Thursday, January 9, 2020

Perception 2-on-1 Blog 01/10/2020

This week's topic is perception. Wikipedia says "Perception (from the Latin perceptio) is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information, or the environment."

Anyone who has been involved in sales at one time or another has heard the tome "You cannot make a second first impression". In other words you'd better look and sound like you know what you are talking about, whether or not it is true. Then you were likely trained to "sell the sizzle, not the steak". That is business speak for sell them what they want, not what they need. Sell based on their emotion. Sell the benefits, not the features. Ya gotta love marketing folks. Anything to make a sale.

Now there are times when selling the benefits are not enough, Think of the saavy IT head looking to replace his companies computers. That individual is likely interested in the features  aka technical stuff about the systems he/she are to purchase. In other words, know your audience -  their perception of you as a sales professional is tied to what you know of the real features of the hardware you sell. Know your audience.

Reality as seen through each individuals eyes will vary somewhat so when does perception meet reality? That is an interesting question as we all have our own perception of reality. We each see reality through our own eyes and judge it based upon our individual experiences. One's perception of popular music, for example, may be that rock and roll is junk if all they have ever listened to is classical music. A reader my have the perception of popular mystery as light reading when compared to classics like War and Peace while I - an avid mystery buff - find a good mystery author like Dana Stabenow for example is just as accurate at covering the human condition as any "classic" author.

Perception is involved in nearly every decision we make and we need to be careful not to let a decision be unduly slanted by a preconceived notion - a perception.  Take your time and get the facts straight. Know the power of perception.



That's a quick take on perception. Please check Ramana's take over at Ramana's Musings


 

2 comments:

  1. You have approached the topic from a completely different perceptive than mine. I have been more flippant and lazy whereas you have obviously brought into play your experience in sales but, the last but third paragraph conveys more or less the same thing as my whole post does.

    The video is mind blowing. Thank you.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Point of view depends on our perception of information we receive.

    ReplyDelete