Sharon Drew Morgen – What? Did You Really Say What I Think I Heard?

Have you ever wondered why folks who take training don’t retain the new knowledge? According to Harvard studies, training fails 90% of the time. Surely students want to learn, trainers are dedicated professionals, and the content is important. But the problem goes beyond the students, the motivation, the trainer, or the material being trained.

I suggest it’s a brain change issue: current training models, while certainly dedicated to imparting knowledge in creative, constructive ways, may not be developing the necessary neural circuitry for Learners to fully comprehend, retain, or retrieve the new information.

As an original thinker who’s been inventing systemic brain change models for decades, I’ve developed a Learning Facilitation model that separates the brain from the mind as the central training element to generate new neural circuits that will translate, understand, retain, and act on, the new knowledge.

I’m presenting Learning Facilitation at the Learning Ideas Conference in New York in June. For folks interested in learning a new training approach that offers brain training before mind/content training, here’s an abstract of the paper I’ve submitted to the conference and a link to the actual paper.

Link to paper: https://bit.ly/3vErBjm

Design Training to Enable Neural Circuits to Accept and Retain New Learning Without Resistance, by Sharon-Drew Morgen

Abstract. Standard training assumes that the right information presented and practiced in the right way will cause a Learner to understand, use, and retain it. But without first generating a home in the brain for the information to be triggered, Learners may not retain it, resulting in a 90% fail rate.

Learning occurs only when Learners have the requisite neural circuitry to translate the incoming content into action. In other words, training must include circuit generation before offering new information or it might not be understood or retained.

This paper introduces a brain-change learning approach that separates the mind from the brain to first enable students to generate new neural circuits to house the new content. It explains why current training models don’t enable Learners to form new circuits; how brains ‘listen’; how new neural circuits get generated; how to set up a room, instruct, and design exercises that work directly with a learner’s brain and eschew their mind (initially), before the new content is taught.

This training model has been used successfully in global corporations with 100,000 learners who, on follow-up, retained their knowledge for decades.

Link to paper: https://bit.ly/3vErBjm

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Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

Sharon Drew Morgen April 15th, 2024

Posted In: News

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I live on a floating home on the Columbia River, north Portland, OR, with an intimate connection to the river. I have three decks – one on the river side and two on the ‘lagoon’ side – from which I launch my kayak, welcome friends with boats, share a beer or two with visitors, sit and meditate in the early morning, swim.

My house has twenty 5’ tall windows that admit the light reflecting off the water year-round, so regardless of the season (the weather being unpredictable here in the Pacific Northwest), I have light all around me.

The weather is certainly a factor in our daily lives. Temperatures generally range from 40-80, with drizzle and rain much of December through March and occasional explosions of sunny days so we remember. Spring is variable, and mythically glorious in summer and fall.

It’s the end of March now. Last week it was in the 70s for 5 days. I sat with a book on the sparkly river as an occasional duck or goose swam by, some looking up to see if I had food (Feeding them means they’ll not only return for years but tell their kids and grandkids that I’m a mark. My neighbor Bob used to feed them daily. The day he missed, one spoiled goose went right up to his door, honking, honking, steadily honking, honking for an hour. I had to call Bob to come home and feed him to keep me from going crazy.). Yesterday a sea lion swam by. Huge.

I assume the sun is considering returning full time. But not today; it’s raining again, for a change. And if I don’t look outside to see the wet decks and gray skies, I can remind myself that yes, really, it’s becoming spring.

MY FRIEND

If past years are prologue, my duck friend should be by soon to lay her eggs in one of my tall river-side planters. She’s comfortable with me by now. When I come out her little head rises up, one eye checking that it’s me, then descending back into her job. But when I have guests she’s unfamiliar with her head stays up, alert, watching, aggressively observing, protecting.

Every night I check on the eggs around 8:00 pm when she goes out for food. Two summers ago a raccoon ate the 10 eggs about a week before they were ready to hatch. I found my agitated friend swimming back and forth, back and forth for days looking for her ducklings. I felt helpless. Like I was a bad grandmom.

But last year she had nine ducklings. Nine! It’s always sweet hearing them chirp when they hatch. When they’re a week old, they’re ready to learn to swim. I watch as she gentles them into the water, guiding them first in more shallow water, then after 3 weeks onto the river itself, always keeping them safe. It fascinates me how she knows what they’re doing when behind her; there’s always one who wants to do its own thing, but Mom is quite strict. Nope. In the line with your sibs!

Watching them grow as they learn to swim in the nearby water – those that don’t get eaten by other river creatures – is fun. Last year 7 of them survived. They all came ‘round to see me when they were grown, all the same size as mom, all ready to start their own families. I felt proud as Mom swam with them in circles in front of me, to show them off.

FLOWERS EMERGING

On my daily walks these days I see new flowers appearing. The floating homes have garden pots now budding with tulips and daffodils. The town houses across the street have carefully tended, creative, colorful, postage-size gardens: some wild, some manicured, some small Zen-scapes with stones and water features. Pretty.

Daphne scents the air. The pink and magenta magnolia petals open wider daily to show off their different hues. And that purple ground cover – no idea what it is – is all over. Rose buds. Hyacinths. Pinks, purples, yellows, lavenders. Sweet explosions of color and smell. Spring is emerging.

People outside walking, leading leashed dogs that would much prefer to run free. Everyone smiling. Boats returning. Small boats, some with couples, families, dogs; party boats with music blaring, sometimes the bebop of Ella or Billie, sometimes (unfortunately for my ears) the thump of techno.

Paddle boards with young folks, small dogs on the front; kayakers floating in pods of friends. I do an early morning paddle before the river gets busy and let the downstream current carry me along as I listen to the birds and the silence. Feels like I’m in the arms of something Bigger. A moment out of life. A joy.

Yes, we’re on route to being sunny and warm and sparkly and vibrant for the next 6 months, emerging from our wet hibernation. And I’m delighted.

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Sharon Drew Morgen April 1st, 2024

Posted In: News

Years ago I sat next to a lovely young man on a plane. Dressed for success, he exuded professionalism.

SD: You’re all dressed up to see a client, I bet. You look great.

YM: Thanks. I am. I’m going to offer my services free to a prospect for 2 weeks and hope he accepts.

SD: I bet you hope that you’ll prove your worth him paying for your services.

YM: I do! But I don’t know if any of it will pan out.

SD: What’s stopping you from facilitating him and his team through their pre-sales decision making so they all realize they need you and are willing to pay for you?

