How to be Memorable. This is a critical issue for most of us today. We want people to remember our names, our ideas, what we said when talking to them. We also want to stand out from the crowd. I don’t know about you, but most of my days are spent in back-to-back-to-back video calls and meetings, and they all begin to run together. I want people to make sure that they remember what we talked about in ours. This was also a critical differentiator in our Shark Tank experiment.
Shark Tank Experiment
In our Shark Tank experiment, remember a lot of these pitches are happening back to back to back. The sharks are hearing the same deals over and over again. They have tons of numbers in their head. The most successful pitchers know how to stand out. Now before I give away the answer, I have a little quiz for you. So let’s see how we do here.
What had the greatest effect on the success of an entrepreneur?
A) the color of their clothes,
B) the interactivity of the pitch,
C) the highest amount of revenue, or
D) getting sharks to laugh?
Which one do you think had the highest effect on success?
The answer here is B) interactivity of the pitch. The more interactive the pitch was, the more likely it was that those entrepreneurs would get a deal. The reason for this is because we think that interactivity creates dopamine. It sparks excitement. In fact, we found that 81% of successful deals had some kind of interaction. They passed out puppies, did demos, had samples, had them try something, had them hop up on stage and demo for the other sharks. All of that interaction was snapping those sharks out of autopilot. It was making them more excited, making the actual pitch itself more memorable.
Learning Tools: Interactivity in Conversations
Break Social Scripts
The question is, how do we bring interactivity into our everyday conversations, video calls, emails, chats, and profiles to be more charismatic? The very first way we do this is we have to break social scripts. You know these social scripts; we unconsciously follow them in many of our interactions.
We hop on the phone and say, “Hey, how’s it going? Been busy? Yep, yep, me too. How’s the weather over there? Yep, those numbers, can you believe it?”
We have the same socially scripted conversation over and over again. This also happens because we get asked the same questions over and over again. How many times have you been at a networking event or a party or a meeting, and someone says, “How are you?” or “What do you do?” I think I’ve answered “What do you do?” at least a million times. So not only is the question socially scripted, my answer is socially scripted.
When you ask questions that we’ve heard a million times before, it’s like asking the other person’s brain to stay asleep. My brain stays asleep asking, and their brain stays asleep answering. The entire goal here is to wake people up, to break those social scripts.
Speed Networking Experiment
I wanted to test this idea of breaking social scripts, so we did a massive experiment in our lab. Here’s what we did. We got over 500 speed networkers across three different speed networking events. I assigned them conversation starters—everything from “How are you?” and “What do you do?” to more exciting ones, which we’re going to learn in a second. Then we set up cameras in each of the four corners of the room. We assigned these conversation starters, had cameras watching, and then began to track the conversations.
We wanted to see if body language changed if volume changed. We know that in a really good interaction, the volume goes up, people get excited. In a really good conversation, there’s more smiling, nodding, leaning, hand gestures, and touches. So we used the cameras to track which were the good conversation starters that had a lot of body language movement and which were the not-so-good conversation starters where the volume was quiet.
In a bad conversation, they always look like this, right? That’s what all bad conversations look like. So we were tracking to see if we could tell the difference between the conversation starters based on the body language, the volume, and the ratings.
Ratings and Results
At the end of each conversation starter, we asked each speed networker to rate the quality of the conversation on a scale of one to five. One being brain-dead boring, don’t want to talk to that person again, to five being amazing, I met my best friend, I love that conversation. Here’s what we found. Let’s actually start with the worst ones. The worst ones, by far, the quietest volume, the least body language, the worst ratings—the ones and twos—were the two questions we ask the most often: “What do you do?” and “How are you?” This one kills me because it had the worst ratings, yet these seem to be the two conversation starters that everyone uses at the start of interactions. So those got the absolute worst ratings.
Best Conversation Starters
So, what got the best ratings? Here are the top three conversation starters that got the best ratings across the studies:
- What personal passion project are you working on? I love this one, and it created the most excitement when people were asked about their hobby. Here’s what happened: They would get asked, “What personal passion project are you working on?” and it was like people came alive. They would look up, say, “Oh, what a great question!” They’d get excited, smile, lean in, use more hand gestures. Asking about what excited them got them excited.
