Once, a friend invited me to a fundraising event for a politician. There were hundreds of people all vying for the politician’s attention. At some point, I had a few minutes with the politician, and I asked him a question. When he spoke to me, he blocked out all the people and noise around us. For those few minutes, I was his only focus. What was impressive was his ability to ignore the throng surrounding us and speak to one person.
It was clear he had trained himself to have this presence. While he couldn’t give people a lot of time, he instead gave them all his attention. Watching him work the room, I understood how he made people feel important. In case you're wondering if he won the election, he did not. But it isn’t easy to win the presidency of the United States without a few billion dollars.
I once joined my children in an acting class. One script had me engaged with a partner. When the scene was over, the acting coach asked how I was able to focus on my partner for as long as I did. I explained that I had spent hours sitting across from clients, being present. You may have also developed this ability of presence.
A large part of what causes humans to change comes from the external environment. The environment of the last couple of decades has been filled with technologies and strategies designed to acquire your attention, from social media to the devices we carry everywhere.
Enhancing Personal Connections through Presence
The next time you eat at a restaurant, try to count the number of people who have their phone in their hand. The younger the party, the more you will see the glowing faces of people who are not present. These people decided to go to a place together to spend time with their phones instead of each other, engrossed in the small screens of infinite distractions.
Your presence communicates that you believe the person sitting across from you is important enough to command your attention. When they feel your presence, they will feel differently about you compared to a person who is unable to be fully present. What follows is a list of strategies that can improve your presence and your attention.
Strategies for Enhancing Your Presence and Attention
- Leave your phone in the car: My younger sister refuses to carry her phone into meetings. She locks it in her car. When people call, she is unable to take their call. By leaving the phone in the parking lot, anyone who calls will have to wait until she finishes her meeting for her to call them back. You may feel weird being so far away from your device, but you will have removed a technology designed to interrupt you with notifications to steal your presence and your attention.
- Be fully present: When you are with people, be fully present for and with them. Don’t worry that some are unable to be fully there in the moment. You and I are here for a short time, which means we need to make our time count. Your presence can make people feel important and worthwhile. You need only to focus on the person or people with whom you are engaged to make them feel special.
- Be interested in others: You can find people who are interested in you by being interested in them. By asking questions and making someone the focus of your attention, the person will find they like you. There may be a time for you to answer questions, but you can improve your relationships by spending as much time as you can listening to the person sitting across from you.
- Listen to understand: We often hear without listening. A lot of communication is missed because we listen to respond instead of listening to understand. If you have been to a doctor recently, you may notice they are not likely to listen during the seven minutes they spend with you. Whether you are a sales leader or a salesperson, your presence should cause others to recognize you understand them.
- Take a Beat: Much of the time, a person isn’t done talking, often collecting their thoughts. In The Only Sales Guide You’ll Ever Need, you will find a strategy to wait for a count of four before responding, working up to being able to wait for eight beats. Often, the person will continue to talk, revealing something more important.
- Practice Mindfulness: If you struggle to be present, practicing mindfulness can train you to stay in the present moment. The greater your ability to stay grounded in the here and now, the less you will find yourself losing your attention to your wandering mind. Don’t allow your mind to wander to the future or the past.
- Take More Time: When you hear sales leaders and sales managers talk about velocity, the goal of speeding up the acquisition of a client, know that velocity in the sales conversation is working against the development of the relationship that must be in place before you win their business.
Caring: A Super Strategy for Deepening Relationships
The first editor of The Only Sales Guide You’ll Ever Need challenged me about including a chapter on caring. He asked me what caring has to do with B2B sales. I had difficulty explaining that it’s not a strategy for B2B sales, but rather, a strategy for developing relationships.
You and I may not know that the person sitting across from us isn’t often acknowledged and isn’t often heard. Your presence is a gift. This is the gift of caring, a super strategy for relationships, commercial and personal. The more you are fully present for others, the more people will want to spend time with you.
This is an extremely other-oriented approach. Developing this skill set will set you apart from most of the people you know, including your peers and your competitors. If you are a sales leader, you may change your relationship with your team by following the strategies here.