YM: You sound just like this book I just read on helping buyers buy. It was brilliant, and the author says prospects don’t have problems with our solutions, merely understanding their risk of change. And sellers should lead them through the change process before we push product details. I thought that was smart.

SD: (holding back a smile, as he was of course talking about my book Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell): So what’s stopping you now from helping these folks first manage their change so they can identify as buyers before giving them free work?

YM: I told my boss I thought we should bring her in to train us all. I got him a copy of her (my!) book. He read half of it then told me it was crazy stuff, that that isn’t the way to sell, and to not do anything she suggests. So I’m sort of stuck.

This man’s boss would rather risk the cost of his travel, his time, his opportunity cost and the prospect’s goodwill than add new sales skills and have a much greater chance of closing the sale. He wasn’t even curious enough, or respectful enough, to allow the man to try something new.

WE’D RATHER BE STUPID THAN DIFFERENT

Groupthink. A form of structural stupidity. Going along with the status quo because…. because what? Is rigidity acceptable merely because everyone follows the same flawed thinking?

I don’t understand why the risk of change with a credible chance of success is greater than the cost of customary activities when their probability of failure is known to be high.

Failure is such a known quantity in several industries that companies build it into their budgets. They

build in extra time for a project to manage resistance during change initiatives (95% fail rate);
continually seek new coaching clients after they cancel when they haven’t gotten the promised results (80%);
bring in additional training programs because the training provided wasn’t retained (90% fail rate);
budget training funds for new hires due to attrition, when perfectly good employees leave due to low morale;
hire 9x more sales folks because of the 95% failure rate due to outdated sales thinking.

And yet they keep doing what they’ve always done, getting the same results. Hello Einstein!

PUSH BACK

As an original thinker and inventor of proven (and innovative) models that correct for, and entirely avoid, these failures in sales (Buying Facilitation®), coaching, training, and change management (Change Facilitation), I’ve been running into this blind spot for decades. And I still can’t understand why people would choose to continue failing when, with a few changes, they could avoid resistance, enable permanent change and learning, and retain good employees.

But no matter how many books (10, including Selling with Integrity, the first sales book on the New York Times Business Bestseller’s list) I’ve written; how many people I’ve spoken to on radio, tv, podcasts, keynotes over forty years; or Fortune 500 clients I’ve successfully trained (many); I still get major pushback: the risk of change is higher than their need for success.

To show you how endemic the resistance to change is, here are some real comments following highly successful Buying Facilitation® pilots that taught sellers how to close sales in one quarter the time, AND with Servant Leader tools:

(Proctor and Gamble): Given the speed of closing and increased sales we’d experience if everyone used Buying Facilitation®, we’d need to speed up manufacturing, hire more support folks, buy more trucks… It would cost $2,000,000,000 and take us 2 years to recoup. We’re not set up for that.

(Boston Scientific): We got a 53% increase in closed sales and the sales folks loved it. Thanks, Sharon-Drew. But the model is too controversial for easy adoption.

(Kaiser Permanente): We pay sellers for numbers of visits and we have no way to pay per closed sales. [Note: their sales went up from 110 visits/18 closed sales to 27 visits/25 closed sales.]

(WmBlair & Co): This is crazy stuff. This isn’t sales. You folks just got lucky (said folks as they watched their colleagues close sales quickly).

I could go on. Thankfully, early adopters have hired me to train sales and consulting departments in many global corporations over the years. But too often my innovative concepts get compared against the standard tools and folks either don’t believe it’s possible to sell from the Buy Side (client success studies and references aside) or can’t get buy-in from their teams to do anything differently. Groupthink prevails.

STAYING THE SAME AT ALL COSTS

The perceived risks of change seem too high for mainstream. But take a look at the risks of following Groupthink:

You always get what you always got – regardless of what else is possible.
You use resource (people, money, time) to build strategies and practices around what has a high likelihood of minimal success, low adoption, high cost.
You assume that the known fail rate – in sales, coaching, OD, change management, consulting, marketing, training – is what ‘is’ and build the failure into a project rather then researching innovative options with a history of success.

In my map of the world, when I see something failing after a fair trial period, I change the thinking behind the problem, not merely move around the chairs. I understand I can’t get it right initially, but failure is nothing but a tap on the shoulder reminding me to do something different. In fact, failure is a necessary element of learning and change. Why has it gotten such a bad rap? And why is it a more potent determinate of action than the possibility of success?

Here are my guesses as to why companies maintain models that demonstrably fail:

They prefer the known failure as there’s a buy-in for it.
They don’t know what’s worth taking a risk on (And don’t discuss alternative possibilities with the team).
They build in or hide the fallout (Sales operations record real costs – outsourced lead gen, for example – in the cost center and closed sales in the profit center) so the success ratio appears larger than it really is.
They don’t know who or what to trust. (And haven’t done purposeful research to get references or read case studies that prove it.)
They assume what they’re doing is the best that can be expected. (And don’t question that premise as per egos and job expectations.)
They don’t know how to strategize using a different model.
They assume the failure is an accurate version of what’s possible. (And haven’t researched alternate, proven modalities.)
They assume that since the model is the standard model used in the field, it must be the best option. (And they consider the risk of change higher than the risk of success.)

Yet resistance, non-compliance, failure to close, failure to learn, failure to not permanently adopt new behaviors, is failure they’re maintaining.

At what point is the risk of change worth taking? When is the cost of failure less than the cost of trialing something out-of-the-box? After all, different thinking is the only way real change happens.

WHAT IS YOUR RISK?

Here are some questions to help you consider going outside the box going forward:

What would you need to know to be willing to consider the prospect of doing something different(ly) even though your colleagues continue their current activity?
What would you need to know or believe differently to be willing to consider your consistently low success rates ‘failure’ can be turned around by trialing something new?
How will you know when you haven’t found a fix for a problem (i.e. resistance, low close rates, low learning retention etc.) and the risk of an innovative solution is less than the risk of the status quo?
What colleagues would you need to include in thought discussions and noodling as you consider the risk of doing something new?
If you decide you’re willing to discover innovative approaches to consistent problems, how will you know who or what to trust? What would you need to know or understand to be assured that your trust is well placed?
How will you know that a possible solution is truly innovative? That you can trust the pitch or the hype?

Personally, I don’t consider failure an option. For me, the risk of trialing something new when I know the enormous risks of maintaining the status quo is not a real risk given the alternative. Without innovation, without the risk of disruption in the name of success, continued failure is the only option. If you’re willing to go beyond Groupthink and consider innovative, successful alternatives that have been proven in global corporations, contact me.

