So let me get the easy stuff out of the way first . . .
Your biggest competitor isn’t the other guy/girl dude/dudette or company up the street doing what you do.
Its much bigger!
Its much deadlier and . . .
It’s a silent killer in that most people fail to properly acknowledge its existence.
Your biggest competitor is everything else . . .
competing for the attention of your crazy busy prospects and customers!
Things like all those phone calls, emails they send and receive, dealing with their internal customers, external customers.
All the interruptions they face daily (Wendy Cole from Time Magazine says we are interrupted 7 times per hour)
All the advertising messages they are exposed to (FastCompany Magazine says we are exposed to over 3,000 of them daily)
How about a workload that due to downsizing is now the equivalent of the work of at least another person?
And just to make it interesting . . . the pace is getting faster and faster!
I could go on and on but here’s what it all means
1) As much as I wish people had more than enough time to have us on the brain, they don’t. From the moment we hang up a phone with them, leave their office or get our product in their hands . . . there’s lots of things showing up to compete for their attention!
2) As much as we’d like to think they are completely focused on us and our message when we are communicating with them, there are other things competing for their attention. In other words . . . there’s a really good chance that when you’re talking with someone, they’re having an “outer body experience” in that they are mentally someplace else!
If you acknowledge this premise that our prospects and clients have many things competing for their attention . . . What’s your plan to be more memorable, more compelling and to keep them engaged?
A great question to reflect on today and an even better question to pose in your next sales meeting.
Meanwhile, this is a big part of our focus on our Presenting Your Solutions With Impact webinar series kicking off this Wednesday. Details can be found here. Can’t make it? No worries, we’re recording it!
