Capturing Mindshare

Often I read articles about influencing others and selling ideas. It might be difficult to sell new ideas at the moment, but I believe knowledge and learning professionals can focus on laying groundwork and capturing mindshare to position themselves for the future. While people may not be buying the latest, greatest, concepts right now, that time will come again, and we need to be remembered.

What is mindshare? Mindshare is the ability to generate an impression that you are credible, you will deliver what they need, you actually understand and relate to their issues even when you haven't experienced them yourself first-hand.

When I was a younger professional, I designed and delivered sales and sales management training to an older, more seasoned audience than myself. Admittedly, I had never been a sales manager and had never walked in their shoes but what I had done was a lot of shadowing, interviewing and observing. One day, I described what I knew to be their day-to-day experiences and fed back to the group what I knew to be their problems and opportunities. It was like I had said the most profound thing in the world. Everyone smiled; some even cheered: "That's exactly what we go through; that's exactly what we have been saying!"

From that day forward, I had captured, which allowed me to introduce two new items - a homegrown best practices toolkit, which was met with a lot of leadership skepticism that it would be adopted, as well as a new sales process that turned these distributors from being transactional to more consultative in their approach. The company enjoyed great success as a result of both of those programs.

How do you capture mindshare?

ASK questions (even if you know the answer)

LISTEN

LISTEN again

OBSERVE directly

WALK in THEIR SHOES (even when it's not your job)