To Be Successful At Sales, You Must First Capture The Attention of Your Prospect

Sales people spend their days contacting, presenting to, and selling to buyers. Contrary to what some people may believe, buyers are not sitting on the edge of their chairs just waiting for sales people to stop by and sell their wares. Buyers have important things to do, the least of which is listening to another sales person’s story. Typically, spending time with a sales person is not on the top of any buyers prioritized daily task list. Your presentation to a buyer might be the fifth or sixth presentation they have heard that day, and their attention quotient is well below the threshold of human endurance. They will patiently listen in body, but their mind, interest, and feeling are far spent. Still, other buyers may have more pressing matters on their weary minds and their brain cells are in critical overload. We have all been there, and out of shear habit, persisted with our presentation in the face of utter hopelessness, and then we move on having performed our sales duty.

I remember as a young father, trying to capture the attention of my four-year old son. He was an active inquisitive child, his mind going a mile-a-minute and his attention span shorter than his nose. I would say something to him, or call out his name and get no more response from my actions than if I were talking to a rag doll. I discovered over time that I needed to get his attention and cause him to focus on me before he could hear and comprehend what I was saying. I would reach out my hands and press his little head gently between my open palms, then turn his head so his eyes were looking directly into mine and say, “Listen to my words.”

Don’t you sometimes wish you could do that with a buyer? Once I had his attention, and his eyes were focused on mine, he had an uncanny ability to hear, understand, and take action on my words. As long as I had my young son’s attention, we could communicate. As quickly as his attention was lost, communication was lost. I learned a valuable lesson from my child, one that I learned to adapt and apply as a sales person. If our message is to be understood and acted upon, we must first capture the attention of the buyer. It is not acceptable to believe that just because we are in their presence that we have their attention. We may be in their physical presence, but their minds are miles away.

It is not acceptable to reach out and turn the face of a buyer to focus on our eyes. However, we can do the next best thing, we can capture their attention with an appropriate prop and dialogue. We can present them with something that is so compelling that they will not blink or think a stray thought until we have explained our “attention getter”. The attention getter has three main purposes:

1. Capture attention
2. Provoke interest
3. Get them to want to hear more.

Imagine, even after listening to half a dozen sales people in the same day, capturing the attention of a buyer and causing them to mentally engage with every word you speak!

Let me you an example of what I mean. One of my clients worked for a moving and storage company. A typical homeowner who was planning to move or relocate would call three or four moving companies to get quotes for the packing and transportation of their household goods. For the most part, homeowners choose a moving company based on lowest price. My client used an attention getter to capture the attention of the prospect and to focus on quality, not just price, and to set themselves apart from all the other companies quoting the move. The attention getter went like this:

After greeting the homeowner and an introduction, the sales person would explain to the homeowner the process they would be going through to prepare an estimate for moving their household goods. The salesperson would explain that they would need to walk through the home and identify all large items, calculate cubic volumes and weights, factor in all specialty items, packing times, etc. Once the initial walk through was completed, they would review the results with the homeowner to ensure nothing had been missed. During the few moments the sales person was giving this explanation to the home owner, he was wrapping a champagne glass that he had removed from his pocket in some packing material, and then he placed it in a small box, sealed it, and handed it to the home owner.

Now the homeowner was watching with great interest, but was not too sure of the sales person’s intent. He would ask the homeowner to throw the package outside onto the driveway or sidewalk. There was always a slight hesitation because the homeowner knew what had been placed in the box. The sales person would insist. After the box was thrown the sales person would then walk out to the driveway and pick up the package. As he unwrapped the package, he would tell the homeowner about Bob and Fred who would be doing the packing and handling of their household goods if their company were fortune enough to earn their business. He would explain that Bob and Fred would do a much better job packing their property than he had done with the champagne glass. By this time the unbroken glass, to the utter amazement of the homeowner had been removed from the packing. The inference here was, “if the glass didn’t break, your household goods won’t break either”.

The sales person had certainly captured the attention of the prospect causing them to start asking very specific questions about the move. On several occasions the homeowner would go into the kitchen, pick up the phone and cancel the scheduled visits from other moving companies, having decided to use my client, even though a price quote had not yet been prepared.

An attention getter will open the mind of the buyer, and allow your message to be heard, comprehended and acted upon.