Stop Texting While Driving (Sales)

According to recent studies, the human brain is not able to multi-task the way many believe it should. Still, many sales people try to juggle multiple tasks at once and that may be a reason why many sales and marketing initiatives miss the mark. To be effective in this new highly complex world of sales and marketing requires an unprecedented amount of clarity and focus.

Unfortunately, too many sales and marketing leaders are texting while they're driving the sales and marketing machine and this has a tremendous impact on the results they are trying to achieve. Texting while executing sales and marketing programs put the entire company at risk.

Why texting while selling and marketing can be a bad idea. 

Your brain has diminished functionality when you try to multi-task (multi-tasking is a myth).

·  Talking on a cell phone and driving quadruples your risk of getting in a car accident, the equivalent of drunk driving with a .08 blood alcohol level.

·  Texting and driving causes your risk of getting into an accident to increase by a factor of 8, the equivalent of driving with a blood alcohol content of…well let’s just say you’d probably be unconscious.

Being impaired, is usually accompanied by the following symptoms.

·  Loss of understanding

·  Stupor

·  Poor reasoning

·  Inability to concentrate

·  Diminished perception, both depth and peripheral

Anyone  in this frame of mind will have trouble executing any meaningful 21st century sales and marketing plan if they do not have clarity and focus. 

Clarity is the exact understanding or perception of a given subject.

Focus is the ability to fixate and concentrate on a specific reference point.

Both of which can’t happen if you’re texting while selling and marketing.

What does texting while you sell and market look like?

·  You don’t have a full understanding how the buyer's journey interacts both online and offline.

·  Time is not blocked out on your calendar on a routine basis to stop for clarity and focus.

·  The sales organizations process has not been mapped to the buyers journey.

·  Marketing assest and resources are organized by product.

·  Most of your time is spent in corporate internally focused meetings.

·  Over-reliance on adhering to strategies and tactics used in the past without embracing new ones.

·  Accept most new insights in sales and marketing at face value, skimming the article vs. reading it.

Why is this a problem?

·  You’ll overspend on solutions that won’t have a business impact and waste a lot of money on trial and error

·  Sales people will not ramp up very quickly and they will struggle to be as agile and nimble as they need to be. 

·  Being mis-aligned with the buyers journey leaves you pre-occupied with yourself and you miss vital clues in the market which diminishes your competitive capacity.

·  It’s much easier to improve incrementally than it is to have to do major retrofits because you call behind. 

·  There are two sides to every coin and in the case of analysts they typically play both sides of the fence. They charge a company to get reviewed and they charge their clients for access to the report. The companies that sell the latest and greatest solutions have a vested interest in covering up their warts and this leaves you at disadvantage.

How to stop texting while selling and marketing

Here are some potential actions you can take during this time of “not texting”

o    Carve out at least four hours per quarter to look 18 months into the future and anticipate what will you need to have clarity and focus on relative to sales and marketing. 

o     Review and study what companies that are growing faster and profitably than their peers are growing. Reach out to one of their leaders and talk to them about their top concerns over the next 18 months as it relates to sales and marketing execution. 

o    Review trade journals of suppliers who provide services or products to your industry. Focus on articles and comments that speak to what they believe to be future trends they will need to meet for you.

o    Review at least one publication (online or print) that will give you a perspective of business on a global level - i.e. Harvard Business Review, The Economist etc. 

o    On a monthly basis, set aside one hour to review all sales opportunities from a closed-won, closed-lost perspective.

o    On a weekly basis, set aside 60 minutes to evaluate the health of the sales pipeline and ensure you have a plan of attack to close opportunities. Once you have reviewed this data, identify the top one or two anchors that are holding you back. Then, set out to remove the anchors to better prepare yourself for the future. If you can carve out the time, you could play an Innovation Game (www.innovationgames.com) with your team called Speed Boat.

o       Set up a call with industry analysts or leaders of organizations and take the time to develop a deep understanding of the strategies and tactics you trying to execute. Note:  I’m always amazed at how misunderstood social media is by sales and marketing leaders and how little effort they’ve put into understanding how it actually impacts the buyers journey. A 30 minute call with an analyst can shed a lot of light on any given subject.

Stop texting, and look up at the world around you. You may be shocked at how much faster you reach your destination when you stop texting and pause to get clarity and focus.

For more information on how to enable your sales and marketing teams, visit Mindmatrix.