In our blog post three weeks ago, I proclaimed that the biggest factor between good and great salespeople is that great salespeople are proactive and do the things that make them great. The good ones don’t. They respond. They work hard. They’re nice people. They’re good salespeople … but they’re not great, and they won’t be good when the market is no longer booming.
With this proclamation, I committed to releasing five ideas for salespeople to be more proactive in their week-to-week activity. The first three were 1. Start small, 2. Block off proactive time on your calendar, and 3. Do it early. And this week we have number four.
Idea #4: Turn off all notifications.
Our mind is wired for survival. Period. End of story. Every reaction is stimulated by the urge to not starve, not freeze to death, and not get eaten by a predator. Even though we don’t have those challenges in our society anymore, nor have most of our ancestors had any of these fears for centuries, our minds are still wired to keep us from those dire situations.
One of the outcomes of the human mind protecting us from death is our inability to tolerate boredom. We can’t be bored. As humans evolved, the ones that were content with relaxing and enjoying the peace that boredom brought starved, froze, or were eaten – some probably had all three tragedies happen to them. Since these people died early, they didn’t reproduce. Only the anxious survived and reproduced … and here we are … almost eight billion people with complete inability to sit in a quiet room by ourselves for more than ten minutes.
While our minds helped our bloodlines survive, they don’t’ do a very good job helping us focus. Our gadget makers and advertising executives have known this for decades. All those beeps and lights grab the attention of our antsy minds and keep us from the deep thinking that can really make a difference in your career and life. The deep thought where brilliance and creativity and joy are born.
Ok, I think you get it. Turn off the stupid phone, email, watch, doorbell, beeper, whatever. Turn them off. Focus on the task at hand. Think deeply. Develop great ideas for your customers. Be great and remember … greatness doesn’t happen between text messages.
See you next week for our final factor that separates good and great salespeople.
