You have to be a little out of touch with reality to be good in sales. In my early years when I was “smilin n dialin” you had to convince yourself that the next phone number you called would become a client and not be like the preceding fifty calls that said no (or said worse). Successful cold calling commands ignoring the reality of rejection and seeing each fresh dial as a potential sale.
It also helps if you can block all the outside noise from getting into your head…the buzz that your competitor is coming out with a better product…the carrier envelope in your inbox that might contain a letter saying your prospect failed underwriting and his life insurance app was rejected…or news stories that some proposed new rule or law would make it much harder to do your job. Blocking out news that you don’t want to hear is called Information Avoidance (also known as Information Aversion). The reason we do it is that listening to facts that contradict what we want to believe is stressful because it can cause us to be disappointed. Since blocking causes us to be less informed it often results in less than optimal decisions, but blocking is not always bad.
Ignoring news that will not affect actions done today can be good. A perfect example was in 2016 with all of that media attention given to the Department of Labor’s Fiduciary Rule proposed revision. If you were a carrier or marketing organization there was a reason to pay attention, because there were steps that could be taken right then to start preparing for any outcome. However, if you were an agent there was nothing you needed to do at that stage (except maybe write your Congressman). As an agent, you were far better off ignoring all of the outside noise and concentrating on selling and serving clients. There’s even research that says this type of information avoidance is beneficial.
A revised study released last fall found that “information avoiders outperform information receivers.” The lack of information caused the avoiders to work harder and be more productive because the receivers rationalized why they shouldn’t work as hard using the information they got. [http://hdl.handle.net/10419/171368]. Avoiding noise helps agents do their job.
My first sales manager said the reason why great salespeople were exceptional is that most people only have to make one decision each day and that’s whether to go to work or not—after that they spend the rest of the day reacting to whatever stimuli they encounter. By contrast, salespeople are proactive—not reactive—and they create the stimulus. Salespeople make the decision to “go to work” multiple times each day and this is easier to do when one avoids distractions.
It should be easier to avoid media distractions in 2018. The more onerous parts of the DOL fiduciary revision are on hold, there shouldn’t be any new tax reform bills, and most economists say the economy will continue to motor along. However, it is often not the big news that distracts us but rather the small. To be more productive this year, perhaps during the day we can all listen to music instead of talk radio, stay off the internet unless it’s for business, check emails at only 8 am, noon and 4 pm, and read the morning paper during supper. This information avoidance may mean missing a bit of the daily buzz, but it should make hours worked far more productive.
