The Resource of Attention

The “R” in Maestro’s information-gathering framework, DRIVE, stands for resources. When you’re speaking with a prospect, it’s critical that you know what resources they have available to dedicate to the problem your product solves. Part of this is financial in nature. Do they have funds to purchase a solution? How much do they plan on spending?

Just as important as the money resource is the human resource. Does your product require help from the buyer’s IT department? If so, are they available to help and supportive of moving forward with the solution? Maybe there is training required in order for the buyer to get up and running. Who will be trained?

It’s critical to consider money and manpower, but there is another critical resource you need from a prospect in order to be successful—their attention. Without their attention you can’t communicate with them in the first place. And as we all know, more and more things are vying for our attention. Between email, texts, Slack messages and all the rest, our attention span is now that of a goldfish, right?

HOW THE BRAIN DOESN’T WORK

You’ve heard the statistic, haven’t you: the human attention span is dwindling because of technology, and it’s now only eight seconds, less than that of the famously memory-less goldfish. This statistic appeared in Time magazine, after all.

And it is NOT TRUE! Why did we all believe it was true? You are on paragraph five of this blog, which would not be possible if you could only pay attention to something for eight seconds!

Do you want to hear something else mind-blowingly false? Goldfish do not have a particularly short attention span, and they are perfectly capable of forming memories. They are actually used in studies about memory formation. So, no, they are not totally stunned every time they see their plastic castle. Why do you think they swim to the top of the tank when they see you coming? They remember you feeding them the day before!

HOW THE BRAIN DOES WORK

There is still a lot that we don’t know about the brain. Researchers have, just in the last few years, made major discoveries about how people pay attention. Human attention used to be thought of as a sort of searchlight in the brain. Scientists were looking for how the brain decided where the searchlight should be pointed, but it turns out the “pointing the searchlight” metaphor wasn’t quite right.

Michael Halassa at MIT discovered that the brain doesn’t shine a light where attention should be focused. Instead, it turns off the lights everywhere else. Parts of your brain act as a filter, and well before you even notice something, your brain has sent a message that you don’t need to pay attention to it. Think about it—if you noticed every stimulus around you, it would be impossible to have a conversation with someone in a restaurant. Your brain filters out information you don’t need, turning off the lights on that stimulus, and leaving the light on where you should be focused.

The second part of the searchlight metaphor that was wrong is that it’s not a constant light—it’s more like a strobe light. Even if your searchlight is focused on reading this blog right now, that searchlight gets weaker about four times a second. We concentrate in 250-millisecond chunks of time. Why? Is it because of technology? Have our phones ruined our brains?! No, human brains have always been like that, because we’re cavemen.

Let’s say one of your ancestors was picking berries to bring back to her cave. If her searchlight was constantly focused on those berries, she wouldn’t notice the saber-toothed cat that was sneaking up behind her. Our searchlight dims every quarter second because our brain evolved to help us not get eaten.

HOW TO CAPTURE ATTENTION

We know that humans are capable of paying attention to things they want to pay attention to. I also know that I checked my Slack all 15 times it dinged while writing this. There is a lot going on in our lives, so how do we capture someone’s attention? How do we make them want to open and read our email? Here are some tips and tricks.

Make Messages Easily Scannable

If someone opens your email (already quite a feat to accomplish) and sees five paragraphs of dense text, they are not going to read it. Put your messages in a format that is easy to scan. Think bullet points or bolded key ideas. And filter yourself—stick to one or two major points.

BLUF

In Maestro’s effective emails workshop, we always promote BLUF—bottom line up front. Get to the point immediately. Let them know what the message is about right away, and make sure it is something they care about.

Mobile Friendly

So many of us check messages on our phone. Even while sitting here at my computer, I’ve been checking messages on my phone. Your messages need to look good on big and small screens.

Use Images

Adding illustrations to text helps comprehension and learning. A review of 155 studies on the effect of text illustrations by Levie and Lentz found that illustrations increased learning in 98 percent of the experiments. But please stop repeating the statistic that the brain processes images 60,000 times faster than words. There is no research out there supporting this statement.

Use Moving Images

Most people would rather watch a video about something than read about it. When interviewed, 59 percent of senior executives said they would rather watch a video than read text when both are available.

Use an Attention Trigger

Ben Parr spent years researching how individuals get called to attention for his book on the topic, and he found that there are seven triggers. Use them in your messaging (and especially your subject lines) to help get your prospect’s attention.

• Automaticity: Sometimes people can’t help but pay attention. We think people wearing red are more attractive. When we hold something warm we think people are friendlier. Loud noises make us look. We can’t help it.
• Framing: Everyone has their frame of reference, so you either need to adapt to their frame (easier) or change it (harder). You just can’t ignore it. Parr says a good way to change someone’s frame of reference is through repetition of an idea.
• Disruption: Anything unexpected gets our attention.
• Reward: Everyone gets excited about the prospect of getting something.
• Reputation: Decision-making centers of our brain slow down when we are getting expert advice—that’s how much we trust experts.
• Mystery: Our brains don’t like uncertainty. We often can’t get unfinished stories (or incomplete tasks) out of our heads.
• Acknowledgement: People have a need for and respond to validation and empathy.

CTA at the End

Studies show that people are more open and likely to take action when their cognitive load is lower, and cognitive load decreases at the end of reading an article. That’s why your call to action should be at the end of your text. Do you know what else decreases cognitive load? Fewer decisions. That’s one of the reasons the “3 times” model for scheduling meetings works so well.

It’s estimated that business people send and receive an average of 121 emails a day, and that’s just work-related. Add to that all of the marketing messages you see, the slack channels you’re on, updates from school, text messages, weather alerts. And on and on. We are bombarded with information, and our brain is filtering a lot of it out.

We can only pay attention to one thing at a time (multitasking is also a myth that duped all of us), and there are only 24 hours in a day—attention is a valuable resource. It’s also the first resource you need from your prospect, so make sure you’re making yourself, and your messaging, stand out.

Since your cognitive load is now lower because we’ve reached the end of this blog, here’s our CTA! Get in touch with us at Mastery@maestrogroup.co to schedule Effective Emails (or another Maestro workshop) for your team.