Better memory better sales.

How often have you attended a networking event and you bump into someone you’ve met before and you cannot remember a thing about them?

Imagine the impact you could have on your business and your sales if you could walk into a networking event and recall the names of everyone you previously met?

This is the difference between a trained memory and an untrained memory

Take two salespeople selling a comparative service/product, similar features, benefits, price range. They both meet a potential client at a networking event. Two months later all three of them are attending the same conference. Each of the salespeople individually encounter the potential client. Salesperson 1 cannot remember the name of the potential client or where they previously met. Salesperson 2 not only remembers the potential clients name and where they met, but also their partners name who was introduced to them in their first meeting, they also recall they were a huge soccer fan and they were a die-hard Arsenal supporter …. who do you think gets the sale?

Salesperson 2 is not selling a superior product or service; they are selling a superior encounter. People do business with people they like, people they trust, trust builds relationships, relationships builds business.

Salespeople with a trained memory will always outperform salespeople without.

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Digital Amnesia

How Technology is Stealing Your Brain…and how to steal it back!

Digital Amnesia: The experience of forgetting something important because you trust a connected device!

Since we’ve been able to place more memory power in the palm of our hand than was used to land a man on the moon, we’ve banished our own memory to the back burner. The more we rely on technology to retrieve information, the more we erode the process to recall that information ‘naturally’ and we trigger Digital Amnesia.

So is this a problem? Well, aside from the mental health aspects, here’s just one scenario. You have a pre-arranged appointment, you have reviewed all the pertinent information about that client/customer/patient, you’re able to ask after their spouse/partner, kids, calling them all by name, you can even comment on their favourite sports team. They feel you have a great relationship.

A month later you bump into them unexpectedly, not only have you ‘forgotten’ their spouse/partners, kids, names…you can’t even recall THEIR name. How’s that relationship now? How’s your credibility now? How helpful is that device now?

In Bob’s latest highly interactive, empowering, and funny, keynote presentation, he shows you how to keep your memory in shape, how to steal your brain back from technology…and how you’ll never again need to say “Sorry, I forgot your name”.

This same method, which is the foundation of all memory systems dating back thousands of years, can be adapted to recall any sequential information such as presentations, lists, safety procedures and more.

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Your brain doesn’t always tell you the truth, it often lies to you.

Answer this problem quickly.

A coffee and a cookie together cost $1.10. The coffee cost $1 more than the cookie. How much does the coffee cost?

Most people say $1, which is wrong.

The coffee costs $1.05 and the cookie 5¢.

Our brain often takes shortcuts based on how important it thinks accuracy is over speed. It usually opts for speed, giving rules of thumb too much consideration over straight logic.

This is evident when we make assumptions about someone based on how they are dressed and even how they speak.

By the way, if you know of a place that sells coffee and a cookie for $1.10…let me know!

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For those of us in our 50’s or older, here’s a question. When you were in high school or university and you forgot something, did you ever say, ‘Oh dear, another university senior moment’? Of course you didn’t, you probably just brushed it off without as much as a second thought.

It seems once we turn 50 that every little slip of our memory suggests we are heading down a dementia tunnel. A memory study was conducted amongst a group of seniors, one group was told that our memory declines as we age, the other group was told the opposite, that it doesn’t change much at all. They were given a memory test, sure enough, the group that was told our memory declines, did much worse than the positive group. In fact the positive group didn’t do much worse than a controlled group of college students.

So it turns out that ‘worrying’ about our memory, or those ‘senior moments’ is one of the worse things you can do for your memory. So the next time you stand in front of the open fridge door wondering why you’re standing there, forget where you put your glasses or why you walked from one room to another…..forget about it……literally.

Funny, unique and interactive in his entertaining conference keynotes and workshops, Bob Gray reveals the untapped potential in each of us. His empowering systems and their many applications in the business world give participants immediate ‘walk away’ value. Give him a call, see if he’d be a fit as your next conference keynote.

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Being in the, ‘how to improve your memory’, business all these years, I’ve heard that joke many, many times.  Funny as it is, there’s a great deal of truth behind it.  Not that you will actually improve your memory by lending someone some money, but analyzing why you remember, and applying these reasons to everyday memory problems, will improve your memory.

It’s simple really, it comes down to focus and what’s important to you. You see, when you lend someone some money, let’s say $100, it’s not done without thought and focus, you don’t casually whip out five $20 bills and hand them over without any thought or conversation. No, there is a discussion, probably about why he/she needs the loan, when it will be paid back and so on, and you naturally have a laser sharp focus on those details, especially the ‘when will it be paid back’ bit, because it’s important to you.  Money is important to most of us, so we log that information into our memory; we maybe even write it down later or log it into our phone. The bottom line is, we help our memory to work more effectively because of this focus.

Ask yourself, how focused am I when I’m introduced to someone?  Do I afford them the same laser focus on their details? Will I remember their name tomorrow? How about the name of their spouse who I was just introduced to? Do I write their names down? Again, bottom line, do you place the same importance on details about your clients or customers as you do the $100?  Probably not, but when you do, that’s when you will start to tap into the astonishing power of your memory, you just need to give it a helping hand, make remembering names important to you…basically, lend your brain some money, and you will be amazed at what it can do.

Funny, unique and interactive in his entertaining conference keynotes and workshops, Bob Gray reveals the untapped potential in each of us. His empowering systems and their many applications in the business world give participants immediate ‘walk away’ value. Book Bob Gray today as your next conference keynote speaker.  Watch Bob in action.

