Hyperactive Prospects

In a doctor’s waiting room the other day I flicked through a pamphlet with tips to deal with ADHD children. Quite bizarrely I found most of them offered highly applicable tactics when faced with a difficult prospect – tricky in the sense of where you find attention often seems to wane whilst promoting your cause. Here’s a few extrapolated examples:

Get Attention. When they allow people to enter the room with something else, answer their mobile, or nip out to tend to something ‘urgent’, you’re in a bad space. So remove the chance of such disturbances happening.

Make Clear Rules. A sneaky one, but one that can really work if you set out the rules of engagement, so to speak, as early as possible. This will ensure you stay on your turf.

Set Up Routines. Another tidy tip. Ever instigated a weekly review of the campaign with a prospect or other such pattern?

Reward. Again, cheeky. Agreed upon rewards to deliver (typically but crucially not always the all-embracing ‘corporate entertainment’) when something has happened during the pitch process can be winners.

Can’t Or Won’t.  I do like this one. Understanding the real difference with these can be a clincher.