Attention

Last issue we wrote about the importance of protecting one of our scarcest and most important resources - time. Today we’re going to talk about another precious resource – other peoples’ attention.  

Before you plow the field, you’ve got to first remove the boulders. Before you till the soil of any sales opportunity you first have to deal with the big obstacles that get in the way of open, two-way communication. Plowing ahead on a prospecting or sales call without first having people’s attention is like listening to the radio while the signal keeps fading in and out. It’s hard for anyone to understand what’s going on and it’s annoying as hell.

Sometimes producers (especially newer ones) feel they have to make the most of an opportunity because they’ve gotten someone to take their call or sit down with them. Even half of the prospect’s attention, they may think, is better than no attention at all. Unfortunately, that’s usually not the case. To use another apt metaphor, if you’re trying to drive a car but the wheels aren’t squarely on the road, you just won’t have the necessary traction to go anywhere.

When people are distracted by phone calls, deadlines, interruptions and their own moods, attention wanders and dissipates. It’s easy to tell from obvious clues when you don’t have someone’s full attention: you hear him shuffling papers, typing or talking with others in the room; she sounds distracted or disengaged; he seems annoyed or impatient.  In these situations first get the boulders out of the field before going any further:

·       “It sounds like you’ve got people there in your office now. Maybe this isn’t a good time to talk…””

·       “Can we schedule this call for another time when you’re not so busy? It seems like you’ve got a lot going on.”

·       “It looks like it’s not really a good time for you to meet with me now. Can we reschedule for another time that would be better?”

Most of the time the prospect will appreciate your consideration and happily reschedule. If they don’t, they may be telling you they’re not a genuine prospect and it’s better to let the situation go for now. If someone insists that you go ahead when they’re not really paying attention, it’s usually best to let them know, in a friendly but firm way, that you don’t want to continue under the circumstances. You have something of value to share – a solution, a service, a product – and you don’t want to go further unless you’re both able to give it the attention it deserves. The important point, when you’re communicating with prospects, is that attention is a necessary element and if you don’t have it it’s better not to proceed.

Of course you won’t always be able to get people’s undivided attention. If your sales pipeline consists of only calm people with plenty of time to give you, you’re probably leaving out 95% of the business universe. Situations vary and people’s tolerances for distraction are different. Certain “high-value” business targets might warrant a more accommodating approach. With some people five minutes is all you’re going to get and to make the most of it you’ve got to be engaging, clear and succinct. And make sure they know you value their attention.

Protecting your most valuable resource

Protecting your most valuable resource

In any business day, we’ve all got a limited number of hours to accomplish our purposes and an endless number of distractions and detours that can pull us off track and make us much less productive.

Prospecting for new business – whether you’re making cold calls or networking for referrals – is a critical phase of the sales process that’s especially vulnerable to time-eroding detours. If you’re not reaching the right people efficiently and qualifying them promptly, you’re liable to end up like the college student who got four Fs and a D because he spent too much time on one subject.

As a producer you need to make constant decisions about how and where to allocate your time and focus energy. Here are three major time traps and essential strategies for avoiding them:

Not qualifying prospects early enough

Using compiled teleprospecting lists lets you “pre-qualify” targets according to company size, industry group, geographic location and other criteria. But compiled data is frequently incorrect (most list companies will credit you for more than 15% inaccurate records), so confirming these details on the phone is critical.

Since it almost always takes multiple attempts to reach key people at most businesses, before you invest valuable prospecting time tracking decision makers to see if you can schedule a meeting, you want to be sure the businesses themselves match your target criteria. The right time to determine if a prospect meets your threshold for account revenue is before you’ve set an appointment with them – not after.

Failing to disqualify time wasters and tire-kickers

Dealing effectively with tire-kickers and window shoppers is a challenge that warrants at least one complete chapter in the prospecting bible. Have you ever called the same person multiple times over many months and found him receptive and friendly every time but always in the middle of something and too busy to really talk? Have you resisted asking if he was actually open to meeting with you because you wanted to keep the vibe friendly and not come off too pushy? When you look at your call logs and email history, are you surprised at how much time you’re spending on these phantom prospects?

The trick is to stay focused on the goal – finding real sales prospects. A salesman I know used to judge a prospect's value by how long they spent on the phone with him. The longer the call, the stronger the possibilities, he thought. But sadly that’s not the case at all. Many people like to talk and will use up your time doing that unless you assert yourself and keep the conversation on point.

Falling prey to mindless habits of repetition

When activities like dialing a phone number (or pulling the handle on a slot machine) pay off occasionally but not consistently, we can develop habits, due to this random reinforcement, that are hard to eliminate (and often very unproductive).  Random reinforcement is intrinsic to the sales process. You can't eliminate it. So it’s really important to see how it conditions us to repeat activities - often past the point of effectiveness.

Once you understand how you get stuck repeating activities that don’t produce results you can let your critical judgment trump habit and do what works instead of what worked.

The effort you invest in connecting with any target company -- the number of attempted calls, emails and so forth -- should be guided by considerations like the value of the account and sales intelligence gathered about the company’s buying process, rather than by hard-to-extinguish habits formed by past reward patterns. Poker players talk about knowing when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em. That knowing is what makes the winners in any game.