True story:  I overheard a conversation between two guys in their sixties.  One was in his early sixties, 62 or 63, and one had turned 60 within the previous few days.  Upon learning of the other fellow’s birthday the older of the two looked at him with a wry smile and a glint in his eye and said, “It’s the best decade!”  The younger sexagenarian (stay out of the gutter), clearly a little down about his recent birthday, perked up, leaned forward and said “really!!?? Why?”  To which the older guy responded “Because it’s the one you’re in!”

This post is all about being present.  Today it’s all too easy to be sitting in one place while actually being in a million others.  Selling is all about listening and I don’t care what you say about multi-tasking, the processing part of your brain is doing one thing at a time.  If you’re scanning email, you’re not listening.  If you’re thinking about the last meeting, or the next one, or what you did last night, you’re not listening.

Now think about what that costs you.  Reviewing the metrics from my friend Bill Johnson’s comment about prospecting: http://disq.us/8cccr0, shows us what goes into getting a customer meeting.  And any other meeting you are in is something you’ve traded against time doing your main jobs of prospecting, selling and customer satisfaction.  So if you are in the meeting: It’s the most important meeting!

We all day dream occasionally and have all had instances where we catch ourselves and realize, despite appearing attentive, we don’t know what the other person just said.  We have to work hard to minimize those times but we really have to take steps to not let distractions remove us from “the most important meeting.”  Some suggestions:

1. Email is a medium that expectes periodic, not constant, attention.  Treat it that way.  My recommendation is to turn off all alerts for email.  No tones, buzzes or messages on your computer screen.  Rather, plan specific time to check and respond to email.  It can be several blocks of time booked throughout the day or specifically between other scheduled activities when you’re not interrupting something you’ve decided is an important use of time. If you are with others, announce that you are going to take five minutes to review email.  Don’t let them think they are having a conversation with you but you don’t care.
2. Different people use text messages in different ways.  I treat them as a little more urgent than email partly because they are shorter and easier to consume.  When in a meeting I leave my phone in vibrate mode and will note if a text alert comes through, but I won’t even look to see who the sender is.  As soon as the meeting ends, I will review texts to see if anything is urgent.
3. Most people silence their phones in meetings (if they remember) but they still vibrate.  A phone requires you to completely stop what you’re doing and to change focus.  Unless it’s an emergency, it’s rude.  Even if you are not a key speaker in the meeting, you disrupt everyone else.  However, the phone is also how people reach you when your house in on fire.  Take advantage of the features of most phones that let you apply different alerts to different callers.  Set the person who will call you about the fire to a different ring and vibrate pattern.  Also, tell that person to call you multiple times in a row in the event of a real emergency.  Then, put the phone on DND and be present in the meeting.
4. Now that you have neutralized technology, how do you maximize your presence in “the most important meeting”?  Some simple rules:

• Lean in with your eyes focused on the speaker
• Take notes with pen and paper
• Ask questions regularly
• Take steps to show that you genuinely care about the meeting

And here’s the kicker.  Schedule meetings with yourself!  To prospect, to write, to create, to analyze.  And apply the same rules listed above.  You will decide what “meetings” you have and they will all be “The most important meeting!”

A special note to managers.  When you are with a person who works for you, it’s important time for them.  Be present.  Even (or especially) during windshield time.  Sure you have to keep on top of the business elsewhere, so set time to do that and make it clear that “for the next 30 minutes I’m going to be “absent”.  But when I’m back, I’m back. 

Image by Vince Vassallo via http://vincevassallo.blogspot.ca/

Please comment.  It would be great to have a conversation about selling and to hear a funny story or two.  I will moderate but the good news (for all of us) is I have a day job in the real world.  So if I don’t reply instantly, feel free to talk amongst yourselves until I get back ;-).