No, I’m not channeling my inner Simon Sinek, but “Why” initiates very powerful diagnostic processes.
My feeds are filled with posts on failure.
- Response rates to any kind of outbound prospecting continues to plummet. Every metric is down—opens, click throughs, phone engagement, meetings, everything is in sharp decline.
- While, in aggregate, companies may be hitting their revenue targets, per capita seller performance is plummeting.
- It’s commonplace to see win rates less than 20%. Down significantly from previous years (I remember times when win rates less than 33% put a sales person on a PIP.
- Pipeline integrity is worsening, pipelines are becoming more and more anemic.
- Average tenure is plummeting, with both manager and seller tenures now somewhere around 11 months.
- Employee satisfaction and engagement continues to decline.
- Buyers are spending less time with sellers, now somewhere around 17% of the time they invest in their buying process.
- Buyers are deferring rep involvement to as late in their buying process as possible.
- Buyers are, increasingly, preferring rep-free buying experiences.
- 60% of committed buying efforts end in No Decision Made.
- Spending on software stacks skyrockets, yet utilization is very low.
- Sales training is not producing the results expected–at least on a sustained basis.
In virtually every aspect of selling, we see plummeting results. While companies may be hitting their revenue targets, the costs of attaining them is skyrocketing.
Yet, I seldom see people asking, “Why?”
Take any of the items I listed above, rather than asking “Why,” rather than drilling down to understand the things that may be contributing to these things, the methods to handling them seem to center around ignoring them–treating them as unfortunate laws of nature that we can’t change; or doubling down on doing the things that we are already doing.
I guess, my first “Why” question is, “Why don’t we take the time to drill down into each or any of these things we see happening? Why aren’t we trying to understand what causes them, whether that might be positive, or negative? Why don’t we lack the commitment to try to diagnose these issues, understand their drivers, and change/take corrective action to change these things?
For instance, we can look at response rates to virtually every outreach. We do have some indications about why—reps don’t understand them and their business, reps don’t understand their own products, reps are focused on their success, reps only focus on pitching their products, reps waste their time, they don’t trust the reps. We also see that digital and other channels are more convenient to the customers, providing them with enough information (though with high buyer regret, one might question whether these digital channels are as helpful as they should be, or if buyers are just resorting to them out of frustration) And we know that buyers have been relatively agnostic with the channels through which they learn, they just want help with their problems/challenges.
Until we start asking “Why,” until we start probing and understanding these things that impact our effectiveness, productivity, performance and results, we can’t start to figure out what we might change, how we might improve, how we create the greatest value with our customers.
Our failure to ask, “Why” impacts everything we encounter, not just our abilities to engage customers. Why can’t we attract and retain the employees we want? Why are people quiet quitting if they aren’t outright quitting? Why are we not getting the results we want from our sales stacks? Why is our Cost Per Order Dollar skyrocketing? Why are fewer people (on a percentage basis) achieving their goals? Why are we losing the majority of what we compete? Why are we burning out?
Why, why, why????
I can see the discomfort on our prospects’ faces when I start asking them “Why?” They are uncomfortable with the “Why” questions, I can see they don’t want to go down that path. They are frightened, sometimes, I think, they really don’t want to know the answers.
I’ve had prospects stopping conversations when I start asking “Why?” They stop my questioning, asking me, “Can you do this for us….?” My response usually starts with “Why……?” (Why is that the most important thing to do now? Why do this, versus something else? Why do you think that will produce the outcomes you want? Have you considered other approaches? What happens if you don’t do this? ……. and on and on….) In most cases, I’m delighted to do what they ask, I just want to make sure it’s the right thing to do, it’s the most impactful thing to do, and it will produce the results they expect. But until I know “Why,” I can’t make that assessment.
“Why” is threatening, sometimes frightening. But avoiding “Why” doesn’t help us achieve our goals. It doesn’t help us achieve our full potential. It doesn’t help us learn, change, grow, and improve.
Why don’t re recognize this and take action to change?
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