HIRE ME TO SPEAK
HIRE ME TO SPEAK

Agile Sales Require a Real-Time Mind-Set

I write about strategies to turn fans into customers and customers into fans. I also share ways to use real-time strategies to spread ideas, influence minds, and build business.

Sales Strategies  |  New Rules of Sales & Service  |  Best Practices

The real-time mind-set recognizes the importance of speed.

It is an attitude to business — and to life — that emphasizes moving quickly when the time is right.

For decades the typical Wall Street bond trader has worked in a high-pressure atmosphere ready to make split-second decisions based on information scanned from real-time data and news feeds. The traders peer intently at bond prices displayed on the Bloomberg and Reuters screens, poised and ready to commit huge sums of money when the moment is right. Data from futures markets and stock exchanges update the instant a trade is made.

Fortunes are made in seconds; reputations are lost in a minute.

Now, the same real-time news and data that financial firms used to pay tens of thousands of dollars for each month are available to everyone for free on the web.

All of us now have a new currency of success: the ability to gather, interpret, and react to new information in fractions of a second—in real time. Twitter, Google News, what’s happening on your site right now all play a part.

Real time mindset

But success requires a new way of thinking.

With such a real-time sales strategy, you need to develop an agile mind-set, an attitude that recognizes the importance of speed. It’s an approach to business—and to life—that emphasizes moving quickly when the time is right.

Developing a real-time mind-set is not an either/or proposition. I’m not recommending that you abandon your current business-planning process. The smartest answer is to adopt a both/and approach, covering the spectrum from thorough to nimble. Recognize when you need to throw the playbook aside, and develop the capacity to react quickly.