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convince them in 90 seconds or less
When he called the people he was referred to, he
said, “I’ll do breakfast, lunch, dinner, coffee at midnight—
whatever it takes to meet you face-to-face.” The purpose
of the call was to get them to say, “Yes, I’ll meet you.”
What Alfred was doing was getting himself out there.
The call and the meetings were opportunities to show-
case himself. There was little pressure to give him a job
because all he asked for was referrals. Within five years,
Alfred had made more than a comeback—he was chair-
man of a major national mortgage bank. And he’s still
making new connections.
Job Interviews
An interview is a presentation with you as the subject.
As in any presentation, you need a hook and a point,
an opening and a close (for more on this, see Chapter 12).
And like any presenter, you need to learn how to breathe;
we’ll talk about this in Chapter 13. For now, let’s talk about
your hook.
Remember your ten-second commercial? Well, just
like a smart advertiser, sometimes you want to hit a
very specific audience. Advertisers look at demographic
slices—say, women eighteen to thirty-four. You’re look-
ing to score with a nine-to-five audience. That’s a slightly
silly way of saying you should customize your ten-second
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