Thought Tweet #526 Invest the time it takes to understand people. Understanding provides for trust, motivation, & leadership.

The Thinking Behind The Tweet

In part, inspired by a re-reading of Michael Gerber's 'The E-Myth Revisited'. Pick a demographic - learn its psychographics - and don't forget, we're dealing with people...not statistics.

Have you had trouble getting people's attention?

Is it becoming more difficult to get people's attention?

If you have had trouble getting people's attention and that problem seems to be worsening...you're not alone.

And, there's good reason for it.

Here's the picture...

Some experts say each of us is 'hit' by 5,000 advertising impressions a day...others say the number could be as high as 50,000 per day. 

Regardless, 5,000 or 50,000, that's a lot of advertising hits per day. The ads hit our eyes and ears...as we drive down the street, look at magazines, get our hair cut, stop behind a bus, read our mail, look at our BlackBerry or iPhone, watch a movie at the theatre, visit a restaurant, buy gas for our car, rent a movie, watch TV, surf the Internet...logos, marketing messages, branding, branding, branding. 

100,000,000 hours per weekend...that's how much time people in North America spend every weekend watching TV commercials.

We are mostly immune to the ads. 

Let me rephrase that - our conscious minds are mostly immune to the ads. However, all those thousands and thousands of ads and branding pictures get through our eyes and ears and into our unconscious brains. And, that's where the problem starts. I mean - if you want to get people's attention - that's where the problem starts. All of the incoming stimuli - 5,000 or 50,000 advertising hits per day on top of numerable other stimuli Mother Nature, Man, and everyday life expose our brains to - gnaws away at our brains.

That's why it is so darned hard to get people's attention.

During a conversation last week, I mentioned I had been studying sales performance at a number of companies.

During the last 15 years, many B2B enterprises have experienced difficulties with sales. For some, the tech meltdown about 12 years ago caused major changes which neutered their sales performance. For most, the worldwide economic meltdown which began about 4 years ago and still lingers on as [at least] the tail of a recession shook sales performance to its core.

It is time for better sales performance, better results in the near-term and growing results as the future unfolds.

All of us who run B2B enterprises should be working on this.

As part of my effort, for small to mid-sized B2B enterprises, I have been considering 4 main questions:

1. Does a Sales System - that is - does a process containing specific steps and routes - when followed, lead to sales success? 
2. If the answer to #1 is 'Yes' then can a wide range of people be trained to follow those steps, or, are only certain types of people able to learn how to succeed?
3. If the answer to #1 is 'Yes' then is that the only way to succeed?
4. Have the steps/routes changed in response to technological developments commonly known as social media?