Let Me Pose A Hypothetical Question…

What if we rethought our conversations–with our customers, with our own people? What if we thought, about why the best conversations don’t start with answers? Or they don’t start with agenda led questions? Or they may not start with an insight?

What if we weren’t driven to focus on proving our value, convincing the customer about our POV, but were about exploring an issue together? What if we started with an idea, a theory, and engaged our customers in a collaborative conversation to explore, discover these ideas?

I’m going to be talking about how we might lead with hypotheses. So let me first define the term: “A hypothesis is a testable, experience-based theory designed to be explored collaboratively, rather than asserted as truth.”

Let’s roll on with this idea….

We may start with a story which in we might develop a premise or hypothesis, and then extend it into thoughtful discussions with our customers? Or as we explore an idea, we might weave stories or metaphors into the discussion to help people better visualize the ideas and what they might mean to them.

So much of what we do tends to be performative. We show up with insights–teach, tailor, take control. And sometimes. those insights may be perceived as confrontive, provoking argument, or pushing people away. (It’s interesting to look at this in the context of cultural differences. I was speaking with an EMEA sales executive who said, “We’ve had to back away from leading with strong insights and positions. Culturally, this type of conversation doesn’t work in many European countries.)

We tune our value propositions, leading with them much like insights. We focus on answers–sometimes before the customer has recognized the product, “We help organizations like you do this…..” We have our playbooks, our scripts, carefully phrased questions, and scripted ways to overcome/avoid objections. We perform with certainty, having all the answers.

We end up talking at our customers rather than with our customers. We end up delivering messages, rather than engaging our customers.

What would those conversations look like? How would we shift from insight to inquiry, how would we lead with curiosity and mutual discovery? And why might these be the most powerful ways of engaging our customers?

Imagine the power of engaging our customers with an idea, “Here’s something we’ve been noticing with our customers? Are you experiencing similar things?”

A hypothesis driven conversation is a testable statement, based on our experience, observations of what’s happening in the markets, observations about what we see happening in the customer’s organization. It’s not a statement of fact, though it may be based on facts. Instead, it’s posed as a question that invites a response. And those responses drive dialogues–collaborative conversations.

I particularly like William Isaacs’ framing in his book: Dialogue, The Art Of Thinking Together. He poses several scenarios. The first is the debate: Debates are all about winning, “I’m right, you are wrong.” He then moves on to Discussions: Discussions may be about bouncing ideas back and forth, but sometimes are not as purposeful as need be. Then he introduces the idea of Dialogue–the act of thinking together.

Engaging our customers in Dialogues or Collaborative Conversations requires shared intent with those we are having these conversations. It requires active listening, emotional presence, co-ownership of the progress. It creates the space where assumptions are surfaced and tested. Where meaning is made through our collaboration and where progress is co-owned. Through this, we achieve greater clarity, alignment, and purposeful action.

Let’s look at an example. Imagine we are leading with insight. We might say, “Most teams in your space are struggling with early pipeline conversion. We’ve found it’s due to weak first meetings and bad qualification.” The customer might respond, “Tell me more….” And we don’t know enough to carry on the conversation. Or the customer could say, “That’s not our problem!” At that point, we’re stymied, game over.

But what if we changed to a hypothesis led discussion? What if we asked, “We’ve noticed a pattern across a lot of sales teams with early pipeline conversion. While there was excitement in the first conversation, immediately afterwards, interest wanes, customers drop out of the conversation. What’s your experience?”

The customer could respond, “Yes, we are seeing similar things. How are others addressing this?” Alternatively, they might say, “That’s an interesting idea, how might we look at this to see if it’s happening with our team?” Or they might say, “We are seeing interest waning, but it’s happening much later in the process. Have you seen that happening?

Notice what happens, when we shift to a hypothesis. Suddenly, we are inviting a conversation, we start exploring the issues together, thinking together and moving forward in developing our understanding and how it might be addressed.

How do we get started? Some thoughts:

1. First, a hypotheses based approach works best in complex B2B buying decisions. Situations where the problems may not be fully understood, a need for cross functional collaboration and consensus, where there may be high ambiguity, risk, uncertainty.
2. What if we flipped the script on our insight, value proposition led approaches to presenting them as hypotheses, inviting the customer perspective and engaging in a dialogue?
3. How might we leverage the power of stories to illustrate the hypotheses, making it more relatable? Or weave mini stories into the conversation to help moving forward.
4. Rather than starting our discovery calls with checklists answering our questions, what if we had a few hypotheses we might test on the customer, engaging them in the discussion?
5. What if coming into a conversation with assumptions that need to be validated, we reconstruct them as hypotheses to examine?
6. What if we moved from, “This is what you are doing wrong,” to “What might be going on?”

Things that are critical to shifting these shifting these conversations include:

1. A hypothesis based conversation doesn’t mean there is less preparation, “Let’s see where this conversation goes….” It is different preparation. Not just what we need to say or the position we need to take, but what are we there to learn?
2. We have to suspend our assumptions. In these conversations we can examine them, keeping those which are meaningful in exploring the hypotheses.
3. We have to engage in active listening. And in active listening we have to make room for disagreement, exploring different perspectives, without collapsing the conversation. This active engagement promotes collaborative hypothesis building.
4. We have to focus on generating new understanding–between all of us, not just exchanging information.
5. We have to recognize that not all hypotheses are helpful, concentrating on those that are. And we have to recognize, that some hypotheses may be important to the customer, but we can’t contribute in a meaningful way to the conversation. Perhaps we better serve the customer by suggesting another organization that can be helpful.
6. We have to have the courage to admit, we might be wrong.
7. We have to have the willingness to be surprised.

What I’ve done in this post is to pose a hypothesis. What’s been your experience with these things? Have you experienced disconnects when delivering insights, your value propositions? How have you recovered from those?

Let’s start a dialogue…..

 

Afterword:  This is the AI based discussion this post  Somehow, these discussions a getting much better.  Perhaps, I’m training the tool better, or maybe the tool is getting smarter.  But this is a fascinating discussion!  Enjoy!