26 How to Sell Yourself
What can you do?
You need to help the audience realize that you’re a compe-
tent, capable person.
Prepare
Very few people are wonderful when they’re winging it. Some
are naturals, but most are not. It usually takes a lot of hard work
to appear spontaneous. Mark Twain wrote, “It usually takes me
three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.” The old vaude-
ville rule is, “It takes a lot of hard work to appear to be ad-libbing.”
Your strengths
Never forget that you know more than anyone else about cer-
tain things. You grew up in a particular family, attended specific
schools and churches, had certain friends and influences on your
life, and had your own jobs.
You are unique. Use this to your advantage.
Only you can put it all together in your particular way. But do
it with care. Even the most sophisticated computer needs an in-
stant—a split second—to respond. So the most important step in
responding to a question or an accusation is to let your prepara-
tion work for you and the way to do that is to pause.
The audible pause
The pause is the key to the fine art of thinking on your feet.
We don’t like to pause. We think, “If I take too long to reply,
they’re going to think I’m stupid.”
This is why the pause has become unnatural. We either plunge
ahead from thought to thought, stopping only long enough to suck
in a sufficient supply of air to spit out the next fact (the way the
weather person on TV does), or we fill our pauses with compe-
tence-defeating sounds. “I...uh...think...uh...we should...uh...act on
the...uh...assumption...uh...that we’re all...uh...uh...adults.”
By the time that sentence is finished, you not only question
the competence of the speaker, but you wish you were somewhere
else.