Selling Yourself in Confrontation and Media Interviews 105
Memorable
The key is getting your message across in such an effective
way that your audience will remember it.
You can be memorable in a good way or a bad way.
Guess which one I recommend.Disastrously memorable
I was in the audience at a breakfast meeting at the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce. The audience was made up of business
leaders, lobbyists, association executives, legislators, and pro-
fessionals in every field. The featured speaker was then-secre-
tary of the interior, James Watt. In the middle of his talk, he put
on an impish grin and said (I don’t remember the exact words,
but it was something like this): “We have the perfect coalition.
We have a woman, a black, two Jews, and a cripple.” He got a
huge laugh but lost his job.
It was memorable, all right. Unfortunately so.
People are still quoting it years later.Making a connection
Earlier I said, “Tell them what they want to know.” That means
that to be memorable, you have to connect with them. The best
way to do that is to tell stories. Use anecdotes, personal examples,
paint word pictures using similes and metaphors.
“What have you done for me lately?” will often be one of the
questions you should answer. How will you affect my income, my
future, and my family?
Tell stories
Notice that I said stories; mind you, not jokes. Not smart-alec
comedy. And remember, buzzwords are memorable. You have to
be more memorable in your responses than the buzzword that
was used against you.
As with the other aspects of this training, the memorable an-
swer isn’t easy to come by. But awareness of the concept and its
importance will help you develop a technique and incorporate it
into your style.