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Sharon Drew Morgen March 25th, 2024

Posted In: News

Your important nonprofit or exciting startup will help the world be a better place, bring innovative ideas to the market, and be quite sucessful. You’ve created a terrific pitch deck, have a highly competent management team and terms, and have identified donor prospects with major gift potential. You’ve designed a multi-channel approach to build relationships with small investors to excite them to becoming large investors. Why aren’t you raising all the funding you deserve?

It’s not you, your message. or your organization;
It’s not the strength of your relationship or who you ‘know’;
It’s not the market, your competition, your return potential or your marketing materials.

It’s about how your investors will choose you over the competition. But do you know how, specifically, they’ll choose? Since each potential investor has unique, and unspoken criteria for choosing who to invest in, there’s no way to know. How, then, can you engage them?

HOW DO INVESTORS CHOOSE?

Investor funds are not sitting there waiting for you to show up, no matter how compelling your information, solution, management team or terms. They must choose from among several worthy investments. And certainly they’ll have unspoken, and possibly unconscious political, ecological, or personal biases.

Clearly they’re judging you against some criteria that you are unaware of, and you’re guessing what information to present based on your criteria. Unfortunately, the criteria don’t always match.

Sadly, as an outsider, you have no access to an investor’s hidden or historic arrangements, personal beliefs, or political mind-fields. And asking them directly about their criteria will only get you obvious answers.

How can you set yourself apart from the competition and flush out their choice criteria so you can make an effective pitch? Let’s begin by understanding the difference between how investors choose and what you offer.

ALIGN CRITERIA FIRST

Decades ago as a sales person, I realized the difference between choice criteria (personal, idiosyncratic) vs content (data) when attempting to engage a prospect. I was frustrated with the seeming gap between what I thought prospects needed (my solution, of course) and their willingness to buy, between the information I thought might persuade them and how they made decisions.

When I started up a tech company in London and became The Buyer I realized the problem: selling involved me getting my solution placed; buying involved me meeting specific criteria that managed risk so we could make necessary changes with minor disruption or wasted resource.

Now on the other side of the table, I realized that people bought, or invested, only once their own criteria were met. I had to shift from believing that my details would rule the day, to understanding I had to help investors recognize their own criteria and match it.

I did something I had never done: Rather than designing pitch materials based on what I thought they should know, I began my interactions with questions that helped them discern their decision criteria first, THEN presented my content in a way that fit.

TRUTHS ABOUT HOW INVESTORS DECIDE

To consider the components of a decision to invest, start-ups and scale-ups should consider how investors choose:

Folks seeking funds have no way to understand an investor’s choice criteria as each has their own unique sets of rules, beliefs, values, vision they choose from. For example, some choose management as their criteria, some choose market size and potential for penetration, etc;
Unless the investor’s choice criteria are met, no decision to buy or invest will be made;
Unless the investor is willing to shift their criteria, they’ll consider presentation materials with a biased eye, regardless of the efficacy of the investment.
Information is only relevant when it fits into the investor’s criteria or it will be ignored, resisted, or misunderstood.

To have the best chance to engage investors, begin by facilitating them through the internal, and often unconscious and biased, decisions they must make then customize your pitch to meet their specific criteria.

HOW TO MOTIVATE

Enter your fundraising session with a goal to facilitate decision making. Otherwise, you’re entering into a black box of unknowns, assuming that your ideas, your solutions, or the quality of your deck will get you funded. Money goes to those opportunities that first match their hidden criteria regardless of how you present.

Rather than attempting to inspire and provoke action with a brilliant pitch and deck, I begin my funding sessions by posing questions to help the investors discover their unconscious choice criteria.

For example: As a woman, I know only 4% of investor funds go to women (up from 1% in 1996!) so I pose a question to help them recognize their bias here. I might ask:

How would you know that investing in a woman-owned company would be a good investment and offer an excellent opportunity for a high return on your investment?

By enabling them to make their choice criteria transparent and dialoguing with them, I let them tell me how I fit into their standards or not. THEN offer the specific information to address that specific criterion (and yes, I design a pitch deck with flexibility, beyond the content that I think is important.). So: Q&A first THEN pitch deck.

FACILITATIVE QUESTIONS THAT GENERATE REAL ANSWERS

I’d like to discuss the type of questions I pose. I’ve invented a new form of question that prompts the Other to discover their own answers, unbiased by my needs or assumptions. Facilitative Questions help Others discover their unconscious choice criteria.

(Note: FQs are brain-directional, not information gathering. They use different goals than conventional questions, with very specific words, in very specific order, in very specific sequences to get to the neural circuits within the Responder’s unconscious where their values-based criteria are stored. They are so different from standard questions that they can’t be learned without training. Here’s a link to a Learning Accelerator that will teach you how to formulate them.)

They not only find real answers, but instigate discussions to generate flexibility where possible. Here are some Facilitative Questions that I use during funding sessions:

What would you need to see from me and my company to know it’s got a high probability of succeeding?
What would you need to see to know we’re organized and managed for ongoing success, can enter the market competitively, and employ ethical standards?
How would you know in advance that we represent collaboration, communication, and cooperation making us a good choice for partnership?

By posing these questions, you can dialogue with the investors first around substantive issues, begin a relationship, and get rid of the hidden criteria as much as possible. This will certainly differentiate you from your competitors. And don’t worry if some investors don’t want to play: they’re the ones who wouldn’t have invested in your anyway. It’s not only the investors who must choose: you get to choose who you want to get into bed with.

Remember: your solution is great. But so are the other solutions these investors are considering. The problem is not how to position your solution, but how to inspire investors to choose you.

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Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.

Sharon Drew Morgen March 18th, 2024

Posted In: News, Sales

I used to assume that what I hear someone say is an accurate interpretation of what they mean. My assumption was wrong; what I think I hear (the words, the meaning) has a good chance of being inaccurate, regardless of my intent to listen carefully. But it’s not my fault.

During the years I spent reading, thinking, and researching for my book (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?) on closing the gap between what’s said and what’s heard, I was quite surprised to learn how little of what I think I hear is unbiased, or even accurate. Listening, it turns out, is a brain thing and has little to do with words or intent.

HOW BRAIN’S ‘LISTEN’

Our historic life experiences (education, family, values, Beliefs, mental models) filter all incoming words, creating biases and assumptions that keep us from translating incoming messages accurately. Generally speaking, our brain determines what we hear. And it’s not objective. Here’s what happens:

- Words are merely puffs of air that emerge from our lungs, formed by our mouth and tongue. They are meaningless sound vibrations that enter a Listener’s brain and get made into signals that get sent to ‘similar-enough’ brain circuits for translation. Everything ‘heard’ is understood and translated as per the circuits the signals were sent – what’s been ‘heard’ before – leaving the possibility that incoming content may be at least partially misunderstood.
- A Listener’s ears

– capture some portion of incoming sound vibrations,

– conducts them through historic filters (Beliefs, mental models, etc.)

