The Distraction: Building Anticipation Into Your Pitch

In sales, getting the person you’re talking to engaged in your sales conversation is crucial, especially if they’re not engaged. That means the person you’re talking to is on their phone, they’re looking around, they’re rolling their eyes, they’re yawning, they’re putting their head in their hands. It’s a struggle to get any kind of a commitment from these types of people. To get anything going, you want to get your buyer engaged. You want to get them involved. One of the ways that you can do this is by building anticipation. Learn some successful sales techniques that will help you battle in the ring of sales and become a good salesperson.

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The Distraction: Building Anticipation Into Your Pitch

We’re going to talk a little bit about sales. It’s not going to be a super long episode so hold on to your hat. We’re going to go fast and hopefully, you’ll get a nugget or two out of it. We want to start doing a couple more podcast episodes that are dedicated to sales and sales techniques that I’ve used successfully. That’s what we’re doing here, we’re selling our products. At some point you’re going to be on the phone, you’re going to be in front of people that you want to buy your products. It’s important that you’re a good salesperson and you know proper technique and you know how to battle in the ring of sales. This is one that I have named personally the distraction.

I used to work for Oreck vacuums and I took over an unsuccessful district. We were able to take that district and region to number one. This is one of the techniques that I taught my salespeople to use to help a couple of different pain points that they were having, getting their buyers engaged, people that came to buy vacuums. Getting the person you’re talking to engage in your sales conversation is crucial. If the person you’re talking to is on their phone, they’re looking around, they’re rolling their eyes, they’re yawning, they’re putting their head in their hands, those are not engaged people. You’re going to struggle to get any commitment from these types of people. I remember not too long ago, I was in a buyer meeting at Walmart and the buyer literally was uncontrollable yawning. I stopped the whole presentation and I asked him, “Are you okay?” He looked at me all startled, “Why?” I said, “You are yawning uncontrollably and I thought maybe you want a glass of water or you want to take a quick break.” He sat up, and I don’t recommend that all the time, but it was so bad that I had to say something. You want to get your buyer engaged, you want to get them involved.

One of the ways that you can do this is by building anticipation. How do you build anticipation? There’s a bunch of ways to do it. I’m going to tell you a story about selling on the floor of Oreck vacuum store and then we’ll try to tie it into maybe how it can be more relevant to what we’re currently doing now. In the vacuum store, we had all kinds of products. We had cleaning products and we had floor cleaning machines and vacuums and small canisters and air purifiers. We had a bunch of different things. In the course of a demonstration about whatever it was the customer actually came in for, they would a lot of times mentioned something that would trigger to me a different product. Let’s say we’re going along and we’re doing the vacuum demo and everything’s going great and all of a sudden, they mentioned that they have pets and they have bad pet stain issues.

I would literally stop the presentation and say, “Hold on one second.” I’d run over and I get a bottle of our pet stain remover and bring it back over and I would set it down in the area that we were working at. I would say, “Whatever we do, don’t forget to remind me to tell you about that,” then I would go on with my presentation and every single time, people would be locked on to that, “What’s that product and why does he want me to remind him and what is that?” They would be engaged. It was building anticipation. Why doesn’t he want to tell me about it right now? Why can’t I know about what that’s going on right now? There is anticipation and if for some reason I did forget, I was selling a vacuum here and doing whatever, they would always remind me, “You were going to tell me about that.” “I was. I completely forgot. Thanks for reminding me.” That’s a sale right there.

I call it the distraction because it’s a distraction to stop in the middle of your demo and go and get something and bring it back. That’s a distraction. It’s a distraction to stop your phone pitch to say, “That’s a great point. Don’t let me forget to tell you something that we’re doing right now that will affect that.” That’s a distraction. It’s distracting and it’s meant to be. If your person is not engaged or if you’re going through the motions or things are motoring along at a normal speed, sometimes you need that jolt. You need that change of pace. Once you do that, the anticipation of what it is that you’re going to say or what the product is or what it’s going to do or how it’s going to fix a problem, all that stuff starts to build. While it’s building, they can’t help but be more laser-focused on what you’re currently saying because they don’t want to miss that either. What you did say now, that’s important. What you’re going to say later, that’s super important too.

