The Primary Objective is control of attention.

In any engagement, sales, operations, leadership, the objective is simple: control of attention.

In sales, if you or your teams do not gain and keep their prospect’s attention, your opportunity is out of control. And if it’s out of control, your ability to influence the outcome becomes guesswork, and your forecast turns into hope.

In operations, if your project stakeholders aren’t aligned, if the wider colleague base isn’t engaged, if they don’t see what’s in it for them, delivery will be slow or fail altogether. Adoption will be poor. The outcome? Another frustrating project.

Capturing attention, and keeping it over the course of a sales cycle or project, is a skillset. It can be trained. It can be developed.

If you think it’s native in your people, some innate emotional intelligence or natural gift, you’re wrong.

Don’t misunderstand: I have no doubt you do have and will have successes.

But the real question is, to what extent are you or your people in control of the frequency and pace at which those successes happen?

Yes, smooth projects and clean deals happen. But those are the easy ones. They come when attention is already high, when interests align naturally. If they make up 30% of your pipeline or your projects, how do you maximise the other 70%?

How do you equip your people with the skills, tools, and training to unlock the wins that wouldn’t have happened otherwise?

That’s where the real growth is. That’s where the big gains live.

If you teach your people to: Find out what the other person wants and show them how to get it.

To uncover others’ objectives and where they align with your own you will get higher rates of attention, engagement, and control.

An understanding of how we, and others, make decisions is essential:

• What decision-making cycles (DMCs) look like
• What drives them
• What blocks them
• What distractions do to them
• How decisions are made under pressure

Understanding how these things affect not only customers and colleagues, but yourself is critical to elite performance.

If you don’t have the skills to teach this to your people, get them from someone who does.

Bridge the gap. Train, coach, and develop your teams. Win more often, on purpose, internally and externally.