– translate the remaining vibrations into signals that get sent to

– match ‘similar-enough’ existing circuits, which

– discard what doesn’t match.

The remainder is what we think we ‘hear’.

Listeners have no idea what has been discarded in the process, the relevance of the historic reference the translating circuit refers to, or what parts of the originating message are heard inaccurately.

- Speakers have no idea how a Listener’s brain has interpreted or biased what they’ve said or how close to accurate it is. Neither do Listeners. We all accept the translation our brain offers us as real.
- We speak in run-on sentences, not individual words, and a Listener’s brain must make sense of the variations in vibrations of each word.
- People speak for approximately 600 milliseconds and respond (or begin formulating a response) in 200 milliseconds. Large portions of what’s been said is not even listened to.

In other words, what we think we hear is some version of what’s been said. With people we’re in regular contact with and already have circuits to translate, it can be pretty accurate. With others not so much.

DIAGRAM OF HOW BRAINS ‘LISTEN’

Herein lie the gap between what’s said and what’s heard: we all make inaccurate assumptions of what we think we hear, causing us to respond and choose actions from a restricted or flawed knowledge base. Of course, it’s not done purposefully, but it sure plays havoc with communication and relationships.

I once lost a business partner because he misinterpreted something he thought I said, even though his wife told him he had misheard. His comment: “I heard it with my own ears! Are you both telling me I’m crazy??” and stormed out, never to speak to me again.

Unfortunately, and different from perceived wisdom, brains don’t allow us to ‘actively listen’ to accurately understand what’s been said. Sure, Active Listening allows us to ‘hear’ the words spoken but doesn’t capture the intent, the underlying meaning. And given our neurological hearing processes are automatic, mechanical, and thoughtless, we’re stuck with what we think we hear. Here’s a simplified diagram of the process of listening:

INPUT (WORDS/VIBRATIONS) -> FILTERS (BELIEFS, MENTAL MODELS) -> CUE (CREATES SIGNALS) -> CEN (DISPATCH) -> OUTPUT (INTERPRETATION – WHAT WE THINK WAS SAID)

Here’s a graphic:

There’s little chance any of us can understand a Speaker’s intended meaning accurately.

GUIDELINES TO MAXIMIZE UNDERSTANDING IN DIALOGUE

Given how vital listening is to our lives, for those times we want to make sure we understand and get on the same page with a Communication Partner (CP) to reach consensus, here are some guidelines:

Get agreement for a dialogue: Often, Communication Partners have different life experiences and, potentially different goals – many of which might be unconscious. Begin by agreeing to find common ground.

“I’d like to have a dialogue that might lead to us to a path that meets both of our goals. If you agree, do you have thoughts on where you’d like to begin?”

“I wonder if we can find common goals so we might find agreement to work from. I’m happy to share my goals with you; I’d like to hear yours as well.”

Link to Purchase

Set the frame for common values: At a global level, we all have similar foundational values, hopes and fears – for family, food, shelter, health. Start by ‘chunking up’ to find areas of agreement.

“I’d like to find a way to communicate that might help us find a common values so we can begin determining if we share areas of agreement. Any thoughts on how you’d like to proceed?”

“It seems we’re in opposite mind-sets. How do you recommend we go about finding if there’s any agreement we can start from?”

Get agreement on the topics in the conversation: One step at a time; make sure CPs agree to each item and skip the ones (for now) where there’s no agreement. (Put them in a Parking Lot for your next conversation.) Work with ‘what is’ instead of ‘what should be.’

Enter without bias: Unintentionally our historic, unconscious beliefs restrict our search for commonality. Replace emotions and blame with a new bias for this conversation: the ‘bias’ of collaboration.

“I’m willing to find common ground and would like to put aside my normal reactions for this hour but it will be a challenge since my feelings are so strong. Do you also have strong feelings that also might bias our communication? I wonder if we could share our most cherished beliefs and then discuss how we can move forward without bias.”

Get into Observer: To help overcome unconscious biases and filters, here are a few mind hacks that will supersede automatic brain processing: in your mind’s eye, see yourself on the ceiling looking down on yourself and your CP. I call this the Observer (witness, coach) position. It will provide a different viewpoint for your brain, replacing the emotional, automatic response with a broader, far less biased, view of your interaction. Another way is to walk around during the conversation, or sit way, way back in a chair. Sitting forward keeps you in your biases. (Chapter 6 in What? teaches how to stay in Observer and reduce bias.). From your Observer place, notice elements of the communication of both you and your CP:

- - Notice body language/words: Similar to how your brain filters incoming words, your CP is speaking/listening from their filters and assumptions, which will be exhibited in their body language and eye contact. From Observer notice how their physical stance matches their words, the level of passion, feelings, and emotion. Now look down and notice how you look and sound in relation to your CP. Just notice. Read Carol Goman’s excellent book on the subject.
  - Notice triggers: Emphasized words hold beliefs and biases. You may also hear absolutes: Always, Never; lots of You’s may be the vocabulary of blame. Silence, folded arms, a stick-straight torso may show distrust. Just notice where/when it happens for you both. If your CPs words trigger you into your own subjective viewpoints, you’ve gotten out of Observer and must get back onto the ceiling where you have choice. But just in case:

“I’m going to try very hard to speak/listen without my historic biases. If you find me getting heated, or feel blame, I apologize as that’s not my intent. If this should happen, please tell me you’re not feeling heard and I’ll do my best to work from a place of compassion and empathy.”
Summarize regularly: Because the odds are bad that you’ll accurately hear what your CP means to convey, summarize what you think you heard after every exchange:
“Sounds to me like you said, “XX”. Is that correct? What would you like me to understand that I didn’t understand or that I misheard?”

“I’ statements: Stay away from ‘You’ if possible. Try to work from the understanding that you’re standing in different shoes and there is no way either of you can see the other’s landscape.
“When I hear you say X it sounds to me like you are telling me that YY. Is that true?”

“When I hear you mention Y, I feel like Z and it makes me want to get up from the table as I feel you really aren’t willing to hear me. How can we handle this so we can move forward together?”