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So with the Oscars coming up a friend of mine asked how she could show off at her annual Oscar party by recalling best film winners.  This is what I shared with her for best film winners 2001 – 2010.

First of all we need an image to represent each year, so I gave her rhyming partners.  For 1, (or for our purposes 2001) I told her to visualize a Bun,  2 (2002) A Shoe,  3 Tree,  4 Door,  5 Hive,  6  Sticks, 7 Heaven,  8 Plate,  9 Wine and 10 Pen.

To each of these images I had her attach, in a crazy way, an image which would represent the film.

2001 winner was A Beautiful Mind.  She visualized a Brain (Beautiful Mind) in a hamburger Bun (1 or 2001)

2002 (Shoe) winner was Chicago, she thought of the Windy City, for Chicago, and imagined Dorothy’s Ruby Red Slippers being swept up in a Tornado.

2003 (Tree) Lord of the Rings. The rings of a Tree replaced by the Golden Ring from the movie.

2004 (Door) Million-Dollar Baby.  A huge 6’ baby nailing $1M bank notes to an ornate Door.

2005 (Hive) Crash. A car crashing into a huge bee Hive.

2006 (Sticks) Departed. Running through her favourite DEPARTMENT store smashing everything in site with a huge hockey Stick.

2007 (Heaven) No Country For Old Men.  Old Men, each holding a flag from a different country, jumping from cloud to cloud in Heaven.

2008 (Plate) Slum Dog Millionaire. A basketball player, worth a Million $’s, Slam Dunking a Plate.

2009 (Wine) Hurt Locker.  She saw herself smashing a bottle of Wine against a metal Locker, hurting herself with the broken glass.

2010 (Pen) The King’s Speech.  A Kings Crown with large fountain Pens in place of jewels, and the King uses each pen, one at a time, to write a Speech.

If you visualized each of those images as you read them, go back in your head and test yourself to see if you have them memorized.

This is a basic Peg System, which coupled with another system known as The Phonetic Index, would allow you recall, not only the Best Film winners of every year, but also the best actors, supporting actors, cinematography….. and so on and so on.

These same systems help in business, recalling model numbers, prices, speeches, presentations, clients names…… and so on and so on.

Funny, unique and interactive in his entertaining conference keynotes and workshops, Bob Gray reveals the untapped potential in each of us. His empowering systems and their many applications in the business world give participants immediate ‘walk away’ value. Book Bob Gray today as your next conference keynote speaker.  Watch Bob in action.

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While at work, have you ever received a phone call from home asking you to pick up a few groceries from the store, or been told not to forget to book your dental or doctors appointment as you leave the house? How about trying to remember to write down this to-do list as soon as you sit down in your office, only to forget everything as soon as you’ve poured yourself a coffee?

I recently shared a go to memory system that I have used countless times throughout my life for recalling ‘on the go’ items, things that are thrown at us unexpectedly. It is a centuries old system sometimes called the Journey method, the Roman Room method, more recently called the Memory Palace, essentially it is an ancient Greek method known as the Loci System. (It is also invaluable for recalling presentations without the aid of notes).

Let’s say we need to be able to recall 10 items at any given time. So we first need 10 items or places (Loci), which we are already familiar with. (All memory is based on linking or joining what we wish to remember, to something we already know). The easiest 10 items we ‘already know’ would be furniture or appliances in our home.

This is how it works. Imagine walking through the front door of your home; visualize placing your left or right hand on the wall. Now move your hand along that wall until you hit the first room. This room will contain your first five items ‘you already know’. Write down the first piece of furniture, in my house it would be the living room and a piano. Now continue to mentally walk around the room, what is the next piece or item? In my house it would be a big bay window. Continue until you have written down five. My next three would be sofa, table and picture. Now continuing with your hand on the wall, mentally go to the next logical room and do the same, write down another 5, mine would be the kitchen where I use Coffee Pot, Oven, Ceramic Jars, Sink and Toaster. So we have 10 ‘go to’ items. Now whenever someone calls, or asks us to remember something, we simply mentally attach those items, in a crazy way, to the items in our home.

So you receive a call from home asking you to bring home Bread, Milk and Eggs. We simply link Bread Milk and Eggs to (in my case) the Piano, Bay Window and Sofa. I would visualize a huge loaf of Bread playing my Piano, then a huge carton of Milk being thrown at the Bay Window and my Sofa made out of Eggs, or Eggs being cracked over my Sofa. You need to remember to call the dentist, see a huge dentist drill drilling hundreds of holes into your lovely dining room table. Need to remember to book a tennis court, see your self smashing the picture on your living room wall with a huge tennis racquet. Now we are into the kitchen for another five things if we need it.

I have a 15 item check list I mentally go over before I leave for the road for my speaking engagements. I have used the same 15 items in two rooms where the furniture has since changed, there is no longer a sofa where it used to be and the coffee pot is no longer in that spot in the kitchen, but it doesn’t matter, my check list is permanently attached to those original 15 loci, which is a good thing, because I’d hate to forget to take my Tutu to a presentation, yes, if you haven’t seen my keynote, I do wear a Tutu….which is memorable!

Funny, unique and interactive in his entertaining conference keynotes and workshops, Bob Gray reveals the untapped potential in each of us. His empowering systems and their many applications in the business world give participants immediate ‘walk away’ value. Book Bob Gray today as your next conference keynote speaker.  Watch Bob in action.

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