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How To Avoid Left Turns

Written by: Donald F. Pooley

Article Overview: My wife is afraid of left turns. So before I drive anywhere with her in the car I visualize the different routes in my mind, and choose the one with the fewest left turns.

How To Avoid Left Turns

My wife is afraid of left turns.
So before I drive anywhere with her in the car I visualize the different routes in my mind, and choose the one with the fewest left turns.
I also do that before a meeting with a client or prospect--- visualize the different routes to where I'd like to go, and try to anticipate the possible 'left turns' along the way.
'Left turns' are things that can disturb the client/prospect and the smooth flow of the meeting.
By anticipating these, we can figure out ways around them.
For example, we've been taught how to 'answer objections', which means we know most of the objections that prospects will offer. If we know them, we can anticipate them, and think of different routes that will by-pass them. Just as we anticipate, and avoid left turns.
To avoid left turns in unfamiliar territory we examine a map. Or, if a friend is telling us how to get somewhere we've not been to before, we'll try to visualize the map in our mind. We may even sketch it out.
A map of a meeting is an agenda---a step-by-step description of the route you'd like a particular meeting to follow. So make an agenda of what you want to accomplish in it.
What's your goal? Where do you hope to get to? Write it down at the bottom of a page. That's your destination. Where are you now? Write it down at the top of the page.
This is the same as looking at a map, and thinking, "Here's where I'm going, and here's where I am now." And your next thought is "How to I get from here to there?", and you start to examine the different routes.
It's the same with your agenda. You've written down where you want to go, and where you are now. Now think of the different routes between them. As they come to mind write them down in the middle of your agenda page. They don't have to be in sequence, just jot them down as you think of them.
Then, when you've jotted down all you can think of, start to eliminate those with too many 'left turns'.
This sounds like a simple process, and it is. Yet we know it produces important results. Which is probably why leaders in every field prepare (or have prepared) a written agenda of each important meeting they attend.
When Mr. Martin met Mr. Bush he had an agenda that had been carefully planned to by-pass possible 'left turns'. And so did Mr. Bush.
If they use this simple, no-cost method to ensure that their meetings run smoothly, shouldn't we?

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