Skilled salespeople
practice their pitches
over and over.
What I’ve found,
however,
is these salespeople
are more interested in
getting their messages right
than
getting their words exactly right.
I helped one skilled salesperson
practice his pitch yesterday.
Each rendition of it
was slightly different.
The message, however,
was always the same.
“My suggestion:
Don’t memorize your talk.
Memorize your stories.
Ten stories make a talk.
Write yourself
a simple cue card
to remember each story’s name.
Then tell us ten stories.
Be you.
We didn’t come
to hear your words.
If that’s all we wanted,
we could have
read the memo
and saved a ton of time.
Bring your heart.”
Memorize your message,
not the exact words.