Chapter 45 TECHNIQUE 40 Find out what's hot in your partner

I have a doctor friend, John, who recently married a charming Japanese wife, Masami.John told me that when they were first invited to a dinner party and met John's colleagues, Masami panicked.She wanted to make a good impression, but was too nervous to talk to the American doctor.John was the only American doctor she knew.When the two were dating, they didn't spend a lot of time discussing medicine. John said to her, "Don't worry, Yami, the doctors are always asking the same questions. When you see them, just say, 'What is your specialty' or 'You are an employee of a certain hospital? Doctor?' Just fine."

"Next, if you want to go a little deeper," John continues, "you can throw in a few of these types of questions: 'What is your relationship with the hospital?' or 'How does the current healthcare environment affect you?' These are hot topics that doctors care about because healthcare changes every day." Masami asked these questions verbatim, John said.At the dinner, she went around asking different doctors what their specialty was and how they were related to the hospital.As a result, she became the center of attention at the banquet.Later, many colleagues congratulated John on finding such a charming and knowledgeable woman.

Not just doctors.All walks of life have their own issues of concern, and laymen will never understand those unchanging contents.For example, independent bookstores complain all the time about the big chains taking their business.The accountant tossed and turned at night, worrying only about liability compensation for audit errors.Also, we writers are always complaining about the magazine's refusal to pay electronic rights to our painstaking works. Suppose some unlucky fellow goes to a party and finds that the place is full of writers.It's not easy talking to these writers, they often get out of their mouths before figuring out what they think.It can be particularly painful for people who are accustomed to speaking in everyday language.But if he could call any of his writer friends before the party to find out what was going on, he'd be able to strike up a good conversation with these vocabularies.I call this technique finding the other person's hot spots.

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Before you jump blindly into a bunch of binders, or join a bunch of dentists, know what's hot in that line right now.Every line has issues of concern that are not known to the outside world.Ask your fellow travelers to find out what's hot.Then focus on the hot spots and heat up your conversation.