of each point and make a word out of it to trigger recall of all info.

Then I watched a re-run of Derren Brown’s The Heist. His shows are awesome to watch, although prepare to cower behind the sofa on occasions! I saw him live in London last year and it was great, apart from I do hate seeing people hypnotised without their consent. His website won a ‘webby’ last year for best TV related site. Anyway, in one segment preparing for The Heist, he got a random list of 20 words shouted out, wrote them straight away on a flip-chart from 1 to 20, then with his back to easel, could answer correctly any word once prompted with their corresponding number. He then taught the 13 people in the room to recall the list themselves in just ten minutes. And weeks later, they could still remember the whole list.

So, undoubtedly the same technique would really help me recall vital intel on a sales call. He used the Linking Technique. It involves creating a vivid story that reminds you of everything. I’m going to give it a go next time I want to recall a crucial list, and here are the web resources that’ll get me there:

Project Happy Child
Memletics high performance learning
Interpreter hints