The Essential Step To Earning More Face Time with Prospects

Way back in 1971, before the dawn of the Internet, Herbert Simon, an economist at Carnegie Mellon University, foresaw the challenge of the information-rich world we live in now.He wrote, “A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention…and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.”This prescient professor, who by the way, went on to be honored as a Nobel Laureate in economics, predicted the problem we all wrestle with today in our professional and our personal lives – managing INFORMATION OVERLOAD.In fact, every single prospect that you are calling on is slogging through volumes of written info, through graphs, charts, videos, and data over the Internet and social media. They are trying to make sense of solicited and unsolicited advice from co-workers and peers.And, they are sorting through piles of emails and voicemails and maybe even good old snail mail from multiple salespeople like you.It can be overwhelming for the prospect to decide which seller going to give his or her precious time to. In his research Simon found that busy people, in deciding how to allocate their time among all the sources of information contending for their attention, give priority to those that provide the biggest return on the time that they invest.In sales terms this means that the seller that provides the greatest return on the time a prospect gives them, will be rewarded with more time to sell to the prospect. It’s quite simple. If the prospect gives you their time and you deliver significant value in return, what will happen? That’s right. They will invest more time in you.I call this “Return on Time Invested,” or “ROTI,” for short.To break through the clutter in the prospect’s mind, and to command their attention, every single sales interaction you have with a prospect must deliver value in the form of complete answers and sound, insightful guidance in the shortest possible time. This means that you must have a solid plan to deliver value each and every time you ask for some of their time.A plan. This means that you have to invest your own time to prepare a plan for every sales touch with a prospect. Remember that every sales interaction needs to have a goal and an outcome. The goal is to deliver certain value to the prospect that will enable them to move at least one step forward in their decision-making process. The outcome is an agreement on the next steps to be taken. Success depends on preparation, not improvisation.The benefits to you, the salesperson, are substantial. If your prospects experience a positive ROTI on the time they invest in you, then that’s how you accelerate their buying process. That’s how you earn the role of trusted advisor. That’s how you earn their business.