Today’s sales environment is more complex than it has ever been. We are forced to perform phone calls and follow an inside sales process.
We are not crazy about this!
But? Maybe we should be!
You see, you can do a lot more calling over the phone than you can in person. The problem is that our contacts and our prospects are busier than ever.
Being always connected, customer’s and prospect’s time is constantly threatened. Our prospects and customers are constantly being barraged with endless emails.
Their to-do lists are a mile long. They are stifled by unplanned patient/resident issues and countless interruptions. Reports are due, patients/client’s family are calling, projects are unfinished, etc…
There just isn’t enough time in the day to get everything done.
Our prospects are crazy busy. Because they are so busy, they guard their time with a determined tenacity. Our customers and prospects are NOT going to give up their time easily. They are already overwhelmed.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t bode well for us. As salespeople, it’s our job to get our customers’ and prospects’ attention. It’s our job to get them to pay attention to us. Our success depends on our ability to get customers and prospects to call us back, to take our calls, to give us their valuable time.
To gain your prospects’ attention and get them to give up their time, you need a trigger. Something that will have them pause and say “I want to know more.”
THIS TRIGGER: Curiosity!
What is it?
Curiosity is when we disrupt our contacts’ or prospects’ way of thinking. Our brains spend hours, days, weeks, months, and years establishing patterns of those things around us. As we do our jobs and live our lives, our mind scans our daily surroundings and maps our patterns. These patterns then become predictable.
Our subconscious mind embraces these patterns as the norm. These patterns are captured by our minds. By embedding these consistent patterns in our subconscious, our conscious mind focuses on the bigger more pertinent information coming in. In essence, by identifying patterns the brain allows our conscious mind to work more efficiently, ignoring the little, redundant information we are inundated with every day.
Let me give you an example. How many of you have been so deep in thought when you were driving somewhere, that when you arrived at your destination you are like, “How did I get here”? This is your brain using patterns of the norm that is captured in your mind and puts driving on autopilot, so you can think through issues and not about driving.
What’s happening is we are programmed to tune stuff out. I am sure you have heard of the expression “Talk to the hand.” Well, giving the hand to salespeople and other needless distractions help us to be productive. This human tool has a negative effect on our salespeople. Our Sales executives get tuned out!
To capture a prospect’s attention and avoid getting the hand, we have to disrupt their pattern of thinking. You have to get their subconscious to say, “Hey! That’s not right. That’s not what I am expecting.” When this happens our subconscious sends a message to our brain that says “hey, this isn’t right. You need to take notice.” Surprise is a killer tool to get the mind’s attention.
When our expectations aren’t met, when our patterns are disrupted, our brain cells fly into action. This process begins in a tiny region of the brain called the anterior cortex. When we expect something that doesn’t happen, the brain creates a unique signal called the error-related negativity signal or as neuroscientists call it, the “oh, crap!” circuit. I like the “oh, crap!” name best.
As salespeople who make cold calls (or just need to get prospects and customers to listen), we need to figure out how to trigger the anterior cortex. We have to get to the “oh, crap!” circuit. The way to do this is to be intriguing. I know many of you are thinking, Cheryl you have gone crazy. But folks, I have spent hours studying neuroscience, and this stuff works so well, I use it on my own family! Don’t tell my husband! But you can get yours to do the dishes using this stuff correctly.
Intrigue or curiosity is created through the unexpected. It’s created in our ability to trip up the predictable pattern our contacts and prospects have. In other words, provide information our clients and prospects didn’t expect.
Have you ever found yourself watching a stupid TV show because you just want to know what happens in the end?
Have you ever stayed tuned to the 10:00 PM news, even though you were tired, because the lead was “When we return, see how the man eluded the police by scaling a 50 story high building!”
The reason is that we want to know something we don’t already know. We become curious and WANT the answer. It is like getting an itch, and we want to scratch it. To scratch the itch, we will invest our time. We’ll stay up later to watch the news even when we are tired. We’ll sit through a stupid TV show, and we’ll even return a salesperson’s call.
This gap in knowledge is called the “Gap Theory” and it is a salesperson’s best friend.
Gap theory is when there is a gap in our knowledge that can’t be filled. It creates pain. The pain won’t go away until we gain knowledge or fill the gap.
You want to get more prospects to call you back? Fill the gap. Shift your thinking from: “What information do I want to convey?” to “What questions do I want my prospects to ask?”
Our High-Performance Sales Academy teaches behavioral neuroscience tips to get past the gate keepers and more. To get started right now and learn how to become a high-performance sales executive for only $497 click here: Earn More Referrals Now. You will gain immediate access to our High-Performance Sales Academy as well as our new updated version being released soon!
Our upcoming version will include our inside sales training. Buy the High-Performance Sales Academy training, and Cheryl will give the first 5 to buy a free pass to also receive the inside sales training! Just email Cheryl@homecaresales.com to receive your gift! Next week my blog will share more tips!
