The best sales performing sales professionals understand that relationships sell and by remembering your customers name can make a huge impact in developing relationships, establish trust and help you win more sales. Lucky for you, there are methods on how you can remember names so that you don’t run into the scenario of saying, “what was your name again” or “I’m sorry, I forgot your name” to a potential client or customer. Below are 5 of the best tips I have used to help me remember names and faces.
PAY ATTENTION
This might seem obvious but we tend to occupy our minds when others are introducing themselves or being introduced by others. Our minds are occupied on what we are going to say next or focusing on other things and not fully paying attention to the name(s) that are given. Be in the moment and fully engage in what is being said. This is where listening skills really come into play as you fully listen and internalize the names you hear.
REPEAT, REPEAT AND REPEAT
The best way for us to remember names is to repeat the name once we have heard it, as soon as you can. For example, if you just met Bill, say, “Bill, nice meeting you, tell me where are your from Bill?”. If you can repeat the person’s name 10 times during the first interaction, this will greatly help you remember names and when you verbalize it, you activate brain activity to help with memorization through repetition.
CRM
Sales professionals use CRM (customer relationship management) to manage conversations, but take this a step further and if you can, take a picture of the person and attach it to your crm. Take notes about where you met them and some key points about the person so that when you visit them next time, you can jog your memory from looking the person up. Connect with them on professional networking sites like linkedin.com and copy and paste their profile picture to add to your crm. If you exchange business cards, after speaking with the person, jot down some quick notes on their card and make it a habit to document it in your crm.
VISUALIZE
We learn visually and it names are very abstract. For example, when you think of car, in your mind do you picture a car or the word “car”? Most likely you have an image in your mind of a car. You can use this approach to help you remember names by visualizing the person’s name and associating it to something that sound similar or associated with their name. Lets say you meet a person named, Mike Jones, then associate the name into pictures. So Mike, the first thing that comes to my mind is “mic (microphone) and Jones into bones. After you have done this, pick out a feature or characteristic of the person’s face that stands out the most to you and then associate these images to those features. For our example of Mike Jones, he has a large nose and thin lips. Now we tend to remember things that are unique or extreme so take those features and visually enhance them. In our example with Mike, image his nose 10 times larger with a skeleton bone model dancing on it with a mic. This does take practice, but practice makes perfect.
By making the images extreme, our minds tend to remember things more. For example, do you remember brushing your teeth last month and the details of that activity versus a near car accident you had 5 years ago that scared you to death? Or how about that unique and weird monument you saw during your vacation that caught your eye. By visualizing and associating images with the person’s name, this will truly help you remember names.
MAKE THE NAME SOUND WEIRD
This trick sounds weird but it works. The more unique, crazy and weird you can make it, the more memorable it will be. For example, if you just met Steve Jackson, in your mind make up a weird sound by exaggerating the syllables and sounds that is associated with their name. What I would do in the case with Steve Jackson is to say in my mind, “Steeee-Vuh J-J-J-ACKSON!!!” using an announcer’s voice. Or associate some words that sound the same into a short song, since we all can remember long lyrics to a song, if you make a short theme song for the person, this will help you remember their name, for example for our buddy Steve Jackson, say in your mind, “Steve- Weave-with the bushy eyebrows dances with Michael Jackson, relaxing. Seems weird but it works and yes, make sure you do this in your mind, and when you say the name, use the proper sound and use this technique as a memory technique only, because you might offend someone if you call them, Stevey-Weavy the Jackson Relaxing.
……………………..
These are my five favorite name memorization tips, and I suggest learning different ones as well. Try different techniques out and see which ones work for you. To view other tips click here >>> HOW TO REMEMBER NAMES.
Leave a Reply