Hooks…

Do hooks lead to successful performance?  I mean marketing professionals and salespeople like to leverage some sort of “hook” when prospecting for prospective customers, true?  I’m no different.  I’m selling my book, The Peace and Power of a Positive Perspective ©, at King Soopers grocery stores in the Denver area thanks to the Authors in Grocery Stores program.  Can you guess my hook?

During a recent store event I sold a few books; got the proverbial “definitely maybe” from others; and received several compliments…  mostly about my shirts vs. my book.  Ironically, one of those compliments came from none other than the King Soopers store manager.  I hooked him to the point that he said, “Gary, I need to up my shirt game” and he did.  (Hard to see but under his work vest is a very cool, Jurassic Park design.) 

This event reminded me of my years as the Master Sales Enablement Advisor at Oracle NetSuite.  (BTW - I’m still offering sales enablement consulting; shirts and all.)  The challenge back then was working with senior, successful, business owners and sales professionals in NetSuite’s Partner Channel.  My assignment centered around a 3-day, in-person, “selling fundamentals” class.  Imagine; senior, successful sales and business professionals spending 3 full days with me; in-person; in a ”fundamentals” class no less! 

Now the class was anything but Sales 101.  The class title was a hook.  The “fundamentals” part focused on the key aspects of selling NetSuite.  I needed hooks to keep my audience engaged.  The loud shirts helped but there was more to it than that.  In fact, every visual I used throughout the 3 days; every exercise; every role play (yep, role plays); everything designed into the class had hooks. I know how hard it is to keep a salesperson’s attention let alone a successful business owner.  After all, I are one HaHa!  But it takes more than hooks to succeed. 

Sales success is all about performance.  I was chatting about performance as related to hooks and attention spans with a friend and former colleague of mine recently, Mike Demmert.  (He attended my class but really only remembers my shirts!)  One of the positioning statements I used then and continue to use today comes from Anders Ericsson in his book Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise© 

You seldom improve much without giving the task your full attention. 

Ah yes, “full attention”.  How do you compete for your customers’ full attention in today’s day and age?  Successful performance and full attention is a two-way commitment.  As a customer have you ever dealt with a salesperson who seemed distracted; seemed not to be giving you his or her full attention?  Me too.  Who wants to do business with someone who isn’t giving their full attention? 

Mike shared this formula about performance that comes from The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance ©: 

P = P – i 

W. Timothy Gallwey 

Performance is equal to Potential minus interference. 

Makes sense, yes?  When you focus on the task at hand your potential is high.  Unfortunately, there’s lots of interference reducing that potential.  Our Unknown Sage wonders if appearances (aka hooks) have become more important: 

Peter's Placebo 

An ounce of image is worth a pound of performance. 

Well, I can’t deny the impact image (aka hooks) have on attracting potential customers.  But to keep them as a customer, it’s performance that makes the difference.                                   

GAP 

When life gets tough we could get a helmet… or… we could leverage the peace and share the power of a positive perspective.