The Golden Hour

Britain is in the grip of collective trauma after a three-year old toddler’s abduction from an Algarve holiday apartment.  The local police force face a barrage of complaint from The Fourth Estate, as the Portugese authorities don’t do communication.  At best bizarre, at worst inexcusable, this outdated behaviour means journos look elsewhere for insights.

And would you believe it, a stunning lesson for salesreps comes from the UK police approach to such abhorrent cases.  Empirical examination shows the immediate aftermath of an incident is critical.  It’s called The Golden Hour.  Two things must be achieved in short order; witnesses found and interviewed, forensic evidence collected.

When a ‘solution’ sales opportunity presents itself, you must act in similarly quick time.  If you let time elapse between first tickle and next action commitment, then you’re probably scuppered.

What are the two key activities in your sales cycle?  For me they’re agreeing on a subsequent demo, and getting names of other players to glean info from in the meantime.

To take the police thinking further, the Americans apparently invented a process called Amber Alert in these investigations.  This gets messages out on local media every quarter of an hour as soon as possible.  In my domain, regular comms updating my target audience between the two dates could be a winner.

….and let’s hope little Maddie turns up soon, safe and sound.