Get buy-in each step of the way: keep checking in, even if it seems obvious that you’re on the same page. It’s really easy to mistranslate what’s been said when the listening filters are different.
“Seems to me like we’re on the same page here. I think we’re both saying X. Is that true? What am I missing?”

“What should I add to my thinking that I’m avoiding or not understanding the same way you are? Is there a way you want me to experience what it looks like from your shoes that I don’t currently know how to experience? Can you help me understand?”

Check your gut: Notice when/if your stomach gets tight, or your throat hurts. These are sure signs that your beliefs are being stepped on and you’re out of Observer. Get back up to the ceiling and then tell your CP:
“I’m experiencing some annoyance/anger/fear/blame. That means something we’re discussing is going against one of my beliefs or values. Can we stop a moment and check in with each other so we don’t go off the rails?”

Get agreement on action items: Simple steps for forward actions will become obvious; make sure you both work on action items together.

Get a time on the calendar for the next meeting: Make sure you discuss who else needs to be brought into the conversation, end up with goals you can all agree on and walk away with an accurate understanding of what’s been said and what’s expected.

COMPASSION, EMPATHY, AND RESPECT

Until or unless we all hold the belief that none of us matter if some of us don’t; until or unless we’re all willing to take the responsibility for each (inadvertent)act of harm; until or unless we’re each willing to put aside our very real grievances to seek a higher good, we’ll never heal.

It’s not easy. But by learning how to hear each other with compassion and empathy, by closing the gap between what’s said and what’s heard, our conversations can begin. We must be willing to start sharing our Truth and our hearts and find a way to join with another’s Truth and heart. By hearing each other accurately, it’s the best start we can make.

______________________

Sharon Drew Morgen March 11th, 2024

Posted In: Listening

Your solution is great. You know the narrative of the type of buyers who buy. You’re writing appropriate content and getting it out to the right demographic. But you’re still closing less than 5% from first contact and spending a ton of resource finding different ways to touch the same people as your competition touches – in hopes that you’ll have the right message that catches them at the right time or just grind them down.

Why aren’t more buyers buying? Do you know why your well-executed sales outreach programs – salesperson, social media, digital media, marketing – don’t elicit more closed sales?

DO YOU WANT TO SELL? OR HAVE SOMEONE BUY?

You’re not closing more because your messages target a restricted audience, those who have already

understood their risk of change,
tried all familiar resources and workarounds to fix their own problem and came up short,
decided their only route to a problem resolution is to make a purchase,
gotten appropriate buy-in and managed any disruption that a purchase would bring

and then you and your competitors work tirelessly to close a sale from that small pool of ready buyers.

Seeking those you believe are probable buyers (those who SHOULD buy) limits your spectrum of buyers to those who are prepared for any change a purchase will cause.

In other words, before people self-identify as buyers, they must first understand that the risk of change is less than the risk of the status quo. A buying decision is a risk management problem before it’s a solution choice issue.

Indeed, the last thing buyers want is to buy anything. Literally: the last thing. People don’t want to make a purchase, they merely want to resolve a problem with the least disruption/cost, and try everything they can to first fix the problem themselves.

By acting as if selling causes buying, we disregard the internal, private, idiosyncratic, systemic change management work buyers must do before they’ve got their ducks in a row and are ready to buy; until then, the risks of change are too high regardless of their need or the efficacy of your solution.

The sales model only handles the buying portion at the end (step 10 of 13. See steps below) of the complete Buying Decision Path. But this is merely a fraction of those who will eventually buy.

Here are the problems you face when targeting people who haven’t yet self-identified as buyers and don’t yet have all their ducks in a row:

Once prospects have determined a need, you’re already in a competitive situation and have to find ways to be better/cheaper/more branded.
You’re wasting over 90% of your time finding, following up, meeting with, and in several ways trying to connect with, those who appear to need your solution but turn out not to be buyers.
You ignore the high percentage of those who would/will buy but aren’t yet ready to (but could easily be gotten ready).
You overlook the possibility of connecting with and serving, real buyers early along their change management/decision path
and reduces the number of possible entry points onto the Buying Decision Team/buying decision.

Sure, you’re making great information available for those who are ready to engage. But you could be entering earlier and facilitating those who are in the midst of taversing the full range of risk/change management steps along the Buying Decision Path and not accessible with the sales model.

Sample

SELLING DOESN’T CAUSE BUYING

The problem has never been your terrific solution but in closing all the sales you deserve to close. It’s because sales are solution-placement driven, seeking optimal ways to get persuasive content to probable buyers in hopes of making a sale, but ignores the much higher pool of real prospects who aren’t far enough down their buyer’s journey to commit or engage.

The sales model is great for when buyers have completed their internal steps for change. But for those buyers who haven’t completed their buy-in and change/risk management issues, and haven’t yet determined if they CAN buy, sales don’t have the intent, skills, or focus. Sales wasn’t created to do that. It’s only meant to place solutions.

It’s possible for us to add a front end to sales and first facilitate people through their internal change work so they can self-identify as buyers. Then you’ll be a true relationship manager, quickly prepare the folks who WILL be buyers, and close quickly. Not to mention with a change facilitation hat on as you begin each interaction, you can recognize those who will become buyers on the first call and not waste time on those who will never buy.

The sales model we’ve been using is based on a model developed by Dale Carnegie, introduced in his book How to Win Friends and Influence People (1937). He promoted relationships, face-to-face visits, finding folks with a need, placing solutions, for which he recommended developing great pitches.

Think about it: while there are certainly a helluva lot more bells and whistles in 2020, the basic skeleton of need/relationship/ appointment/ pitch, remains the same. It shouldn’t be. Selling doesn’t cause buying. They are two different activities.

The buying environment has changed dramatically over the past 100 or so years, far more complex than merely choosing a vendor or solution; the sales model hasn’t. It’s time for new thinking. Let’s join buyers where they really have their real ‘pain’ and facilitate Buyer Readiness earlier in their buy-in/systemic change process.

BUYING MEANS CHANGE FIRST

If prospective buyers might need a new CRM system, for example, they cannot buy until their tech guys, users, time frames, vendor relationships, current software etc. are in agreement, recognize they can’t fix their problem themselves and have assembled everyone who will touch the final solution to integrate the ‘new’.

Sales seeks out folks with ‘need’ in order to place solutions. But need is not the primary factor in a purchasing decision: until the risk of the new is a understood and accepted those who SHOULD buy will maintain their status quo, regardless of their need or efficacy of your solution. And the time it takes them to manage all this is the length of the sales cycle.

