“Remember that a man’s name is to him the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” – Dale Carnegie
Have you had the good feeling of running into someone, and they address you by your name, even though you’ve not seen them in quite awhile or you only met once.
And there is the opposite experience. You run into someone who you expect to remember you, but they don’t. And that stings a little.
And possibly you, like me, have been that person who didn’t remember a name.
We say that we “are just not good at remembering names.”
It might be that we are just not good at caring enough to attempt to remember names.
I had an inspiring experience a couple years ago at an association meeting.
Our speaker for the evening was impressive, even before his presentation began.
Here was my experience:
Our speaker, who was not local, was standing talking with our chapter president and a couple other people. I walked up and introduced myself. He repeated my name and then asked about my podcast. My podcast! How did he know I had a podcast?
He then referred to my workshop topics! We had never met or corresponded before meeting just then. I’m sure I looked stunned. I asked him how he knew those things.
He shared with us that a week before the meeting, he got a list of the people who had registered. This was about twenty-five people.
He did some research on each of us. He looked at our websites, our LinkedIn profiles, and our Facebook pages. He memorized a few interesting things about each of us. He had seen our profile pictures, which helped him connect the face, name, and information.
He didn’t go into detail about the memorization techniques he used to store all that in his brain. But it worked. Penn and Teller might have been involved.
Just think how much rapport and interest he generated in the networking hour we had before his talk.
He took the name game to the next level. I just want to start with being able to recall the name the next day.
Here are seven steps to help us:
First: We have to have the intention of remembering the name.
Second: We have to hear the name.
Third: We have to repeat it, making sure we heard it correctly. They won’t mind taking the time to go over this. It’s a compliment to be asked.
Fourth: We have to repeat the name a few times silently to ourselves.
Five: We need to write it down at some point or get their business card.
Seventh: This is taking it to the next level…we can look them up on LinkedIn, see their profile picture, associate it with their name, and attach one bit of information about them.
The next time we see them, we have a great chance of remembering their name.
And impressing the heck out of them, and ourselves.
We can do it.
