A Summary of Carmen Simon's Teachings from the Book "Made You Look" and how you can apply these insights in a digital sales room
Digital sales room has rapidly become a central tool in modern sales. It allows companies to build a better customer experience in a digital environment and strengthen the trust between the salesperson and the buying group.
A key objective of the digital sales room is also to address one of the main challenges in sales: capturing and maintaining attention. Carmen Simon's book "Made You Look" offers valuable guidance for us salespeople on this topic. Carmen Simon, a neuroscientist and expert in cognitive marketing, explores how the human brain processes information and how brands can leverage this knowledge to capture their customers' attention. Simon's insights provide useful revelations that are largely applicable to digital sales rooms.
1 - The Importance of Attention in Sales
Carmen Simon emphasizes that attention is the most valuable currency in today's digital world. People have an overwhelming amount of information and must make decisions faster than ever. Simon highlights that you can divide attention into automatic and deliberate parts. Automatic attention is triggered when something in the environment is new, unexpected, or emotionally significant. Deliberate attention, on the other hand, requires active focus and engagement.
Simon's theories can be utilized in a digital sales room by creating an environment that immediately captures automatic attention. For instance, personalized and dynamic messages or intuitive visual solutions help stand out. A well-designed summary video and a visually intuitive interface that guides users to key materials can be crucial in capturing attention in the first few seconds.
2 - The Power of Recall
Simon reminds us that capturing people's attention is not enough; you must also retain it and create a lasting memory. This is particularly important when dealing with buying groups that make decisions as a team. Only some members may be present from start to finish, so it is essential that each visit to the digital sales room sticks in their minds and helps the buying group remember key messages. How can this be achieved?
Simon emphasizes cognitive "anchors"—visual or emotional stimuli that facilitate memory. She notes that customers forget about 90% of your presentation within 48 hours. And as the buying group, which is constantly growing, does not carry the same message, the decision-making process becomes significantly prolonged and complicated.
A sales room consolidating all up-to-date sales materials and meeting notes helps significantly recall your key messages. For the sales room content, this could mean visual metaphors, recurring themes, or even carefully constructed stories that link the customer's problems to your solution. For example, concrete examples of how your service has solved previous challenges are effective memory makers.
3 - Connecting Need and Emotion
Simon also addresses the role of emotions and rationality in decision-making. Many salespeople strive to provide precise data and analyses, but Simon suggests that decisions are made on more than rational grounds. Emotions play a crucial role in purchase decisions.
Digital sales room and often associated personalized videos can help distinguish you from others. Instead of traditional presentations, you can utilize emotionally engaging stories, customer examples, and visualizations that highlight the value of the product or service in a way that resonates with the buying group. Using emotionally charged stories related to the customer's needs can make a more profound impact than mere data. An excellent example of such content is reference videos recorded by other customers themselves.
More about this in the blog: Reference Videos: Effortlessly Get Customers Speaking for You
4 - The Importance of Dialogue
Simon highlights the significance of interactivity and dialogue, especially when you want to capture the buying group's attention. A digital sales room enables real-time interaction—through chat tools, live presentations, and personalized discussions—and you can enhance the feeling that the customer is at the center of attention. However, it is crucial that this interaction feels authentic and meaningful. According to Simon, people's brains easily recognize inauthenticity, which can lead to a loss of customer interest. Therefore, ensuring that the digital sales room is tailored to the customer's needs and that the content and communication offered through it feel personal is important.
5 - The Effectiveness of Simplicity
Carmen Simon also reminds us that simplicity is often the most effective. Excessive information can lead to "cognitive overload," which impedes customer attention and recall. A digital sales room offers the opportunity to build clear, easily navigable structures that contain only essential content and where the most interesting content for the customer can be found quickly.
Considering that buying groups often consist of multiple decision-makers who each seek different information, an optimal digital sales room should have a clear structure. A digital sales room allows the customization of visible content according to the buyer personas. Simple, well-targeted presentations improve the chances that each buying group member will remember the key points.
Conclusion: Carmen Simon's Insights Applied to Digital Sales Rooms
Carmen Simon's book "Made You Look" offers valuable advice on how salespeople can capture and retain the buying group's attention. Digital sales rooms provide an excellent environment to apply these principles practically. The sales process becomes much more effective by capturing attention with visual content, creating memory traces with cognitive anchors, and integrating emotions into decision-making.
A digital sales room is not just a place to present products or services—it is an environment where the buying group's attention is captured and maintained, making sales more effective and more meaningful.
Additionally, for more on Carmen Simon's thinking and to learn more about gaining your audience's trust, listen to episode 246 of the "Speak Like a CEO" podcast: "How to Win Your Audience's Trust." In this episode, Dr. Carmen Simon offers insights that perfectly illuminate the themes of the book.
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