I have a great friend Mike Searls who is a serial entrepreneur. Mike has been successful at most things he has done and has retired once financially at the age of 47. Mike did not retire because he struck it rich on high tech software deal, he did it the old fashioned way, built the company up from the ground and after 13 years of hard work, blood sweat and tears included, sold the company. Mike is always talking about building a herd.

A herd in business is a following; a set of customers, vendors, referrals and a network of people who like on Facebook, are considered fans.

In these rough economic times, a good question to ask is; Who is paying attention to your herd?

Most business people have a severe case of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and focus most their time on developing new members (customers) of their herd and don’t pay enough attention to the existing herd. I don’t have to say this but you know that the cost of a new client far outweighs the cost of attaining a new one.  If you are not paying attention to your herd, you will lose them.

Now is the time to automate with automated follow up sequence tools  to stay connected to the attention of your herd. You don’t want them wandering off and giving their business to your competition. Every dollar counts, every customer counts. If you have not automated the 8-10 touches to your customers in the buying process, you competition will.

What if I can get your attention any time I want to? It’s easier than you think and content is key.

It’s called tapping the Reticular Activator.

Reticular Activator

THE RETICULAR ACTIVATOR is a section of the brain the stays on alert. It’s function is to make you notice some things and ignore other things (if you noticed everything, you’d be too distracted to function. Many of those with ADD have problems with this section of the brain) When you buy a new car, it seems like the whole world has bought the same car you did, because you notice them everywhere. That’s the reticular activator at work.

If you have the goal of starting a new business, for example, you will start noticing things you’ve never noticed before. It seems the world is conspiring to help you out. You’ll meet just the right people. You’ll run into the right partners, the right accountant, the right legal council.  You’ll happen to stumble across a magazine article that tells you about a software program that will help our business.  And so on.

All these things are happening because your clear goal has set up the conditions for your reticular activator to work well. That’s how it works. When you know exactly what you want, your reticular activator goes to work automatically to help you get it.

For the most part, you run on “automatic pilot.” We all do. You tend to think the way you have always thought. You tend to notice things you’ve always noticed. And you tend to overlook things you’ve always overlooked.

But when you have a new, clear, definite goal, you start noticing things you would “normally” overlook. And that makes all the difference.

The term “reticular activator” comes from the name given to the part of the brain primarily responsible for arousal and motivation in animals (including humans). It’s called the “reticular formation” and it’s located at the core of the brain stem between the medulla oblongata and midbrain.

You can’t be aware of everything all the time. The reticular activator is your first line of defense against the overwhelm of stimuli. The reticular activator decides what will get into your awareness (what you will become conscious of), and its decisions are based on survival instincts plus anything else you deem as really important.

For example, a woman is a sound sleeper. She has been all her life. Then she has a baby and the slightest cry, sniffle or coo, wakes her up.

How does this happen? The reticular activator never sleeps. It is always active.

You can use your reticular activator as a powerful force for good in your marketing and sales communications. Every communication you send to customers needs to leverage the reticular activator. Out smart your competitors who are spending thousands of dollars on creative folks to write snappy content and intelligent lay out by focusing your efforts on the hot buttons of attention your customers.The most creative content and smoking lay outs will just be noise that the reticular activator blocks out.