Disrupting Monotony

A friend of mine started a new job in sales. It’s her first job in sales. She has raised money for nonprofits in the past and the new job is selling SaaS tools to nonprofits, so it is not out of the blue for her, but nonetheless, it's very different, and something she has never done before.

During one of her early trainings, she was on a call with another new hire; a typically brash young seller, a year or two out of college. He proudly boasted to the group that on every single call that is answered, he starts with the line, “Do you have a minute, or should I just go jump off a cliff?” He swore by the line, said it works every time. I am not sure what his definition of “works” is, and beyond that, I am not sure how much of his statement was bravado, and confidence, and the desire to impart a sense to the group that he has it all figured out, but that was his claim, regardless.

My friend didn’t mention if the reactions were more eye rolls, or more agreement, but I would imagine that some people felt one way and some felt the other, regardless of how comfortable people felt expressing themselves.

My friend then commented to me that she would never use that line, because it wouldn't sound like her personality and the buyer would see through it and hang up on her. I was, and am, in full agreement with her on that point, but the situation brings up an interesting consideration, and it launched us into a conversation about the comment and its goals.

The young, brash seller commented on his tactic and noted that it was a ‘pattern interrupter’, and that’s why it works. That’s the fancy sales training book name for what he did, anyway. He may have been simply speaking in shorthand, but his comment missed the point slightly. As it was relayed to me, his comments focused on the interruption as the virtuous component in the exchange but failed to inspect the role the buyer played in the exchange.

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As sellers we sometimes think a lot about the things we say and the things we do, but we fail to think about the mindset of the buyer and how those things are received, and why.

As is the case with most buyers, in most situations, that buyer was likely focused on her job and things that were of immediate importance in the moment. She may have even been interested in what he was selling, but of course ‘not now’; ‘never now’. You can imagine the monologue of the subconscious part of the buyer’s brain going something like this, ‘I don’t have time for this now, after all, what I am doing right now is the most important thing, always. I, of all people, have made a proactive decision to do it, and I chose to do it in this moment, so why would I want to divert my attention to something else. What you are selling is a problem for later-me’.

It’s not that the buyer is proactively deciding to brush the seller off. Proactivity is solely devoted to the important tasks, and the buyer long ago entered a mode where her brain’s gatekeeper was given unlimited power to see off distraction, so the reaction to the sales call is a brush off, but it’s usually not a proactive one, it’s by rote.

“…Should I just jump off a cliff” is a little weird, maybe sleazy feeling, more importantly, it paints a certain picture of the seller in that initial first impression phase, and likely doesn’t lead to a lot of productive long-term relationships. That said, it is worth thinking about how you, as a seller, within your personality, break monotony, and get people out of their rote gatekeeper mode. It's worth thinking about how you pull buyers back from that state of mind and jar them into a more proactive decision-making mode. You don’t have to shock them into a yes, it's just a simple light nudge to remind them that they have the power, and their gatekeeper is not in charge anymore.

It's worth experimenting with different tones, different lines, different openers, and different cadences, just to see what works. If you have the ability to break the monotony, you will put yourself in position to have significantly more substantive cold calls.

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At this point in my articles, I often give suggestions around language that would help a reader translate the ideas into real world scenarios, but I am choosing not to do that in this article for two very simple reasons. One is that each person's’ ‘monotony disruptors’ must be unique to their own personality, and two is that the best monotony disruptors are responses to the buyer’s initial rebuff and therefore must be a real time, unique response to a unique comment. The best way to improve this skill is to make a lot of cold calls, try a lot of new things, and leave inhibitions behind.

Breaking monotony is good for you, the seller. It helps you stay fresh and clear minded in a world that is governed by repetition, but as with most things, when we are able to take a step back and look at the situation from the other party’s perspective, we can see why breaking monotony is so important. We as humans are governed by routine, and that routine protects us from having to expend mental energy on the small disturbances that pop up consistently throughout the day. If you do not break the monotony for your buyer, you fade into the background as just another one of those minor disturbances. Your job is to consistently struggle to find new ways to break through those filters.

You don’t have to convince the buyer to buy. You don’t have to convince the buyer to think. You don’t even have to convince the buyer to listen to you. You just have to jar the buyer into the realization their brain is back in the driver seat.

Monotony givers the buyer’s brain unlimited power to see off distractions