Another Healthy Five A Day

I blogged a few years back on how the roaring success of the 5-a-day fruit and veg portions message gave rise to a more general wellbeing action quintet. And pondered how these could translate to winning sales activity.

Well, now the trick emerges once more, this time for five-a-day good parenting lessons. Thankfully, London’s Telegraph provides opinion closely aligned to mine on this matter.

Somehow sending them off to work, like in this 2008 picture from Morocco, is not one of them. Let’s look at the list anyway;

1. Read to your child for 15 minutes
2. Play with your child on the floor for 10 minutes
3. Talk with your child for 20 minutes with the television off
4. Adopt positive attitudes towards your child and praise them frequently
5. Give your child a nutritious diet to aid development

Before we get into this a little deeper, I feel compelled to point out that the social web throws up all kinds of real-world alternatives in the wake of this study. They include such key parental instructions such as; don’t answer back, do as you’re told, not under my roof, speak only when spoken to & clean your room. Anyway…

Now, I’m not necessarily suggesting that prospects are like children, nor that they need stringent dietary advice. Neither for that matter are the salespeople you may work with or manage. Although I do know people that would challenge these sentiments. But if you take a moment to examine the bullet words, there is scope to build a progressive daily framework around them; Read Play Talk Praise Feed.

Can you use uninterrupted time to looker deeper at a current hot issue?

Do you enable time to speculate on something that may not bear fruit this, or even next, sales period?

How often do you concentrate on the mechanics of your sales, or their buying, process?

Then there’s the little thank-you-and-well-done that can go a long way…

And what about the nutritious supply of leads or consultancy bonus?

A few things there to think about during the summer hols.

Sharp readers of the aforementioned journo’s blog will notice the famed ‘tipping point’ for when an idea “spreads like a flame”. This is the much touted ten percent trigger. Another sweet reminder that you may not need to persuade everybody under the sun that your latest wheeze is a winner. Simply focus on the first tenth.