The average decision-maker has an attention span of just a little over seven minutes. I’m convinced that adult attention spans have been carefully programmed by network television, by the seven to eight minute time segments of entertainment, wedged between commercial breaks. On the other hand, the average sales presentation in the United States runs from one and a half to two hours in length. As a sales manager, you should easily figure out what’s wrong with this picture.

Those of you with complex products or services, or with large product lines may be saying to yourself, that it takes at least an hour to demonstrate all of the features and benefits of what it is you sell and another 20 to 30 minutes for questions and answers, right? Well, if you want more sales, help your staff to cut the length of their presentations down appreciably.

The $elling Edge®, Inc.’s Sales Success Strategies workshop, teaches a six-step selling process that can be completed, no matter how complex the product or service, in 30 minutes or less. We speed up the selling process, not only because of a decision-maker’s lack of attention , but more important, so that a sales professional can make more presentations in a given time period. And, the more presentations made over time, the more sales that are consummated.

You do the math. If a sales representative averages one and a half to two hours for each presentation as compared to an average of 30 to 40 minutes, how many more presentations can your staff make each year? How many more sales?

The six-step selling process, taught in the Sales Success Strategies workshops, is outlined in detail in a self-directed learning manual of the same name. You can learn more about it at: http://www.TheSellingEdge.com/manual1.htm

Your main job as a presenter is to ensure that throughout your presentation, you and everyone in the audience remain on the same page, even the same wavelength, every step of the way. If your slides contain more information that it takes the average listener more than 10 seconds to comprehend, you can’t possibly make this happen. People process information at different rates; faster processors will take a shorter time and the slower processors will take longer. Before you know it, you’ve got an audience working at three to five different wavelengths at the same time.

Then to make things worse, most presenters start talking, explaining the slide, at usually about the 5 second mark, and thus add one more thought-path, one more wavelength, to the whole process.

The Bell Curve

Think about it. If the amount of time it takes the average reader to ingest the info on the screen is 30 seconds, then a classic bell curve will tell you that 20% of the audience is going to read it all in 20 seconds, and 20% will take 40 seconds. Another aggregate 20 will fall into the 10 to 60 second range, and before we calculate it all, we know that we have the group broken down into at least five groups of perception time-lines. Now, let’s screw it all up and throw you into the soup, and you begin talking at some new, arbitrary point. To whom are you speaking?

Chance tells us you’re speaking to the largest group; let’s say the 40% who read at an average pace. That leaves 60%, a landslide in political terms, either way ahead or way behind the bullet point upon which he begins to expound.

Actually, it gets worse! You see, as much as a you might be totally in love with the design of a slide you may have spent hours composing, audiences rarely find your stuff as captivating. Because the presentation is important to you, it’s easy to believe that everyone will be engrossed in the action on the screen and thus giving the event their entire attention.

But tell us: have you ever sat through a colleague’s presentation and found yourself thinking about something other than the material he was sweating blood to deliver? Perhaps your plans for the upcoming weekend? The safety of your children? Whether you can let that bill slide this month?

No audience member, no matter how captivating you might believe you are, ever, ever, ever gives a presenter 100% of her attention. Human minds don’t work that way. Long before Windows, we were multi-taskers.

As lives become more complicated, and work cuts into personal time, the line between work and personal become blurred, and we compartmentalize less. Although it’s difficult to attach hard numbers here, it’s reasonable to assume that at best our audiences are tuning in to us -and us alone- more than 75% of the time.

So even if we’re directly communicating with 40% of the group, given our (at best) 75% maximum attention factor, we have no more than 30% of the audience in our camp. The rest are either struggling to catch up, or consider themselves so advanced that their minds begin to wander to unrelated topics, such as their children, the weekend, their bills; they become non-participants in the process.

Taking it to the Limit

So what does this tell us? Of course, there is only one truly viable solution, and that is to limit, by all means possible, the amount of information that is released with each click of your mouse.

First of all, the less time it takes the audience to discern the new information, the sooner they’ll get back to you and start to listen to what you really mean to “say” on the slide.

