Honoring the code : conversations with great game designers

178 Pages·2013·0.93 MB·English

by  Barton

This Is
The Tool
You Can
Use
To Sell Yourself

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How To Be
GREAT!!! In
Conversation
Small Talk Techniques And Topics To Sell YOU

Published By W. Paul Barton Associates, Baldwinsville, NY
Copyright © 2000 - 2003 W. Paul Barton
All Rights Reserved

Reproduction without written permission prohibited.
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Contents

CHAPTER

1
How To Be GREAT!!! In Conversation? “AAQUA”

2
Making People WANT To Talk With You

3
Twelve Techniques For Better Conversation

4
Six Simple Rules For Good Story-Telling

5
Steering, Controlling The Conversation

6
How To Listen, Remember Names

7
"Silent Talk"

8
"Talk Tidbits"

9
What To Say About The Weather

10
Witty One-Liners And Killer Comebacks & “Zingers”

11
Words, Phrases You Should Know

Index

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How To Be GREAT!!! In Conversation?
It’s Simple. Just Use AAQUA

(To Contents)

How To Be GREAT!!! In Conversation? That is the question.

The answer is AAQUA.

No, that’s not the Latin term for water miss-spelled. It’s an acronym to give you
a short, easy-to-remember strategy to help you achieve your goal of great
conversation.

Before explaining what that means, let me emphasize something that is critical
for you to understand about the art of conversation or small talk (we use the
terms interchangeably):
For most of us, it does not just “happen.”

Oh, there are lots of people who can talk and talk, rattling on incessantly,
dominating the dialogue by jumping from one topic to the other without giving
anyone else a chance to get a word in edgewise. That’s not conversation. That’s
a filibuster. That may satisfy the one who’s conducting the filibuster, but it will
usually turn off everyone else.

Good conversation is give and take that is interesting to each party and allows
and encourages participation by each party. You can MAKE yourself into a
good conversationalist by applying the AAQUA strategy. Here’s what it stands
for:

Anticipate, Arm, Question, Understand, Adapt

Let’s look briefly at each step.

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ANTICIPATE

You will never – repeat, never – have an in-person conversation with anyone else
in a vacuum. It will always have its own context and its own environment.
Think ahead about conversations you are likely to have that are important to
you -- even those casual encounters that may well happen because of where you
will be on a given day. Where will you be?

Walking down the street?
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Waiting for an elevator?
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In a business meeting?
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In a customer’s office?
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In a restaurant, nightclub or bar?
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ARM

This simply means that you should ARM YOURSELF with “something to say”
when the occasions you have thought about actually arise.

Are you going to be walking down the street tomorrow? Well, you know in
advance you will be outdoors and in the context of weather. That’s any easy
conversation topic, but, perhaps, not the most stimulating. For more interesting
conversation fare, plan ahead by checking our “What To Say About The
Weather” chapter.

Are you going to be standing at an elevator tomorrow? What do you do besides
fidget uncomfortably in silence while the person standing next to you does the
same?

Again, think ahead about what you might say in a situation like this. You might
want to ARM YOURSELF with the interesting little item about elevator button
pushers in our “Talk Tidbits” chapter.
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Are you going to be in a business meeting? A customer’s office? In a restaurant,
nightclub or bar with friends, a date or where there are people you want to
meet? ARM YOURSELF with “something to say” from our Witty One-Liners
And Great Comebacks chapter. You’ll find “philosophy of life“ one-liners that
are both wise and profound as well as just plain funny that can work for almost
any situation.

You’ll also find those that will serve you well when the discussion turns to the
most common topics of conversation – things like age, animals, children, careers
and work, diets, doctors, lawyers, marriage, men, women, money, politics,
religion and, of course, sex.

QUESTION

This – the “Q” part of our AAQUA formula -- is particularly critical for the
success of your conversation. All the other four elements – Anticipate, Arm,
Understand and Adapt – are primarily designed to help YOU hold up your end
of the conversation.

But, again, a good conversation takes two – or more – and the “Q” element is the
single element of the formula that is designed specifically to help BOTH you and
the other party.
When you ask people a question, you immediately get them engaged as an active
participant in your conversation.

When you ask them something “personal” to them, such as a question about
their home, their job, their educational background, for example, you are
helping them by giving them the opportunity to talk about something they know
a lot about.

At the same time, they are giving you conversational “clues” about themselves
that you can use as a springboard for your next conversational gambit.

Even questions that are not personal in nature are very valuable – questions
asking for information or opinions about virtually any topic they might be
expected to know about – will serve you well. Any question implicitly flatters the
one you ask because it implies he or she probably knows the answer and, again, it
gets the other party engaged in your conversation.

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UNDERSTAND

The “U” element of our formula requires us to, not only listen to how other
people answer questions we ask to engage them in conversation, but to
“understand” what they are saying – and capitalize on it.

Let’s say you are a person in sales and you have just entered the office of a new
prospect and you want to build rapport first by engaging in a little “small talk”
conversation. You alertly spot a picture of the prospect in college days, standing
next to a sign on a college campus which reads, “Michigan State University.”

You start the conversation by saying, “I see you went to Michigan State.” The
prospect responds with, “Yeah, I was a jock -- went there on a football
scholarship.” You respond, “Oh, I went to Boston University, myself. What did
you major in?”

You listened to the prospect, but you didn’t understand what he was saying. By
volunteering that he went to Michigan State on a football scholarship, he was
giving you a great conversational springboard. He was obviously proud of his
football scholarship or he wouldn’t have volunteered that as a piece of “extra”
information in response to your comment. That leads us to the final “A” in our
AAQUA formula for great conversation – Adapt.

ADAPT

If you, as the salesperson above, had been alert to “understand” what the
prospect was saying, you would not have responded with, “Oh, I went to Boston
University, myself. What did you major in?”

You would have immediately “adapted” to the information the prospect
volunteered about himself . . . following up with something like, “Oh, what
position did you play?”

This could lead to a whole series of questions, increasingly “engaging” the
prospect, such as, “That’s a tough position to play – did you ever get hurt?” Or,
how about, “How did Michigan State do as a team when you were playing?”

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Adapting to the situation and basing your conversation on what the other person
is interested in talking about is key to creating rapport and making the other
person feel comfortable with you.

To summarize, the AAQUA strategy, it’s what you need to do in order to sell
YOU to:

Create and build friendships.
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Create and build very “personal” or “intimate” relationships.
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Create and build rapport and trust with employers to help you get jobs and
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advance your career.
Create and build rapport and trust with customers to help you make the
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sale.

Apply the AAQUA strategy well and you can use your conversation skills to
generate these kinds of feelings about you:
OTHER PEOPLE– friends, people you hope to have as friends and people
you hope to have as very “intimate” friends:
"This is an interesting, entertaining and witty person -- the kind of person I
like to have around me."
EMPLOYERS AND POTENTIAL EMPLOYERS:
"This is a person who would "fit in here" -- a person who can "relate" well
and get along well with others – a person with potential in our business.”
CUSTOMERS:
"I'm comfortable with this person. This is the kind of person I'd like to do
business with."