Memorisation vs Internalisation

I had lunch a few weeks ago at a great little restaurant. Our waiter was very well spoken; his restaurant patter flowed from his tongue like poetry.

Until that is, we started talking back. Whenever we interrupted his well prepared dialogue he stammered, blinked wildly and then went back to his script as though we’d said nothing at all.

He’d memorised what he was meant to say beautifully, but he hadn’t internalised it at all and as such, if we didn’t say our lines perfectly, he was thrown. Unfortunately, no one had given us a script for eating lunch!

I’ve written before on the fact that I love scripts and dialogues. I love it that when I call my hairdresser they answer the phone: “How can I make your day?”. I love that my old real estate agency answers the phone: “It’s a great day at Harcourts”.

That’s memorisation. But when you ask someone what the company’s all about, they can memorise your mission statement or your company profile and repeat it verbatim or they can have internalised that information so that they can speak conversationally about it (with interjections) and not be thrown.

Memorisation’s a great start, but internalisation and being able to interject a script with personality is key.

Many thanks to Rob Morton from the Disney Institute for reminding me what an important topic this is in a recent speech of his.

Kirsty Dunphey is the youngest ever Australian Telstra Young Business Woman of the Year, author of two books (her latest release is ‘Retired at 27, If I Can do it Anyone Can’) and a passionate entrepreneur who started at age 15 and opened her own real estate agency at 21. Currently Kirsty heads up www.reallysold.com the premium online copywriting site for real estate agents and is a co-director of Elephant Propertywww.elephantproperty.com.au Launceston, Tasmania’s only boutique real estate agency purely for investment property owners. Kirsty’s other ventures are outlined at her website www.kirstydunphey.com where you can also sign up for her newsletter.

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