Peady’s Selling Engagement sponsored by IRD Prospector
Welcome to this week’s post on sales and selling success.
Ever registered for a webinar and joined, only to find it was too long, had no real value and was in essence, a pitch for a purchase or subscription? Yep, me too.
Last week someone changed the rules. Mark McInnes an Aussie sales coach and social selling expert promised the “the worlds shortest power webinar” running 17 minutes.
Did he deliver? Absolutely!!
Mark started on time and in the allotted 17-minute window provided some great advice on improving the quality of your LinkedIn network. His key points were usable, realistic and easy to understand. In the last 30 seconds he provided an understated opportunity for his social selling program.
That got me thinking
Should all sales training be delivered in bite sized pieces just like Mark’s webinar?
On a regular basis I see blogs and articles on the declining human attention span. They say that the average attention span is down from 12 seconds in the year 2000 to eight seconds now (less than the nine-second attention span of your average goldfish) – if that’s true, you stopped reading this post about 20 seconds ago!
On the flip side people watch movies that run two or more hours and binge-watch a Netflix series for even longer. Maybe the problem isn’t that we have shorter attention spans than ever before.
Maybe, it’s that we have a lower tolerance for being bored?
Kill the boredom factor
If the training is genuinely interesting, interactive and awesome, people will pay attention to it. The trick is how?
Here’s my 7 tips for sales training on steroids:
- Interactivity and participation are king
- Make it relevant to everyone
- Ensure all learning styles are covered
- Tell stories, use examples
- Play games
- Have regular breaks
- Use music as an energiser
“There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people” – GK Chesterton.
Until next week, good selling!
About the author
Stephen Pead is a media industry veteran of 30 years with significant experience in direct sales, sales management and general management. He is based in Sydney and specialises in helping SME’s market their businesses more effectively and providing training for salespeople and sales managers.
He can be contacted at [email protected]