Secondly, the less time it takes the average people to figure out for themselves what’s going on, the less the width of the bell curve.

Third, and most important, is this: if your slides are designed correctly and consists of nothing but graphics and talking points, or headline-style phrases, the audience will soon realize that they are not being shown enough information to figure things out for themselves. They will conclude that the only way they can hope to be the first to know is to turn their attention quickly to you, and have it spoon fed to them. And this is exactly where you want them to be!

If you put everything you want them to know up on the screen, and if you spell it out longhand, you are training them to look to the screen for their information. Humans recognize patterns quickly, and as soon as the screen becomes the pattern, that’s where they’ll go. Problem is, they’ll be reading one thing while you’re speaking about something else!

The rule of thumb from all this? Make sure that with each passing image, it never takes longer than 10 seconds for the audience to “clear the slide”. By clearing the slide we mean removing the curiosity. Have no more than 10 seconds of material – bullet point, graphic, chart, etc. – appear at one time.

You have worked hard at finding your next job. You have come through many obstacles and have reached your career objective. You have received a job offer. You’re thrilled. Mission accomplished. After all, what else is left to do?

A majority of job candidates do not negotiate their offer. They are happy just to have received it. They just want to start their new job and start getting paid again. Besides, there’s a myth that the process of negotiating could turn the employer off and cause the offer to be rescinded? Does this kind of thinking sound familiar?

Offer negotiations are certainly an optional part of the job search process. You don’t have to negotiate. Should you? Absolutely! In fact, when you don’t negotiate, negative ramifications can occur.

For example, you’re in Sales or Customer Support or any other profession that requires a persuasive style. As a final “test”, an employer may extend to you the position contingent upon how persuasive you are at negotiating the offer. If you don’t negotiate, or negotiate poorly, you lose. A runner-up may be offered the position on a similar basis.

Even if you are not in a profession that requires a persuasive style, you should seriously consider engaging in a negotiating process. Employers expect you to negotiate. There is always a higher amount that you can receive over and above the compensation you are initially offered. How much more will be a function of the bargaining chips you have, and the finesse used to negotiate them.

Let’s take stock of the bargaining chips you may have:

o Your educational degrees

o Being currently employed (assuming you are)

o Your level of expertise and number of years in the field

o The salary you currently command

o Your assessment of your true worth

Depending upon the type of position you are seeking, each of these areas has validity and relevance, and a specific “chip” value that can be called upon when negotiating. Probably the most esoteric yet most valuable of these is your own assessment of worth.

Your true worth is far greater than your current compensation, or what a salary calculator would reveal. Your worth can be defined by what you bring to the table that is unique and valuable. Look at the skills, strengths, core competencies, marketable assets and accomplishments you can declare as your own. This is what describes your uniqueness. It is what differentiates you from the crowd.

What number would you associate with your worth? If you’re having difficulty coming up with a figure, just ask your spouse or best friend how much they think you are worth. You’ll probably get a surprisingly high yet fairly accurate number. Let’s assume you came up with one million dollars. I know, that doesn’t even come close. The point is, can you expect an employer to pay you this amount as your compensation?

For sure, salary negotiations based on your true worth or unique gifts take on a whole new dimension. No, you probably won’t be compensated one million dollars; however, with the right blend of negotiating skills and patience, your efforts will be substantially rewarded!

I have seen up to forty thousand dollars added to starting compensation through diligent negotiations. It is common for signing bonuses, stipulations calling for substantial six-month performance-based increases, several weeks of additional vacation time, stock options, profit sharing, and more to be added as part of a negotiated package.

Negotiating is an opportunity to get what you truly want, and deserve. It is a way to significantly raise your standard of living and sense of self, simply by taking stock of what you have and then knowing how to use it for your advancement. Remember, what you receive now becomes your benchmark for future positions.

We all have choices. Some people would rather keep things the way they are. That’s ok. However, you have worked very hard to come to this point, so why stop short of getting what you truly want, and deserve. Wouldn’t you rather be compensated more on the basis of what you’re worth than on some arbitrary figure designed to keep the status quo? Go for what you are worth – your life will never be the same!

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