Buyers don’t want to buy anything. They just want to resolve a problem with the least disruption and the most efficient use of a resource. And

until they figure out that they cannot resolve their problem themselves,
everyone has agreed to bring in something new,
everyone understands and buys into the risk of change,
and they know how to avoid any disruption that something new invariably brings with it,

they cannot buy. Indeed, they’re not even buyers until everyone agrees. [Hence the reason they don’t heed our content outreach].

All prospects/buyers must do this anyway, with you or without you. It might as well be with you. Why not use your industry knowledge to help them figure out how to traverse their steps efficiently? With a different hat on and a new skill set, you can facilitate them quickly through their process and be right there with them as they decide. You want to seek/find those exact ones who WILL buy. And you can find them on the first call. You’ll just need a different hat on.

STAGES IN THE BUYING DECISION PATH

To design messaging to find buyers earlier in their Buying Decision Path, recognize the steps buyers take to be ready and able to purchase:

1. Idea stage: Is there a problem?

Does it need to be solved? When? How?
What’s the fallout?
Is the cost of a fix lower than the cost of the status quo?
Who needs to be involved?

2. Brainstorming stage: Idea discussed with colleagues.

3. Initial discussion stage: Colleagues discuss the problem, posit who to include on Buying Decision Team, consider possible fixes and fallout. Action groups formed. Research begins. New team members invited.

4. Contemplation stage: Group discusses:

Known workarounds and acceptable/fallout from each,
People who would need to buy-in.

5. Organization stage: Group collects all internal issues that need consideration, including finding more folks to invite into process; research into the elements of the status quo; fallout to change. Begins to assess the entire scope of problem, resolution possibilities, cost of change/no change.

6. Change management stage: Group to determine:

Types of research necessary (and who will do it),
If appropriate people are involved (and who else to invite),
A review of all elements of the problem and solution options,
How much change management would be required,
How much disruption is acceptable.

7. Coordination stage:

Review needs, ideas, issues of new members invited,
Incorporate change considerations,
Delineate everyone’s thoughts re goals and change capacity,
Appropriate research responsibilities.

8. Research stage: Specific research for each possible solution; seek answers to how fallout and change would need to be managed with each solution.

9. Consensus stage: Buying Decision Team meets to share research consider their givens: downsides per type of solution, possibilities, outcomes, problems, management considerations, changes in policy, job description changes, HR issues, etc. General decisions made. Buy-in and consensus necessary.

10. Action stage: Responsibilities apportioned to manage the specifics of Stage 9. Calls made to several vendors for interviews and data gathering.

11. Second brainstorming stage: Discussion on results of data gathering, calls with vendors and partners, and fallout/benefits of each. Favored vendors pitched by team members.

12. Choice stage: New solution agreed on. Change management issues delineated and put in place. Leadership initiatives prepared to avoid disruption.

13. Implementation stage: Vendor contacted. Purchase made. Everything put in place.

For those who want to explore these stages and all elements of how buyers buy, see my book Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell and what you can do about it.

A NEED ISN’T ENOUGH

Instead of only targeting probable buyers and ignoring the much larger pool of real buyers who are merely too early in their decision process to consider buying anything (but will, once they get to that point in their process), add a new focus: seek out folks who want to change, and facilitate them through to becoming buyers.

Note: your current messaging is the wrong tool for this part of their process because it’s not information, need, or buying driven. You need a new skill to facilitate change. To manage this Pre-Sales work, and as an adjunct to the sales model, I’ve developed Buying Facilitation® to

work with sales to enter the Buying Decision Path between Steps 1-9 above (Pre-Sales),
seek/find those who CAN buy (those who’ve recognized a problem in the area your solution serves, but aren’t set up to buy anything yet),
find the large pool of real buyers who can be facilitated efficiently through to Buyer Readiness,
collapse the time from problem recognition to discovery of need to purchase,
enable sellers to be servant leaders and real consultants, and be part of the Buying Decision Team when buyers get to the point they’re ready to buy.

Buying Facilitation® is a generic change management, decision facilitation model that can help buyers traverse that part of their journey that sales doesn’t handle. Using unique skill sets not currently used in sales (Facilitative Questions, Listening for Systems, change sequencing) it was designed to optimize the change/decision process. By adding some new messaging and Buyer Persona targets, you can find those who aren’t touched by your sales messages but are in the process of becoming buyers.

By targeting those who seek change rather than those who might have a ‘need’, by understanding the Pre-Sales (change management) steps all buyers take, by changing your messaging to enable the collection of the full stakeholder group, enable buy in from the disparate voices, and needs, you can find and facilitate the Pre-Sales decision path of those who WILL buy and enable them to ready themselves for a purchase. Here are two examples of success after learning Buying Facilitation®:

Kaiser Permanente initially made 110 visits and got 18 closed sales, wasting too much time traveling to those who WOULDN’T buy. Adding Buying Facilitation® to their sales, they made 27 visits and got 25 closed sales. They still needed to sell – but only to those who were ready/able to buy. And saved a ton of time/money only traveling to those who were real buyers.

Working with Wachovia small business bankers, they went from 100 calls, 10 appointments, and 2 closed sales over 11 months, to 100 calls, 37 appointments, and 29 closed sales in 3 months.

Using Buying Facilitation® outcomes are quite different. It begins by entering as a true consultant, seeking folks who seek change in the area of the seller’s solution. The conventional ‘need’ and ‘solution placement’ mind set not only misses those who are en route to becoming buyers and don’t (yet) have interest in content, but has the potential of alienating folks not already seeking to buy. Not to mention it’s a huge time waster.

Using Buying Facilitation® as a preliminary skill set,

Sellers can tell who will be a buyer on the first call and only visit people once they’ve completed their change process and have become buyers – a highly shortened process as the Facilitator makes the buying decision process much more efficient (half the time) and when a solution is finally discussed, it’s relevant to the buyer’s actual needs, timing, buy in, and stakeholder criteria;
Appointments are made only when representatives of the entire Decision Team are onboard [And note: this can take just one or two calls.];
By entering at the beginning of the Decision Path instead of trying to enlist the low hanging fruit who’ve already become buyers, it’s possible to close 8x more sales (as per 35 years of control group/pilot testing);
A seller’s first job is to facilitate the Pre-Sales steps, then add the solution placement component when they’re ready.

It sounds impossible if compared with the sales process of prospecting, qualifying, and pitching and ultimately closing 5%. But the entire process is different. With the focus on first facilitating the complete Decision Path from beginning to end (focus on change, not on selling), Buying Facilitation® expands the possible target audience by a factor of 8, to include those in the buying decision process, not just those who have completed it (the low hanging fruit). It’s a true Relationship Management tool, and saves time as sellers only sell to those who WILL buy.

