Why You Must Get Ten-Second Attention
As you walk to work your mind is fleeting from thought to thought and your eye from object to object – you are doing what is known as “daydreaming.” You see everything – yet see nothing! Your mind is miles away. You are building castles in Spain. Automatically you tip your hat, automatically you dodge a street car, and instinctively you walk around people who may bump into you. You are awake – yet sound asleep! You are in a daze. Suddenly somebody uses a “Tested Selling Sentence” on you. It penetrates the “cloud.” You come to life – down to earth! You are all eyes and ears. The “sizzle” captured your attention. We must learn the secret of getting our words INTO the other person‟s brain – by the haze and past the daze – for the prospect may be looking at us, eye to eye, yet his mind may be miles away. As Richard Borden says, “You must have a „Ho hum crasher‟ for your prospect!” You must crash his “Ho hum” – his yawn – you must use words that dash by his daze. “Stop, look, and listen” means nothing today to people; they look at it, yet every day people are being hit by trains. It is not a good split-second “daze crasher” anymore because we have seen it too often. Go over your vocabulary. How many “daze crashers” have you, along with “door crashers” and “telephone crashers”? Pretty few, I‟ll bet, if you are like the average salesman. Better stock up on some. They will come in handy to penetrate the other person‟s “castles in Spain” – to change that glassy, far away look into one of keen attention! This is why our first Wheelerpoint is, “Don‟t sell the steak – sell the sizzle,” and our second one is, “Don‟t write – TELEGRAPH.” This is why we advise you to “watch your first ten seconds – your first ten words!”
When You Get Ten-Second Attention – Then What?
Once you have been successful in crashing the prospect‟s “Ho hum” or his daze with a “sizzle,” then you have about three short minutes to get your message into his mind – his blood – his system. You have three short minutes before his mind will wander away, saturated! After walking five miles, after reading several chapters, or after talking for some time, our muscles, our mind and our spirit wilt and grow weary and fatigued because we have saturated ourselves. A blotter holds just so much ink, and then it becomes “fatigued”; it is saturated, and it is useless to the writer.
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