Allow Power Browsing

Escaping the rain from the second Summer in a row to be a washout in London yesterday, I read an article in one of those supplement sections of newspapers aimed, I think, at people with more time on their hands than they deserve.

As my heated panini did its trick, I learned about ‘power browsing’.  Apparently, some academic luminaries have studied the ‘google generation’.  The access to infomation the new digital dawn provides is changing our intake habits.  ‘Digital immigrants’, those that have adapted to technology as it took hold, view things vertically, whereas ‘digital natives’, people that have grown up with technology as omnipresent parts of their lives, think more horizontally.

What this means is that rather than seek out a specific piece of information, and drill deep inside before forming opinions or taking things in, nowadays, people skim and bounce around the top of several pieces of information.

This has wonderful connotations for us in selling.  We all know the ideal of presenting things in short-sharp bursts with sub-headings aplenty.  The evolution now seems to be that sound, pictures and video, multiple sources and rapid parallel processing should be entertained.

So, if you sell solutions, talk to way more people than you might have previously within your prospect.  Get out your mobile and take their pictures, snap examples of situations where you can improve things, video a ‘before’ process in action.  I’ve never done this but can already see myself taking pics of screen-grabs with this theory in mind.