What Career Plans From Mass Workplace Leavers Have In Common With Your Sales Pitch

You’ve likely heard of the coronavirus induced Great Resignation.

Extended periods of lockdown enforced WFH giving rise to workflow, internal corporate machination and general career epiphanies causing a surge in jobhopper endeavours.

There’s an accompanying slew of writings aimed at smoothing the path of the perhaps two in five surveys suggest of the previously office-chained are now seeking to make the jump.

Whether simply to somewhere else similar, but different, to something radically distinct.

With such a staggering slice of the workforce on the move, you cannot escape the many ‘5 Tips To…’ style listicles in this arena.

Yet from one such instructional, I noted an uncanny resemblance in the headings to how you could help a buyer with their own ‘big change’ at work. The one our solution happily sets free.

It’s as documented by psychologist, Linda Blair [sub’n req’d].

Here’s her five headlines;

Try not to change too many things at once
Go towards, not away from
Be bold
Be aware of errors in affective forecasting
Give it time

Three of them seem fairly self-explanatory. And if you’re being hyper-critical, are not far divorced from the deepisms of the randomly unknowing.

Yet in our B2B sphere, any buying idea that seeks to add another project into a mix where bandwidth is already maxed out (1st), is deemed to play things a little too safe for tiny reward (3rd), or does not feature a plan to craft a notable legacy (5th) are usually doomed.

Thankfully the author does add a little nugget here and there. Such as her line, “Phillippa Lally at UCL found it takes at least nine weeks for us to create a new habit and make it automatic”. Which makes the compelling case to switch a promise for instant resolution into a plan for rather making improvement desired stick over time. Where as well as this personal nine-week timeline, you might also evoke a task, procedure or transaction done the ‘new way’ nine times to then sink in.

Then there’s perhaps aspirations new to a buyer contemplating our solution.

One is in danger of being ‘anti-Sales’ (2nd). As we are often urged to wallow in the gravity of the impending disaster of the prospect current dire position. It is also ‘anti’ the kinds of psychological steer epitomised by the legendary Prospect Theory. Suggesting people are motivated way more to stop a loss than seek a gain.

Yet there is something in this. If only for a glimpse into the vaunted ‘legacy’ horizon.

Can you craft a question that delves into what the future you unleash will enable them to do afresh, unshackled by and separated from how much they dislike their present plight?

Finally, there’s the delightfully enticing phrase “affected forecasting” (4th); “According to Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert, we tend to overestimate how happy we think a desired future event will make us feel”.

A tricky one to deal with possibly. But to avoid our proposals being ensnared by errors here, it may well be adaptable to the alternative course they may also be considering. Reminiscent of the old-school FUD (fear-uncertainty-doubt) spreaders of navy-suited mainframers back in the last century.

I’m not big on direct confronting of competition. In fact, I deliberately never mention them out loud with prospects. Yet you can lay traps for them with this technique. Especially where it’s indisputable you are clearly superior on a key Top Trump (aka battlecard) criteria.