In the blink of an eye

In his book, BLINK, author Malcolm Gladwell contends that we make our best and most accurate decisions in the first two seconds encountering a situation, in other words, in the blink of an eye.

Most of us are inherently suspicious of this notion that we can make correct decisions quickly. We are conditioned to believe that if we don’t gather as much information as possible, deliberate, and consider all possible options, we will end up a fool. We only trust our conscious, slow-paced decision processes. But in fact, decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as those made deliberately and cautiously. In fact, you probably remember your school teachers telling you, “Your first answer is your best answer!”

No wonder our prospects seem to have such difficulty making a buying decision. They’re walking around with decades of beliefs, advice and parental tapes telling them not to trust their impulses.

But is that really the problem? Is it that our prospects can’t make decisions or is it that we in sales take our own slow buying cycles into our sales calls?

Think about how you buy something. If you stopped reading now and wrote down your buying process, would it look like this: Decide what I want; find it; buy it? Probably not, but that’s what we want our prospects to do. We want them to make decisions. They don’t, or only do so slowly, and that drives us crazy.

In reality, we do the same thing to sales people when we’re buying - procrastinate; say we need to think it over, have to talk to another person (who’s conveniently not present), have to check our budget; or will call back next week. The chances are we made our decision in the blink of an eye, but are afraid to act on it. We’re either afraid to say NO because we don’t want to deal with the anticipated conflict or we don’t want to say YES because our childhood tapes tell us we’ll regret it later on.

Success in business has a lot to do with making decisions. Good decisions, bad decisions, mediocre decisions. You have to make decisions; once in a while you may make a bad decision, but you repair that with another, better, decision and move on. Failure to make decisions leads to paralysis.

Likewise, success in sales is about getting prospects to make decisions; YES is a good decision, NO is a good decision, THINKING IT OVER is no decision at all. If you are uncomfortable about making decisions then leading people towards a decision will also feel uncomfortable and in that case, sales/business development may not be the place for you.

So, next time you’re the prospect, whatever you do, take a firm stand, look the salesperson in the eye and say YES or NO (either way you’ll probably be right).  Just don’t say you need to THINK IT OVER!