The Art of Attention Part 1

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The art of attention part 1Last 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 people’s 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. Continue reading →

Protecting your most valuable resource

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Wasting time, your most valuable resourceIn 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. Continue reading →

Advances and Continuations

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How often have we watched someone, or been that person, who’s standing in the lobby ringing the bell again and again as though that continued effort would actually speed up the elevator’s arrival? Doesn’t make sense, does it? Yet all of us, in many contexts, are subject to the same kind of conditioned behavior that wastes time and resources and completely fails to move us closer to our goal. That’s called wheel spinning, and in sales it is a costly and draining activity.

Advances and continuations - arrows and circleNeil Rackham’s seminal book, Spin Selling, focuses on this significant problem by talking about continuations and advances. The latter move the sales process closer to a resolution while continuations have you dog-paddling in place, and over time are like being stuck in the mire. Advances can be small or large, but they all move you towards the finish line. They include activities like scheduling the next sales meeting, making a webinar presentation or simply getting the name and title of a particular decision-maker. An advance may also disqualify a “suspect” by confirming he’s not at all open to an insurance review, and while that may not be what you want to hear, it resolves the situation, or as we say at PMA, it gets that target business ‘off the radar.’ Continue reading →

Inquiry and Assertion

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Inquiry and assertion - question mark and exclamation pointDon Draper, the high-flying ad agency Creative Director in the Emmy Award-winning TV series Mad Men, is telling someone about the subtleties of human motivation: “Trust me, I’m in advertising,” he says with sincerity. Hearing this wonderfully ironic remark, we smile knowing all too well that advertising people shouldn’t be trusted; they’re masters of spinning the details to get us to buy what they’re selling. And while, it has been said, people do like to buy, they don’t like being sold.

The overwhelming tsunami of the world’s sales messages is greater than ever and growing all the time. Our natural reaction to this onslaught of propaganda is to protect ourselves by ignoring it, or reacting defensively. The more persistent the attempts to influence us, and the stronger the assertions – the more defensive we become. But as teleprospectors and sales people it’s our job to communicate the value of what we offer. How can we accomplish that without triggering negativity and resistance? Continue reading →