Make no mistake. There is a gap between your mind and your mouth. Neglect filling that gap before making the call or presentation and guarantee less than optimal results.
Here’s yet another example from just last week. First some background. The meeting was of a small, hand-picked group of the company’s top sales pros and managers. They’ve invested the better part of a year in carefully designing a sales process – complete with best practices, tools and metrics. They’ve chosen a CRM and customized it to fit the process. They’ve been using the whole shebang themselves for 90 days. They all get it. They all believe in it. They’re all excited about it. They’re all getting real, tangible value from it. Now it’s time to roll it out to the rest of the sales force.
The sales executive (thankfully) delayed the rollout one month. Instead of the big show, Wednesday was a dry run. I’ll spare you the details; just one example – the presentation to show the value of the “Sales Knowledge Mine” they’ve built that contains the highly organized collection of best practices and tools and the customized CRM system.
Trust me, the guy really knows his stuff, but… Within 30 seconds the presentation was in deep trouble. The whole thing ground to a halt in less than 2 minutes. The poor guy just stood there knowing he’d blown it. Then the magic happened. One of the other group members (knowing his own turn in the barrel was coming up) asked the speaker’s opinion about the most valuable aspect of the Sales Knowledge Mine. “I can immediately find 8 or 9 ideas of what to do in just about any sales situation I can think of,” he blurts out. You could not only see the reaction of the group, you could feel it. Everybody sat up a bit, the eyes got bigger, the heads started nodding. The questions and answers – good answers – kept coming
The gap between mind and mouth got filled!
Knowing and thinking about what you’re going to say is vital, but not sufficient. Say it out loud. Practice it out loud. Doesn’t matter if you’re a rookie or a seasoned veteran.
