The Four Hour Sales Pitch

Have you ever met a person who from the very first moment of meeting them completely blew you away with their charisma? They have a way of making themselves seem so interesting, the most charming stories and hilarious life experiences, the way they speak is so animated and they come across as an amazing raconteur. A fire side storyteller who you can roast marshmallows with and listen to their incredible tales for hours. For me that’s a dream come true but sometimes as I’ve recently learned it’s not all what it seems…. I think to some degree all people prepare a little introduction about themselves that we may consciously or unconsciously use in business or socially to smooth the way in conversation and add some spice to our otherwise ordinary life and personality.

What I have discovered of late is that some people have not prepared enough copy to maintain conversations on a long term basis. It’s kind of like walking along the road having a great conversation and then all of a sudden you fall off the edge of a conversational cliff. What was that about? Suddenly said raconteur has completely run out of things to say. The convo comes to a complete and grinding halt.

Sensing the awkward silence you jump in, adding some information or changing the topic, offering cues to jump start the conversation again but every leading question you put out there is returned with a closed statement that cannot be pursued. You’re now trapped and you just have to project an image of being comfortable in the silence.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that some people forget that they’ve already given you their sales pitch before and the very next time they meet you they go through exactly the same sales pitch again. It’s not polite to stop someone and say excuse me, just want to save you some time but you’ve told me that story before. So you politely listen again, trying to seem as if you’re hearing it for the first time and exclaim and laugh at the right intervals like you did the first time naturally.

Social etiquette is a very delicate thing and on occasion I have been accused of being quite blunt and to the point. Having been made aware of this I now consciously try to listen and engage, ensuring I have all of the relevant information before offering feedback. The problem is that now I seem to overcompensate by being overly interested and maybe it is me who is causing the conversational problem. At what point is it polite to interject and ask for a conversational time-out?

I am an intuitive person and never prepare anything. Conversations just spill out of me, I’m a natural and I’ve been known to chew peoples ears off- guilty as charged. I’m starting to wonder if I should also prepare a script or an intro to offer people when they first meet me. Maybe this is the done thing and nobody let me in on the secret. I’m sure that with some clever re-arranging of text and emphasis on humour I could also project this wonderful personality and engaging life story with lots of twists and turns like an exciting novel that you just can’t put down.

My problem is that as soon as I consciously try to do anything, I completely mess it up. I operate on instinct and go with the flow. If I have to stop and think about my copy it will create gaps in the conversation. Sort of like when you try to play a video on the internet, there are occasional delays and the message from the machine is “buffering”. If I have to start thinking about everything I say, my conversation would be frequently interrupted by “bufferingnessness”.

I suppose this means that I shoot straight from the hip which I’m told is not a good thing. The upside of my unconscious verbal diarrhoea is that I handle impromptu situations very well. I’m the kind of girl that you can put on a podium without a prepared speech and I’ll muddle through quite well compared to most people. The downside of this is that when somebody makes a smart or snippy comment that I have to think about, my bufferingnessness kicks in and I only think of the appropriate response five minutes later. The result is that I’ve lost some of the most important arguments of my life which is shameful for a woman.

Maybe the conflict comes from experience. When I was young I was too sweet and nice to interrupt someone while they were talking and back then everything in the world seemed so amazing to me. I was fascinated by people, captivated enough to listen to their monotone war stories for hours. I have been taken advantage of and lied to so many times it’s almost a joke. Thirty-four years on, I guess I’ve developed an ear for baloney and now I find myself wishing for a fast forward button when I recognise the all too familiar tone.

I’m still genuinely fascinated by people and there is nothing I enjoy more than a good life story. I suppose due to the fact that I’m already halfway through my life now and running out of time, I tend to qualify things better now. My ears are continuously sifting for content. My thought process is more like…. Is this an average boring life story or is this a really interesting life story? If I feel I’m getting a long life story speech from somebody who has just an average life story, then I feel that I am being robbed of productive time. If it’s a super duper life story then I think to myself…. Hey, I should listen on. I could really learn something here.

I have a passion for people and for some reason I seem to be highly sociable. My problem is that I now feel as if I’m in a race against time and I have less of it to give away. I have developed a taste for highly complex, intellectual thinkers and I don’t have the strength to sit in pubs on uncomfortable wooden chairs playing meaningless conversational ping pong with dull, disinterested people. I need content. Please.