Ian Altman: 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