What does “Peripheral Vision” have in common with Sales and Marketing? As the CEO of The Weinbaum Group, I find the correct answer may be elusive. For context, it is essential.
The Background: I led more weekly B2B Sales Forecast Meetings than I care to recollect. These meetings are often speculative exercises; more “March Madness” tournament bracket and less fact-based projection. Too often, Sales Reps feel validated after white-boarding the names of several potential Strategic Accounts; i.e. Ford, Pepsi, GE, Kellogg’s, etc. In contrast, meaningful validation only comes with a signed contract. Something that rarely occurs as frequently, or as fast, as projected.
Improving optics and ultimately conversion rates brings us back to Peripheral Vision (PV): PV is an aspect of vision that occurs outside of the very center of someone’s gaze. PV is a protection system, more reliant upon motion detection or something abruptly distinguishing itself from the field of view. Also telling, the loss of PV while retaining more straight ahead vision is clinically known as tunnel vision.
The Challenge: Few, if any, prospects or leads spend their working hours looking for alternative and innovative solutions to a legacy problem. In fact, many of your prospects may not realize they have a problem at all. Please reference the image above. Unless you are a Fortune 500 Company, you exist either behind or at 130 degrees. If Marketing is doing a competent job of creating Brand Awareness, perhaps you encroach upon the 100 degree mark. Your prospect suffers from tunnel vision; in effect blinding him or her to new innovative services or solutions.
So what does PV have to do with Sales & Marketing? Everything. To grab your prospect’s attention and ultimately to hold it, requires engaging her Peripheral Vision by separating yourself from the field. You must differentiate yourself from the crowd. Not simply by distracting, as distraction is transitory and often irritating, rather by aligning with what is most important to her and increasing value perception across each touch point.
The Opportunity: Top Sales Performers and Marketers do this naturally, orchestrating each touch point to maximize value perception and thereby overcome tunnel vision. Now centered inside their prospect’s field of view, star sales people begin to differentiate themselves from the background clutter. This is accomplished by gently disrupting legacy processes, discovering the aspirations of their prospect and showing them how the sales person’s unique service or solution enables “The Dream!”
At The Weinbaum Group, we believe that the “80 / 20 Rule*” is not a Law. In fact, accepting that rule as law is a failure mechanism that will inevitably lead to predictable results. Instead, we believe that by empowering sales and marketing organizations with “What to Say”, “What to Do” and “How to Do It,” something Top Performers know and implement naturally, you will raise the performance bar across your company and create breakthrough results.
My intention with this blog is to provide both strategic and tactical best practice; with topics ranging from Sales Force Automation, Content Strategy, Messaging, Marketing to Sales Enablement. With The Weinbaum Group’s focus on continual research and innovation, readers will be exposed the very best in Sales & Marketing Optimization.
Please email me with any questions or comments at TomW@TheWeinbaumGroup.com
Your success in mind, Tom