Change Success

A mate came ’round last night to sample some cheeky Islay malt.  We were due to pop out to a nearby juicer, but I’m not ashamed to say I’m a little smitten with Mary Portas (no, not in that way, I’m not her ‘type’!), so insisted we watch the start of her new show

Her latest series gives her five months to turn a dilapidated charity shop (I think the Yanks call them thrift shops) from making barely £12.50 per shop assistant a week into a sort-out money-raising local gem.

Regional Manager Nick (half the age of even the youngest volunteer and overseeing 13 such outlets) unwittingly provided the episode’s killer moment.  Given his apparent real-world retail experience, our Mary enquired of him as to what changes he’d brought in since his arrival.

The rabbit stuttered in Mary’s headlights.  Here he was, giving the chat about how he was changing things, yet when challenged, couldn’t name any single initiative.  Eventually he muttered something about “stabilised pricing”.  Whatever that means who knows, it sounded like Nick didn’t either and Mary soon shot it down in flames as a non-existent policy.

In solution selling we are nearly always dealing with how to assess and manage individual perceptions surrounding the fall-out from the inevitable change that our proposal will bring.

It instantly struck me as a wonderful political mapping exercise to informally establish what each buying personality involved reckons they themselves have ‘changed’ in the past during their time inside your prospect organisation.

I’m sure that many of us regularly utilise someone’s positive attitude towards and overall propensity to change, so it seems well worthwhile making uncovering such stance a key part of your formalised sales process.