The hammock effect

Recently, my wife bought a new hammock. You have two points of contact with a tree or stand, and in the middle, the hammock swings freely and rocks you like a baby. It's very comfortable. The granddaughters love it.

Did you know there is a hammock effect in client communication? It's not comfortable or relaxing. As I was researching our live presentation on step five of The Seven Steps to Selling Success – proposals, I learned of this phenomenon from an article called "10 Surprisingly Effective Sales Techniques Backed By Research" from a research company named Corporate Visions.

According to the article, this problem is pervasive in all forms of client communication. Your buyers will pay attention to about 70% of the information from the beginning of your sales presentation, and their attention peaks at the end. But in the middle, their attention wanes, and if you don't spike their attention and focus, they'll remember very little.

When plotted on a graph, this trend forms a hammock shape. This "hammock effect" persists in all lengths and types of messages, including email, phone calls, virtual sales meetings and proposals.

After your meeting, the first thing your buyers recall will naturally be the last thing you said. But what about all those juicy details in the middle?

To overcome the hammock effect and fight the brain's natural tendency to tune out, you have to spike attention in the middle using "grabbers" — specific selling techniques designed to grab your buyer's attention and re-engage them in the conversation. This is what makes follow-up and follow-through so critical in the process. Your clients have limited attention spans – don't we all? We teach our advertisers the Four Keys of Advertising Success:

Reach

Frequency

Consistency

Compelling Creative

Those keys maximize the effectiveness of advertising. Those same keys can be your strategy for getting and keeping your client's attention. Harsh reality: If you're boring, they will be bored. Alternatively, if you're excited and passionate and give them significant insights and information, they, too, will be excited and passionate about you.

It's not your fault, "The Hammock Effect" is the science of how adults pay attention. Now that you know, you can avoid the problem altogether by planning spikes of "wow" moments for your clients in the middle of the process to keep them engaged.

And this weekend, enjoy some time in the relaxing hammock.

Happy Friday!

Jeff Schmidt is the SVP of Professional Development. You can reach him at Jeff.Schmidt@rab.com. You can all so connect with him on X and LinkedIn.