Once people know all – all – of the elements (most are hidden, personal and idiosyncratic) of their Pre-Sales decision/change steps and have realized they cannot resolve a problem without outside help, they are buyers and seek a solution. By this time, they’ve gone through their steps and are have recognized that bringing something new in will ‘cost’ less than maintaining the status quo. Design messaging to help them traverse their steps (Note: offering information about your solution until this occurs is irrelevant) to manage change and consensus – and THEN sell. We wait while they do this anyway and run after the ones who have completed this journey. Why not add a new criteria and skill set to what you’re already doing and expand your focus to find those who WILL buy.

____________

Sharon Drew Morgen March 4th, 2024

Posted In: Listening, Sales

Using current negotiation models, people feel they are giving up more than they want in exchange for receiving less than they deserve. As part of standard practice, negotiation partners going into a negotiation calculate their bottom line – what they are willing to give up, and what they are willing to accept – and then fight, argue, cajole, or threaten when their parameters aren’t met. People have been killed for this. But there is another way.

In 1997, Bill Ury (author of Getting to Yes) and I had to read each other’s books (my book was Selling with Integrity) in preparation for working together for KPMG. A week before our introductory lunch meeting, I read his book where BATNA – Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement – originated, marked the areas I disagreed with in red, and sent the marked book back to Bill.

There was a lot of red: his book teaches how to get what you want (potentially win-lose) rather than how everyone can walk away satisfied (win-win) and I was quite pointed in my annoyance with win-lose. The next day I realized what an ass I was and called him, telling him not to open my envelope and I’d explain all when we met. But he had already received, reviewed, and agreed with my corrections!

We had a long chat comparing our models, concluding with a very interesting discussion about the different outcomes between a win-win and a win-lose negotiation. And net net, he agreed with me and we worked with KPMG using a win-win model.

Sample

BELIEFS

Win-lose is an incongruity. Using benchmarks for ethics and integrity, if one person loses, everyone loses – hence there is only win-win or lose-lose. Yet in the typical negotiation process it’s hard to find a win when the ‘things’ being bartered are not ‘things’ at all but representations of unconscious, subjective beliefs and personal values without either negotiation partner understanding the underlying values these items represent to the other: i.e. a house in the country might represent a lifetime goal to one person, and just a place to live to another; a $1,000,000 settlement might illustrate payback for a lost, hard-won reputation to one person, and extortion to another.

It’s possible to take a negotiation beyond the ‘things’ being bartered, away from the personal and chunk up to find mutually shared values agreeable to both – and then find ‘things’ that represent them. So it might be initially hard to agree who should get ‘the house’, but it might be possible to agree that it’s important everyone needs a safe place to live.

FOCUS ON SHARED VALUES FIRST

Try this:

enter the negotiation with a list of somewhat generic high-level values that are of foundational importance, such as Being Safe; Fair Compensation;
share lists and see where there is agreement. Where there is no agreement, continue chunking up higher until a set of mutually comfortable criteria are found. A chunk up from Fair Compensation might be ‘Compensation that Values Employees‘;
list several possible equivalents that match each agreeable criterion. So once Compensation that Values Employees is agreed upon during a salary negotiation, each partner should offer several different ways it could be achieved, such as a higher salary, or extra holidays, or increased paid training days, or a highly sought-after office, or higher royalties;
continue working backward – from agreement with high-level, foundational criteria, down to the details and choices that might fulfill that goal, with all parties in agreement. The more time you spend getting agreement on foundational criteria, the easier it will be to get into agreement.

Discussions over high level values are often more generic, and far less likely to set off tempers than arguments over ‘things’: if nothing else, it’s easier for negotiation partners to listen to each other without getting defensive. And once values are attended to and people feel heard they become more flexible in the ‘things’ they are willing to barter: once Compensation that Values Employees is agreed to, it’s possible to creatively design several choices for an employee to feel fairly valued without an employer stretching a tight budget.

Think about negotiations as a way to enhance relationships rather than a compromise situation or a way for someone to win. There is nothing to be won when someone loses.

____________

Sharon Drew Morgen February 26th, 2024

Posted In: Listening, News

After spending 30 years deconstructing the mind-brain interface that enables choice and decision making, and training a decision facilitation model I developed for use in sales, coaching, and leadership, (Buying Facilitation®), I’m always amused when I hear anyone deem a decision ‘irrational’.

Only outsiders wishing for, or assuming, a different outcome will designate someone’s decision as ‘irrational’. I doubt if the decision-maker says to herself, “Gee! I think I’ll make an irrational decision!” I could understand her thinking it irrational after reaping surprising consequences. But not at the moment the decision is being made.

Sample

HOW WE DECIDE

We all make the best decisions we can at the moment we make them. It’s only when someone else compares the decision against their own subjective filters and standards, or use some academic/’accepted’ standard as ‘right’, or judge the decision against a conclusion they would have preferred, that they deem it ‘irrational’. I always ask, “Irrational according to who’s standards?”

There are two components to making a decision. The brain; and the criteria against which the decision maker weights their options.

Brain: All of our actions arise from neurological, biological, physiological, electrochemical and automatic interactions in our brains. When we think, listen, hear, see, our brain goes through several processes before finding familiar neural connections to translate the incoming vibrations into decisions, behaviors, habits. Even when something brand new enters, we end up using existent – historic! – cell assemblies to translate it, restricting us to what we’ve done and thought before. Net net, our decisions emerge unconsciously, and sometimes don’t reflect the full fact pattern of all that is possible.

Data weighting: to ensure congruency, our brains compare incoming content against our mental models, an unknowable set of highly subjective factors including

Personal beliefs, values, historic criteria, assumptions, experience, future goals;
Possible future outcomes in relation to how they experience their current situation.
No one uses the same data set, or has the same criteria, beliefs, or life experiences the decision maker uses to evaluate their decision.

Each of us have unique brain systems; different mental models, connections, neural pathways, histories. There’s not a single person whose brain is organized as anyone else’s. In other words, we just can’t judge others according to our own standards.

Indeed, there is no such thing as an irrational decision.

CASE STUDY OF AN ‘IRRATIONAL DECISION’

Let me offer a simple example to explain. I recently made an agreement with a colleague to send me a draft of the article he was writing about me before he published it. Next thing I knew, the article was published. How did he decide to go against our agreement? Here was our ensuing dialogue:

SD: I’m quite upset. How did you decide to publish the article after agreeing to send it to me before publishing?

BP: I didn’t think it was a big deal. It was only a brief article.

