How do you create a defining moment in a conversation that is so potent it stops the listener in her tracks? A moment that gets a person to say “unbelievable”?

These are the moments that push the listener to be fascinated by what you will say next.

In order to do this your statement needs to:

1. Shatter existing paradigms.  What you say needs to either confirm their thoughts or totally blow them out of the water.

2. Create clarity.  It needs to be so easy to understand it does not require a lot of explanation.

3. Be easy to visualize.  They have to be able to relate to it, understand it and believe it.

Today I heard a great one.  Julie was explaining to me why the company she works for, AngelVisits, is so important today.  They do most of their business off of word of mouth and they need to have people want to pay their company to help an elderly person as he/she becomes unable to take care of himself/herself.  Now remember many of their client’s may be in a nursing home or even in a hospice.  This means the listener is thinking, “I am already paying for this elderly person’s care.”

Julie said, “on average, in a nursing home, it takes 40 minutes to respond to a patient’s request when they have to go to the bathroom.”

Wow, can you imagine having to figure out 40 minutes EARLY when you have to use the bathroom?  Most people feel the sensation and then head to the bathroom.  As soon as she said that statement I could feel the pain of not being able to hold it that long, the shame if I couldn’t, the frustration of being so reliant on others, and the realization that having a person in a nursing home is not enough.  That is a defining moment.

She shifted my thinking from ANALYZING her company’s value to REALIZING her company’s value.  Big shift in a short time.

Make sure you too build defining moments in your conversations.

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