Anyone who sells anything is selling change. You may think that you are selling a product or a service, but you're not. You're selling change.
Are you selling a new copier? You are selling a different way to copy or print. The buttons have changed, the process has changed, the type of ink has changed, and even where the finished copies come out has changed. Are you selling a new uniform service? The pick up and drop off dates have changed, the style, colors, and starch has changed. Even the driver and their jokes have changed.
Medical equipment? A different procedure. Advertising? A different medium. Computers? A different operating system. A benefits plan? Different components, products and premiums. Anyone who sells anything is selling first and foremost…change.
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If you are going to sell change, like anything else, you better understand what it is you're selling. And more importantly what your clients and prospects are buying.
Understanding change means understanding the change process. Understanding the change process means understanding the dynamics of change and the four phases of resistance, and how these dynamics and phases affect and influence your clients and prospects.
People and companies often spend many years and many dollars learning to become change adaptive. This series is intended to provide a crash course in the process of change. Selling it successfully is up to you. The first of this series will explore the dynamics of change.
The dynamics of change
There are individual and organizational dynamics of change that occur all the time, for every change. Understanding what they are and how they influence your clients, and potential clients thinking is the first step to more sales. The individual dynamics of change are: a sense of loss, ambiguity and uncertainty, loss of trust and self-preservation.
Organizational dynamics are: deteriorating communications, loss of productivity, loss of momentum, loss of team play, power and turf struggles, lower morale, and the loss of good people. In any change, in every change, good, bad, big or small, new product, or new service, these dynamics will occur. The trick is to acknowledge them and get through them as quickly as possible.
What this means to you is that you should understand how what you have to offer impacts each of these and have a preplanned strategy to acknowledge and mitigate that impact. Pretending that they don't exist, and simply selling features and benefits makes you appear disconnected from the clients reality. (I will talk more about the strategies to address each in future articles)
Anybody who sells anything is selling change. Understanding the change process and more importantly understanding where your client or prospect is in the process is the key to selling…anything.
I will be discussing strategies for specifically addressing the phases of resistance in the next post.
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