Category 3 Distractions: Lack of Topic Familiarity
See how unknown terms can derail you and what to do when you encounter them.
Category three listening distraction, our lack of topic familiarity in a conversation. We know when we're talking to a client or a prospect and they're in an industry we're not familiar with, they use terms and nomenclatures and acronyms. We don't know what the words mean. Especially when we're really trying to dial in with somebody. They can use a single term we don't know. Our listening collapses. What do we do? Here's the thing. We are demonstrating that we're trying to seek to get on their stage. These nomenclatures, it makes up the scene in their movie. Our demonstration that we want to get there gives us permission to ask about the word, the term, the phrase that we don't know. They like it.
If I'm going off on my story of Saddam and I'm like, "I was with JSOC and my AIT was 97 Echo," you can tell people ... I love it when somebody goes, "Eric, JSOC?" I say, "Yeah, that's the Joint Special Operations Command. That was the taskforce to track down Saddam." You know what it tells me? They care. They're really listening. Let's not be afraid to just stop and ask a nomenclature. Now some tips. If we're with a group of people and we know we probably should know what that acronym means, we might want to save that. But here's what I can almost guarantee. Every time you're in a conversation, if somebody uses an acronym, the acronym's never as important as the point they're trying to make for you to understand their perspective.
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