Status Quo Losses Are Business Vampires

Transcript

Ian Altman  00:02

Welcome to the Same Side Selling podcast. I am your host, Ian Altman. What's the biggest thing that drains resources from your business? Well, if I ask that question to a group of executives, I might get a variety of different answers. And ironically, the least common answer is the one that I think might be the biggest drain for businesses. And that is when you're selling into an opportunity, and your client just stays with the status quo. So what do I mean by that? I mean, that you're trying to sell something to that client or prospect. And at the end of the process, it's not that you lose out to a competitor, you lose out to a non decision. In essence, what they do is they say, You know what, we're just gonna stick with whatever we did in the past, if we did this manually in the past, we're still gonna do it manually. If we're using this other vendor in the past, we're gonna keep using that same vendor, we're just gonna stick with the status quo. If you want to get top results for your team, take a look at the Same Side Selling Academy, just visit same side selling.com to learn more. So for starters, why does that happen? Well, one of the biggest reasons why organizations stick with the status quo is because there's not enough pain for them, there's not enough impact to them of not changing. So what happens is, ultimately, they're saying, you know, your stuff might be pretty good. But I don't yet think that it's worth it for us to take the risk of stopping what we're currently doing to switch to your stuff. And when that happens, what it means is that as the seller, we were more passionate about solving this problem than they were. Because if they truly felt that what they were doing right then wasn't effective, if they truly felt like there was a consequence of their business of not changing, then they would have changed. But what's happened is, they've all of a sudden decided that it's okay to just stick with whatever they were doing in the past. Now, as an organization, if you're looking to change, you have to do two things that are very difficult for our customers to do. The first thing is you have to acknowledge that maybe you made a mistake, hiring that other vendor, or using that other method to solve whatever it is you're trying to solve. And that's something we as humans, we don't like to do. The second thing that you have to do is you have to potentially fire the person you liked enough to hire to begin with. That's why in many cases, what will happen is, somebody has an existing vendor, they're doing a horrible job, you come in and identify some areas, that would be great improvement for their business. And in fact, you identify deficiencies with their current vendor. And instead of switching to you, what they do is they say, oh, you know what, that's a really good point. And they reach out to their existing vendor, and they say, here's this idea. Can you guys fix this? Here's this deficiency, can you remedy this for us? As if that organization will never make another glaring mistake again? But of course, they probably will. So how do we avoid those status quo decisions? Because I will tell you that it's extremely frustrating for sellers. Because if you lose to a competitor, you're like, well, the competitor had a better proposal, they had a better solution, they better understood the client's needs, we decided to go with them. No, No. The status quo is, look, we decided doing nothing was better than doing business with you. And that's kind of a deflating mindset to walk into. How do we get past that? Well, it's probably no surprise that we're going to get past it using the Same Side Quadrants. The Same Side Quadrants are a part of chapter four of Same Side Selling in the hardcopy of the book, it's on page 76. I don't know where it is, and the electronic version. But if you search for Same Side Quadrants, you'll find it. And the idea of the Same Side Quadrants is it's a method for taking notes during our meetings. The idea is that in the upper left quadrant, we take notes about the issue that the client is trying to solve the upper right quadrant, we take notes about the impact or relative importance, namely, what happens if they don't solve this, how important is this compared to other things on their plate? In the lower left quadrant, we take notes about the results, namely, what does success look like? What are we going to measure together and the lower right quadrant, we make sure that we identify who else needs to be included or involved in this process, who's most directly impacted? The big mistake that people make is sellers find themselves trying to convince the client they should do something? And here's a pivotal change that I want you to consider. I want you to be a little bit skeptical. I want you to when you reach out to clients, always in the back of your mind. Ask yourself, have they convinced me that they have a problem that's worth solving? Had they convinced me that if they don't make this change, something bad is going to happen with them, that makes it worth going through the effort of making a change. See if I went to a good doctor, and I said, Yeah my shoulders bother me a little bit, I want to have surgery. A good doctor wouldn't say, Okay, let me scheduled for surgery. A good doctor would say, How long has this been going on? What have you done to try and solve this? Have you taken ibuprofen? What about Tylenol? Does it keep you up at night? Does it wake you up at night? Does it impact your ability to do things every day that you'd like to be able to do, because what they're trying to gauge is the severity because a good physician is always weighing the risk, and your current discomfort with the potential outcome they can deliver for you. And if they don't feel that it's worth that delta, that change between where you're at and where you're trying to get to, they're not going to try and push you into a procedure or surgery. Now, a bad doctor might, but a good doctor won't. And in sales, it's the same thing. So we have to do is you have to go into those opportunities with a little bit of skepticism. I don't mean, throw a damp towel on on whatever their ideas are. So what happens if you don't solve this? And how important is this compared to other things on your plate? What would happen if three months from now we hadn't done anything? And if they say, Well, you know, then we'll wait another three months. That's not someone who's likely to make a decision. Now, this almost sounds counterintuitive, because typically, in sales, people say, Oh, this is an opportunity, I can't let this go because I'm supposed to bring every deal across the finish line. It doesn't work that way. That's not the way business operates. We have to have the humility to say not everyone's a good fit for us. And as soon as we do that, then we start realizing that we need to be more selective in the pursuits that we go after. So we don't waste our time and energy on the people who aren't going to do anything. If your client or prospect can't convince you their problems worth solving. How much time should you spend trying to develop a solution to something that they don't think is worth solving? And the answer is zero. So next time you're looking at opportunities, ask yourself, have they convinced us for each opportunity that this problem that's worth solving, have they convinced us that if they don't solve this bad things are going to happen? What that'll do is that will eliminate many of the vampires that are sucking the resources out of your business, and you'll be able to better focus on the right opportunities that will lead to growth. Instead of wasting your time with people who are never going to make a decision. There are topics you'd like to hear just drop me a note to Ian@Ianaltman.com and I will see you on the next Same Side Selling podcast