At some point in time there will be a moment when you look into the other persons eyes and notice what appears to be a distant gaze or maybe it's the onset of the flu, that glassy eyed look you get just before the fever attacks every part of your body. But then you realize, the person looked healthy before I started talking to them, what happened? It came to me. It's the Fish Eye!
The Fish Eye is a syndrome that may be induced by an ineffective or confusing sales event. The syndrome has been known to manifest in social settings or between family member's during the obligatory holiday gathering but in one revealing incident it became clear to me that I infected my client with Fish Eye. She was polite when we first met. There was a friendly chat for a few minutes and then I began my sales presentation. The topic was document scanning and my plan to simplify the workplace. After several minutes I began to notice the early on set of Fish Eye. My congenial host stopped blinking. She leaned back ever so slightly in her chair. The head began to turn to one side and raise upward and was accompanied by a downward gaze towards me.
My presentation continued but my subconscious was sending alerts that something was going wrong. Finally, it came to me. My prospect most definitely had Fish Eye and it was my fault. The only question rattling around in my head, while I continued with my presentation, was what could I do to treat this poor woman? Humor is always good medicine. So, I abruptly halted my presentation and in an effort to stop the syndrome before it spread. I looked into the fishy eye and said, "do you have any questions at this point?" She said, "no I am just trying to understand how all of the steps you described actually work." At this point it is important to note that I discovered Fish Eye in 1997 so in all fairness to me it would not be unrealistic to expect that anyone hearing my presentation would be uncomfortable with the abstract nature of the material. Document scanning was just emerging as a business tool, so, many were completely unaware of its advantages and seemed more interested in details.
I was not successful in landing this account but I did learn quite a bit about Fish Eye Syndrome. Since that time no other's have been infected and now every presentation is presented with more visual queues and examples. Even though I seemed to have wiped out Fish Eye, I move forward with caution and great attention to my prospect because I have to be ever alert for any new syndromes I might create.
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