- What was the highlight of your day? A small take on “How are you?” Instead of just “How are you?” which is the boring social script, “What was the highlight of your day?” asks someone to search for something positive, which in turn made them more positive.
- Have anything exciting coming up in your life? Again, asking for excitement triggered excitement.
Caution: What’s Your Story?
There was one more conversation starter that almost broke our data set. We could not figure out what was wrong with this conversation starter. Then we realized this conversation starter: introverts hated it, and extroverts loved it. So it caused complete opposite ratings. This conversation starter is: “What’s your story?” If I were to ask you, “So, what’s your story?” does that make your heart race in a bad way? Does it make your stomach clench? That means you’re probably more on the introvert side of the scale. Don’t worry; we’re going to talk about this in a future lesson. If that gets you excited, where you can’t wait to share your entire story, you’re probably an extrovert.
The reason why I share this data is that the top four conversation starters break social scripts. They create a kind of conversational interactivity that sparks dopamine, gets people engaged. They lean in, get excited, use hand gestures. My challenge to you is to go on a conversation starter diet. No more “What do you do?” “Where are you from?” or “How are you?” Those social scripts keep us asleep.
Learning Tool: Positive Priming
Spark Positivity
The second way that we authentically introduce interactivity into our interactions is to spark positivity. Remember how I mentioned the last one that when you ask about excitement, you actually trigger excitement? This is not just my idea; this is proven science. Science has found that the kinds of words we use affect how people feel. In fact, when we hear words like “excited,” we’re more likely to get excited. Research has found these blow my mind: When people read words like “fast,” “speedy,” and “young,” they walk more quickly. When people read words like “polite,” “kind,” and “easy,” they interrupt people less.
When people read words like “collaborate,” they are more likely to collaborate. This blows my mind because it means that we have the power to change an entire interaction with one word. If we want to spark more creativity, more engagement, more collaboration, we should say we want to spark more creativity, excitement, and collaboration.
The more purposeful you can be—remember those intentions that we created in a previous lesson? Those intentions are meant to get you to ask positive, non-autopilot conversation starters. The more intentions you have, the more you say them, the more they’re likely to be received.
Positive Openers
Here’s the big question: How do you want people to feel before, during, and after interacting with you? When they open up your email or see your calendar invite, what emotion do you want them to feel? The more we can use those words and those intentions, the more people will pick up on those words and intentions. Here’s the problem: Most of us fall into accidentally negative. I don’t know about you, but sometimes I hop on a phone call or a video call, and I’m like, “Oh, the traffic was terrible. Oh, this weather is so hot.
Can you believe this food? Man, it’s cold in here.” I accidentally start negative without even realizing it. That’s another kind of social script, is that we accidentally begin negative. Sparks, when you say words like “terrible,” “weather,” “hard,” “getting here,” “it’s been so stressful,” “I’m so busy,” you actually trigger stress, busy, terrible, bad. When you say those words, it actually makes people feel more stressed, busy, terrible, bad. I don’t even want to say those words anymore; it’s triggering you to think stressed, busy, terrible, bad. Instead, I want you to think about how in the first 10 words of your conversation, of your
email, of your chat, of your comment, of your profile, how can you use positive words? So, for example, how could you start off with, “So happy you’re here,” “I’m so excited to be here,” “So happy to talk to you today,” “It’s a wonderful day,” “I was just thinking about our project,” “Can’t wait to chat”? Just in those first 10 words, if you can spark positivity, it makes the whole conversation more positive.
Golden Rule: Above, Below the Line
I have one golden rule that I like to use, which is no “I’m so busy,” no “I’m so stressed,” no “It’s terrible out,” no “Can you believe the weather?” no “This traffic was bad,” no “I was so hard getting here.” If you can have that golden rule of “I’m going to stay positive,” that sets you up to set the entire tone of your conversation.
So just to recap the two ways that we want to bring interactivity and make people more engaged and more charismatic in our conversations is to break social scripts and spark positivity. Those two things alone will make people more engaged, more excited, and more likely to be memorable.
Note: You can find more such interesting stuff from Scienceofpeople.com