Change Fatigue Sales Angle

I read this month a chief exec with consulting vested interest expound with exclamation an intriguing stat. The number of 'strategic change' programs a typical large firm ceo currently deals with at any one snapshot in time stands at 3∙2.

That figure feeling a touch abstract? Pre-2020 most companies apparently experienced two major changes a year. For 2024, it’s now nine.

That's a lot of change. And plenty of potential 'change fatigue' somebody will want to dispel. Let it be through us.

There can often be a Sales tendency to shy away from 'change'.

Selling change as a concept seen as a fools errand.

Slammed doors of the status quo and its clinging to fantasy stability/certainty descent to oblivion.

Trying to sell into an enterprise in the midst of a change program fraught with disappointment from a buying freeze.

War stories legion of career-making commission lost on the winds of a prospect M&A, structural re-org, or new system implementation supposedly in train.

At the turn of the century I witnessed huge internal jamborees of big salesteams being told times were tight. Some but not many enlightened leaders proclaimed that they would no longer chase the folly of growth through the traditional fallback twin pincers; cutting costs and putting up prices.

I sense many businesses going through similar paths today.

A deeper stat emerges from the finding that presently each change program directly affects but a mere 1 in 20 of a firm's staff.

That 5% at any one time might be inside a twister, helps those outside looking in propose embracing continuous change.

Not only that, but bend the overall corporate attitude towards it. Always best to instigate shifts under your control rather than have trauma imposed upon you hurtling ever more chaotically away from your grasp.

When we pitch, we can gauge where on change scales our prospect sits. From averse to amenable. Change coming, happening or being bedded in.

There's many a mode on these as I've blogged before.

If those cited figures are true, then we can navigate with them.

Where there's fatigue, inject energy.

First, what change do we dovetail with?

Second, ask direct how prospects compare to these reported norms.

"I read there's likely been nine change initiatives in companies this year, how many you had...?"

You now know there's probably three ongoing right now. With some of that annual nine being prepped for already too.

You'll link with at least one.

Find it, and help its sponsor and those experiencing the inevitable extra load and pain within it to make their life, and eventual results, easier.