Modern Life is shrinking our attention spans and it’s frightening.
I often joke that I have the attention span of a goldfish, but it looks like I really might.
A Microsoft study* famously found that the average human attention span dropped from 12 seconds in 2000, to just 8 seconds by 2015 (yes, shorter than a gold🐟)
And that was 10 years ago!
Given our current digital overload, it definitely hasn’t got any better. We scroll endlessly, AI might be great but it’s not always that engaging and the culture of instant gratification is squeezing our ability to focus like never before.
So (if you’ve managed to read this far and ‘well done’ if you have) …. what does this all mean for you if you work in sales and what can you do about it?
The reality is:
😴 Prospects SKIM your emails instead of reading them
😴 LinkedIn DMs get buried under dozens of other pitches
😴 Product demos risk losing people halfway through
For example, a client of mine had an SDR team whose average watch time on product demo videos fell from around 70% to just below 40% in a year.
Ouch!
So what can sales people do?
💡 1️⃣ Lead with clarity and brevity.
Put your key value proposition in the very first line or seconds. Avoid jargon and long introductions — people decide in moments whether to keep reading or watching.
💡 2️⃣ Make it visual and interactive.
Short videos, Loom recordings, or dynamic slides capture attention far better than plain text. A 45-second personalized video can outperform a long email by miles.
💡 3️⃣ Create micro touchpoints.
Instead of pushing for a 30-minute meeting up front, start with smaller steps: a 1-minute insight video, a poll, or a relevant comment on a prospect’s post. Build trust in short, meaningful bursts.
The landscape has changed, but you do have the tools at your disposal, so use them.
So the question is – how are you keeping your buyers’ attention in this age of distraction?
* The survey was from Microsoft Canada (2015) Attention Spans Consumer Insights Report.
Modern Sales is shrinking our Attention Spans
