What If We Assumed Indecision/Uncertainty Is Pervasive?

Ted McKenna blew me away in a conversation today. He posed the question, “What if indecision is always there?” It got my mind spinning.

We’ve not paid much attention to indecision, and I’ll add uncertainty. Too often we, me included, have tended to be “just the facts” oriented. We help people identify what they are trying to do, we help them understand they issues that impact them, how they might look at them. We help them identify the opportunity cost for not taking action to address their potential fear of change. We help them navigate the buying process, ultimately to making a solution. Everything is logical, supported by data and facts. And at the end of the process we or someone else gets selected.

We did our win loss analysis based on just that, how many opportunities did we compete in, how many did we win, how many did we lose. There were always a few that didn’t choose, we probably didn’t pay too much attention to them, often chalking it up to the customer not being committed to change, or their priorities shifted elsewhere (which we saw as s different version not being committed to change). And there are always those opportunities that were qualified that we abandon at some point, maybe the customer was ghosting us, maybe they just stopped moving. We stopped working the deals, we abandoned them. We seldom do analysis of those, just chalking them up to the way things happen. And sometimes there is no really good reason.

And we have learned, over time, of the overwhelm customers experience in the process. We started looking at things like sensemaking and decision confidence. And through Ted and Matt’s work, we started looking a these differently, focusing on FOMU or my preferred FOFU.

Through that work, we learned of indecision and how to get the customer over the finish line to address by addressing their FOFU.

Perhaps it is my misunderstanding of their work, but I had always thought of indecision and FOFU coming toward the end of the buying process–and in many decisions (roughly 40%) it didn’t appear to exist.

Suddenly, I started thinking, “What if we work on the basis that indecision and uncertainty is pervasive? What if we assume it exists to varying degrees with everyone involved in the change management process and it exists through the entire process, extending past the actual decision?”

Rather than seeing if there are the telltale signs of FOFU towards the end of the buying process, what if we start every engagement process knowing that indecision and uncertainty exists with everyone though all stages of the process.?

Think about it for a moment, reflect on your own roles/jobs. Nothing we see is certain! We try to reduce that uncertainty by doing the things that have worked for us in the past, at the same time crossing our fingers hoping things work out. We live in worlds of constant disruption and change. As a result indecision and uncertainty become pervasive.

If we recognize every change or buying initiative we engage in, everyone has uncertainty/indecision to varying degrees. And each person has varying degrees of comfort/discomfort with uncertainty/indecision.

Now our job becomes very different. We focus on helping the customer identify their uncertainties/indecision from the very first meeting, and in every subsequent encounter (digital or human). We help them define and understand these. Through the process helping eliminate them or reduce their concern. Each person will be different. And the group, as a whole will have a different collective set of factors contributing to their indecision/uncertainty.

Indecision/uncertainty isn’t static, as the customer goes through their change/buying process, they will discover new things. These can reduce or eliminate certain areas of indecision/uncertainty or create new areas of concern. And through the process we leverage our expertise/experience in helping the customer define and understand these areas of indecision or uncertainty.

We may never eliminate these, but our goal is to help the customer become “comfortable” with the indecision/uncertainty that persists. Another way to think of this is becoming comfortable with risk (and each person has differing risk tolerance.)

We also have to recognize, that indecision/uncertainty persists after the customer has made a decision and is in implementation. And we have to help the customer manage that through the process.

To me, the real breakthrough is moving from thinking that indecision is something that we have to identify and overcome toward the end of the customer buying process, to recognizing it indecision/uncertainty exists throughout our work with customers. And we create the greatest value with them in helping them define, understand, manage, and reduce their discomfort with these issues.