All of a sudden, they’re laser-locked on what you’re talking about. It’s called the distraction and you have to listen constantly. Listen to what your buyer is saying and telling you. You have to log that stuff away. You have to be ready to absorb information while you’re giving it. You can’t be this robot of spilling information about your product over the phone. Let’s say you get your buyer on the phone and you’re not anticipating it. You’re just calling and all of a sudden, the buyer picks up the phone and was like, “This is John.” You’re like, “What to do now?” You start to talk about your pitch. You start entering in your pitch.

Sometimes when we’re startled, it can just push us into our pitch and we have to be ready to have the buyer answer the phone. You should always be ready for that. You should always be prepared for the buyer to answer the phone. When they do, you want to make sure that you don’t just launch right in and bombard them with stuff about your product. You want to introduce yourself, you want to ask them how they’re doing. Ask them if they have a second, you want to tell them about a product that you have. You want to ease into that, just like you would ease into any other conversation. You’re not going to be talking to buddies and say, “Let me tell you about this.” It’s not how we as humans interact. You don’t want to do that with a buyer either. Ease into the conversation like you always would with anybody else.

Here’s the thing, you’re into the conversation. You know your pitch well enough that you’re also listening. When the buyer says something about promotion, you can stop and say, “That’s a great point and I want to totally get to that. Do not forget to remind me to talk about what we’re doing socially,” and then you get right back into your pitch about what you were talking about. It does two things. It distracts, it builds anticipation, it gets a buyer reengaged and also it lets them know that there’s more and that they want to stay and keep their attention. A lot of times if you forget, they will remind you, “You were going to tell me something about social media or what you guys are doing socially.”

I want you to try it and let me know how it goes but here’s the key to it. Here’s the main factor. You have to be solid in your pitch. You have to be a professional so that when you’re pitching, you can also be listening. If you can’t listen to your buyer and take in what they’re saying, then you’re just a robot spewing information. Any good conversation between any two people is always you talking and them listening, them talking and you listening and them responding. It’s not all just you talking. I know we’ve become a society of people that don’t listen. All we’re doing is waiting for our turn to tell our side of things. We’ve stopped listening to people, understanding what they’re wanting, what they’re needing, what they’re trying to accomplish and we’re driven by what we want to accomplish. We want to shove that down people’s throat as fast and as hard as we can. I don’t want that for you. I want you to listen to the buyer. I want you to hear what they’re struggling with. I want you to hear what they need and what they want and how you can help them get that.

Part of how you can help them get that is when you hear something in the middle of your pitch that you’re not prepared to talk about right this minute. You can stop and you can acknowledge that and then you can say, “Don’t let me forget to talk about that at the end.” That’s called the distraction. I hope you are going to be able to use that. It’s not an easy thing to do. You’re going to have to practice it. I know that if you can use it well, it will serve you. That’s it. This is going to be a little bit of short one, but sales topic number two, the distraction. I can’t wait to hear how it goes for you.

Regarding the podcast, we have a multitude of different ways that you can connect with us. We have our new Facebook page, @OnTheShelfNow. Please go to that Facebook page and like it and jump into the conversation. We also have our closed group called On The Shelf “Now.” You can type that into Facebook as well and hit join and get in on the back conversation there. Please go follow us on Twitter and recommend and retweet some of our tweets so that we can get your team onboard too on that @OnTheShelfNow Twitter account. Lastly, we have our podcast website. You can go to what’s next. We have a new Facebook Live event coming up. You can go to the website and check that out for sure, but this will be our second Facebook Live. We’re going to be talking about item and product type. You’re not going to want to miss it. It’s a great chance for us to connect live and you can ask live questions and you can distract me while I’m trying to get my stuff out.

There are a lot of ways for you to reach out and we’re here to help. We’re here to find out what you are up against. What is standing in your way of getting your products into big box retail? That’s what we want to know. That’s what we want to talk to you about. Reach out, leave some comments, tell us how we’re doing and subscribe to the podcast. We’re on Stitcher and iTunes. You can subscribe to us in any of those places. It’s been great speaking with you. I can’t wait until next time. Until then, we look forward to seeing your products on the shelf.

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