Recently I attended a seminar put on by the Texas High Achievers here in Houston. The featured Speaker was Bob Nicholl, author of “Remember The Ice”. This was a great event. Bob was motivating and contagious.
His story is simple, but powerful.
He said one day while living in Phoenix Arizona during the hottest part of the summer, he went into a convenience store that he had been frequenting for a while. He asked the guy at the local convenient store how his ice sales were. The store owner told him, “honestly not very good”.
Bob thought that was awfully strange since it was the middle of summer in one of the hottest locations in the United States. But, what Bob had already noticed many times before were the signs on the two registers that stated “Don’t Forget The Ice”.
So Bob asked the store owner if he had a pen and a piece of paper that he could write on. Then, Bob wrote down on the paper “Remember The Ice“. He asked the store owner to please take down the old sign “Don’t Forget The Ice” and put up the new one that read “Remember The Ice“.
So, the store owner did as Bob had asked. Bob said he came back in a few weeks and asked how the store owner how his ice sales were again. The guy grabbed him and said “what did you do, my ice says have skyrocketed”?
He asked the clerk, if I tell you don’t think of the word blue, what do you think of? Immediately you think of the word blue. He said if you tell someone to forget something, that’s exactly what they’re going to do. The store clerk understood right away. It was his word choice that boosted the sale of ice.
Bob says there are 7 naughty words that you should remove from your vocabulary to increase the effectiveness of your communication. He said these naughty words leave our communication all “knotted” up.
The “not-ty” words are:
Not, Don’t Can’t, Won’t, Wouldn’t, Couldn’t, Shouldn’t.
See, Bob’s message is that word choice is of the utmost importance. It’s how we can turn ineffective communication to effective communication and understanding.
Try it for yourself. Take the “not-ty” words from your vocabulary and see how your communication in your relationships, job, business, and sales improves.
I’d love to hear your replies once you’ve tried.
To find out more about Bob Nicholl and Remember the Ice visit:
Posted by Coty Evans 