By salespodder in quirky ā€”

Between the Boxes to Beat Binary Allegiance

Yep, life can appear pretty polarised at present. The stunning ability to have all the world's information seemingly at our fingertips, alongside hot-take opinion, feels an upheaval like no other.

I've suffered sales meetings descend into zombiefied stasis when an initial pause to 'fact check' spirals into doom loops where nothing is taken as read leaving decision, learning and any chance of progress ossified.

The frequency with which this toxin is affecting our meetings is, to use a word as favoured by the above amplifier, troubling.

Much dogma driven debate surrounds why classrooms that ban smartphones are achieving higher results than those not so. My experience is unequivocal. The less phone scrolling, the better the engagement, enjoyment and ownership of the actions of sales meetings. Both internals and with prospects.

I long since deploy a phrase adapted via Dan Pink back in 2013;

"if not ready to buy this idea then perhaps rent it for me a moment".

There's also the Steven Johnson framing of 'liquid networks'. Where we best allow a 'slow hunch' to incubate from ideas hosted 'on lease' in our subconscious, letting them collide with other people's half-formed concepts before they are ready to be fully realised or 'bought into'.

An environment where the phone is the checkpoint arbiter of every utterance rather than a tool to aid genuine thought collision is not one conducive to selling (or buying).

Which brings us to the above meme flowchart.

It's not a stretch to restate the opening question as 'someone proposes a thing'. Where the outcomes then become 'accept' or 'reject'.

Similarly you could start, 'someone has a say'. The bottom boxes then rendered as 'entrench' or 'override'.

The flowchart is seductive because it feels decisive. Yet in our sales furnace it just freezes the room. We must nip the default in the bud where phones come out and this logic diagram death knell sounds.

Our deal progress depends on opening up the space between the boxes. Where lives the temporary lease, that slow hunch, the half-formed collision.

Our job is to keep that space open long enough for the liquid network to do its work and turn those unfinished or stymied ideas into a golden elixir for everyone's ambitions in the room, prospects and colleagues alike.