SDM: It was a big enough deal for me to ask to read it first. How did you decide to go against our agreement?

BP: You’re a writer! I didn’t have the time you were going to take to go through your editing process!

SDM: How do you know that’s why I wanted to read it first?

BP: Because you most likely would not like my writing style and want to change it. I just didn’t have time for that.

SDM: So you didn’t know why I wanted to read it and assumed I wanted to edit it?

BP: Oh. Right. So why did you want to read it?

SDM: My material is sometimes difficult to put into words, and it has taken me decades to learn to say it in ways readers will understand. I would have just sent you some new wording choices where I thought clarity was needed, and discussed it with you.

BP: Oh. I could have done that.

While a simple example, it clearly describes how we judge situations according to our Beliefs, assuming everyone is operating with the same ones. But that’s not true: each decision maker uses her own subjective reasoning regardless of baseline, academic, or conventional Truths.

In our situation, my partner wove an internal tale of subjective assumptions that led him to a decision that might have jeopardized our relationship. I thought it was irrational, but ‘irrational’ only against my subjective criteria as an outsider with my own specific assumptions and needs.

And everyone involved in group decision making does the same: enter with unique brain configurations and personal, unique criteria that supersede the available academic or scientific information the group uses. This is why we end up with resistance or sabotage during implementations.

STOP JUDGING DECISIONS

What if we stopped assuming that our business partners, our spouses, our prospects were acting irrationally. What if we assume each decision is rational, and got curious: what has to be true for that decision to have been made? If we assume that the person was doing the best they could given their subjective criteria and not being irrational, we could:

ask what criteria the person used and discuss it against our own;
communicate in a way that discusses assumptions, differences, gets curious, enables win-win results;
agree at the start to work from the same set of baseline assumptions and remove as much subjectivity as possible before a decision gets made.
In other words, to make sure we understand where Others are coming from, we need to become aware of any incongruences and find common ground. Because if we merely judge others according to our unique listening filters, many important, creative, and collaborative decisions might sound irrational.

____________

Sharon Drew Morgen February 19th, 2024

Posted In: News

I’m writing to complain about vendors – more specifically, the way they’re engaging with customers these days. They seem to forget that we’re the ones paying their salaries; one of the ways to exhibit their commitment to us is by making themselves available. It’s part of what we pay for when we choose their product – a differentiator, if you will.

But now there’s little differentiation: most vendors have reduced us to faceless numbers, to a sort of currency: in exchange for us making a purchase, they take our time, our loyalty, our good will and fail to deliver any meaningful connection when we need support. Personally, I’m getting really annoyed.

Here are some situations I’ve faced lately:

After hours of research and thought, I decided to purchase a somewhat pricey, certainly unnecessary, personal item. I decided to buy it directly from the manufacturer and pay the extra bucks to get the service they offered. When attempting to purchase the item, I was immediately hit with a near-page-sized popup that wouldn’t go away unless I hit ‘allow’. I looked up ‘contact’ and was given two options: email or chat. OK. Maybe a bot could help me buy the damn thing. I asked chat how to get rid of the popup so I could buy the item and was told to just hit ‘Allow’ and then buy it! Nope. They obviously want my name more than my money. Next.

Yesterday, I went to Baskin Robbins to get my bi-monthly hot fudge sundae. I’ve gotten the exact same thing for years: hot fudge, jamoca-almond fudge ice cream (the regular scoops, not the smaller sundae scoops), and extra nuts. I laid out the $6 I’ve always paid and was told I owed $2.50. What?? The associate said it was for the larger scoops and the extra nuts. But I’ve never paid extra for those things and I’ve been coming here for 7 years! I knew the kids that worked there, and the owners Joe and Annette were terrific! “The original owner sold the store. I was trained by corporate. I’m charging you according to the rules.” But why wasn’t I told there might be different prices? I’ve always paid $6! “The prices are right there on the menu. You should have read them.” I see you’re putting rules before people, said I. “Yup. Just doing my job.” Precisely. I wonder how many customers came regularly because it was like family and who will now be seen as rule-followers.

Sample

Last week, I had to go through the rigamarole of returning an Amazon item. I waited 45 minutes in a long line at Whole Foods because the scanner was broken. I remembered when I could call Amazon directly and they’d send me a link to drop the package off at Mailboxes Etc. Thankfully I rarely send anything back (This was a defective item.), but I’ll certainly rethink my choice of vendor with an unknown item.

And don’t even start me on the lost, wasted time I’ve spent – hours and hours! – waiting for customer service reps to answer. Once, waiting to solve a huge tech problem with Best Buy (who I paid for tech support), I was put on hold for 13 hours! They finally called at 3:00 A.M.! The techie said to my sleeping, groggy self, ‘Hi. How are you?’ “Well, it’s 3:00 a.m. and I’ve been on hold for 13 hours, so not a particularly happy camper.” And he hung up on me!

What about the self-checkout at the grocery stores? I used to have lovely chats with the cashiers. One Wal-Mart cashier said she’d like to make my day by subtracting $1 from each purchase! I didn’t save much money, but it made me smile and revisit that particular store frequently. What about airline agents? They always found creative, cheaper routes with great travel tips. When I made hotel reservations I seemed to charm the clerks into giving me best rooms, or special rates.

What about customer service folks who used to be available in each company to answer questions? Gone! All switched to digital, to screens and confusing choices, with no way to pose questions except sending emails that won’t be returned or ‘talking ‘ to those stupid chatbots who always seem to have the wrong answer.

Now I’m left scrolling down some corporate site trying to figure out options, and getting more and more annoyed.

How did we end up so commodified that our value, our worth as customers, is merely a function of a company’s profit and greed? I wonder if companies have tested customer loyalty pre- and post-digital. Surely there must be a falloff. I wonder what it’s costing them.

Being able to complete tasks digitally doesn’t mean it should be the only choice. And certainly digital can’t be that much cheaper in the long run. I miss the old times when I could speak with someone human. Am I the only one unhappy? I sure hope it reverts, and vendors realize that caring for customers is part of their promise.

___________________________

Sharon Drew Morgen February 12th, 2024

Posted In: News

Learning Facilitation

Is AI Right for Your Company?

It’s Trying to Become Spring

Groupthink: the cost of collective stupidity

Successful Fundraising: getting chosen over the competition

Bridging the Gap between What’s Said and What’s Heard

Sell to Prospects who Will Buy, not Those who SHOULD Buy

Making Negotiation Win-Win

What Makes A Decision Irrational?

Vendors Don’t Care About Customers Anymore