Week 4 · Quiet Gravitas · Day 27 of 28 · Saturday · Out in the world · 5 min
Practise everything at one real event
Day 27 · The Full Run
Saturday’s mission: one real event, the full kit. Entrance sequence, ARE and two follow-ups, three-second eyes, still hands, two sighs, one story, one specific compliment, one clean exit.
Find one real event: a dinner or a party, a networking night, an industry function, the team drinks. Run everything. Entrance sequence. ARE and two follow-ups. Three-second eyes. Still hands. Two sighs before anything that matters. One story. One specific compliment. One clean exit.
Steps
Read your cue card before you go in.
Picture it · 3 examples
Example Read the card
In the car park outside the industry dinner. “Sigh twice. Answer first. Full stop means stop.” Thirty seconds.
Selling In the lift up to the networking night
Me, Cue card, in the lift. “Breath at the door. Find a face. Two follow-ups.” Doors open. You do the first one before you have finished reading the third.
Drinks & dinners On the footpath outside the party
You stop on the footpath and read the three lines. “Still hands. Two sighs before anything that matters. One story.” Then in. The host gets the slow first sentence. The rest follows.
Run the full kit. Don’t aim for perfect; aim for deliberate.
Picture it · 3 examples
Example Run the full kit
Breath at the door. Find a face. Name, said back. Two follow-ups before you talk about yourself. Still hands. Two sighs before the toast. One story. One specific compliment. One clean exit. Not perfect. Deliberate.
Selling At the networking night
Pause at the door, find the one person you came to meet, name said back. Two follow-ups about her new depot. Hands still on the glass. Two sighs before you answer “so what do you do?”. The pilot story. A specific compliment about her talk. Clean exit at nine. Deliberate, all of it.
Drinks & dinners At the birthday
Breath at the door. Find the host. Two follow-ups with the stranger at the drinks table. Hands still. Two sighs before the toast. The forklift story over dessert. A compliment to the cook about the one dish. Exit with a line. You missed the names. Eight out of nine.
Afterwards, the honest debrief in your notes: what is automatic now, what still needs the cue card, who responded differently from a month ago.
Picture it · 3 examples
Example The honest debrief
“Automatic: the entrance, the follow-ups, the names. Still needs the card: stopping after the point. Different from a month ago: the regional head asked for my business card. She never has before.”
Selling Written on the train home
“Automatic: the pause at the door, the breath, the story. Still needs the card: the compliment, I nearly skipped it. Different: she asked for my card. A month ago I’d have been in the corner with my phone.”
Drinks & dinners Written on the couch
“Automatic: the entrance, the sighs, the exit. Still needs the card: names, I lost two. Different: my brother said I seemed ‘less jumpy’. He’s never said anything about how I seem before.”
Today’s notes
One line each.
- What is automatic now
- What still needs the cue card
- Who responded differently from a month ago
Lock it in
Tick what’s true.
I read my cue card first.
Picture it · 3 examples
Example Read the card first
In the car outside the dinner. You nearly skipped it because you were late. You read it. Thirty seconds. The first thing you did inside was the first thing on the card, and the regional head was watching the door.
Selling In the lift
Read in the lift before the networking night. Three lines. The doors opened and you did the first line before you had put the phone away. You would not have done it without the card. That is what the card is for.
Drinks & dinners On the footpath
Read on the footpath, with the party audible through the fence. You felt silly reading a card outside a barbecue. Then you walked in slow and the host saw you, which has not happened at this house before.
I ran the full kit.
Picture it · 3 examples
Example Ran the full kit
Nine moves. Seven happened without thinking. Two needed the card. A month ago, zero were automatic.
Selling At the networking night
Nine moves. The entrance, the breath, the names, the follow-ups, the story and the exit were automatic. The compliment needed the card, and nearly did not happen. Two sighs before you answered “what do you do?” were the thing nobody saw and everybody heard.
Drinks & dinners At the birthday
Eight of nine. The names got away from you. Everything else ran. The forklift story, over dessert, had a pause before the “one day”, and your partner, who has heard it six times, laughed in the pause.
I wrote the debrief.
Picture it · 3 examples
Example Wrote the debrief
Three lines in today’s notes, in the car before you drove home. The third one, about the regional head asking for your card, you read twice before you started the engine.
Selling On the train
Three lines before the second stop. The “still needs the card” line was the compliment. You write it honestly, because the honest line is the one that tells you what to practise on Friday.
Drinks & dinners On the couch
Three lines with the TV on. “Different from a month ago: my brother.” You sit with that one for a while before you write the next one.