If You Can’t Sell, You Can’t Lead Change

by Kelly Riggs

As a manager, have you been tasked with leading a significant change initiative at work?

Tough sledding, huh?

Here’s why: people don’t like change. Like you didn’t already know that. The thing is, people don’t like to be “sold” either. And it’s the same thing.

Leading a “change” initiative in the workplace is influenced by the same exact psychology that salespeople encounter in selling – a fact not readily apparent to the vast majority of managers. But, the truth is, if you don’t understand how to sell, you’re going struggle to implement change effectively in the workplace.

Importantly, once you start adapting to constant changes in sales, you can get better at leading the change in a workplace. Moreover, now that there are new marketing and promotional techniques like digital and email marketing, online ads, digital displays and signs (learn more about loop.tv or similar service sites), etc.

Once you use these strategies to improve your sales rate, you can get better at selling ideas as well.

And, because leading change is “selling.”

One of the most significant challenges salespeople face is the resistance to change.

• “Yes, your solution is better, but what we have now will do.”
• “Yes, I would love to use your product/service, but I simply don’t have the time (or resources) to make the change right now.”
• “If I make a change now, I would have to retrain my entire staff.”
• “Yes, it is actually faster than our current equipment, but my people would never go for it. We are way too busy to mess with it right now.”

It’s something we’ve heard over and over: most times, people just don’t like change. Whether they need to buy something different, or they’re simply doing something different in the workplace, change naturally fires up all kinds of resistance.

In The Science of Selling, author David Hoffeld describes a very powerful bias called the “status quo bias.” Simply put, it is the strong natural tendency to stay in one’s current situation. This particular bias is the reason that, “…people have a natural aversion to change. The brain is wired to associate a high level of risk with accepting a new idea.” In fact, the first question from any customer, Hoffeld suggest, is “Why change?”

Which is exactly the question that employees ask when a manager starts making changes without any groundwork or prior communication: “Why change?” It is the first tendency of most everyone when confronted with the prospect of doing something different with no adequate explanation, or no buy-in to the process. This is why it’s critical to train your salespeople on how to say or act appropriately in a high-pressure situation. If they are having difficulty, the company could hire a business like Hansen Beck to provide the essential training.

How Selling Relates to Leading Change

“Sales training IS a change management project. If you don’t acknowledge that, you will never get the best possible results from your sales training investment.”

Mike Kunkle, Senior Director, Brainshark

The human brain has a natural tendency to resist change without cause.

In their best-selling book, Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, authors Chip and Dan Heath point out the difficulty of change:

“…there’s a good reason why change can be difficult: The world doesn’t always want what you want. You want to change how others are acting, but they get a vote. You can cajole, influence, inspire, and motivate-but sometimes an employee would rather lose his job than move out of his comfortable routines.”

What’s interesting is that it really doesn’t matter if you’re talking about implementing a change in the workplace, or trying to get a customer to make a change to buy your product. The exact same process is at work, and the same problem is present – if you want someone to change, you will have to understand the brain science behind the change process.

However, the change doesn’t have to be only business operation oriented, it can be anything like adapting to a new work schedule or pattern, technological advancement, sales techniques, and more. For instance, you can employ digital signages all over the workplace for in office advertising, so that when the clients come to your office for meetings, deals, or partnerships, they can see signages everywhere as well as the benefits of hiring your company. It can be considered a mind game to market your brand and products/services to ingrain your company’s usefulness in clients’ heads.

So, similar changes can be implemented within a workplace, and employees can be taught and convinced to adapt according to it. This is exactly where the disconnect happens for both manager and salesperson. They screw up the psychology, or the brain science, behind the process of change. They try to implement a change (a sale or a workplace change) by drowning people in information. And, as Oren Klaff, author of Pitch Anything, once told me, “Information has no persuasive value.”

Say what?

That is correct, sir. INFORMATION has no persuasive value. Chip and Dan Heath explain why:

“The core of the matter is always about changing the behavior of people, and behavior change happens in highly successful situations mostly by speaking to people’s feelings. This is true even in organizations that are very focused on analysis and quantitative measurement…”

Feelings?

Crazy, huh? And what you should know is that you won’t be a great salesperson, OR effectively lead change in the workplace, without learning how to impact people’s feelings.

The reason is simple. The thinking part of the brain – the part of the brand that processes information – is not the part of the brain where decisions are made. Decisions are actually made in the mid-brain, in the limbic system, where the emotions are controlled.

This is why every sales coach with a clue will tell you how important it is to use stories during the sales process. It’s also why Simon Sinek has made a fortune explaining the “golden circles” and the power of explaining the “why” behind your company (also, see Roy Williams fantastic book, It’s Not What You Sell, It’s What You Stand For).

Without clear and compelling communication during the change process – communication that includes an understanding of the “WHY” behind the change – people resist change naturally. It sounds like this:

• “Who made that decision?”
• “What were they thinking?”
• “Why didn’t anyone ask me?”

Or something like this:

• “This is stupid.”
• “If they would’ve asked, they would’ve known this was a disaster.”
• “Somebody can’t leave well enough alone.”
• “If they really want to fix the problem, they should ask me.”

When people don’t understand, or don’t know the reasons why, or don’t have input into the process, they will almost always resist change at some level.

It’s true in selling, and it’s true in leadership. And that places a significant amount of importance on the communication process.

John Kotter, author of the seminal work, Leading Change, and “widely regarded as the world’s foremost authority on leadership and change,” explains that one of the most significant challenges that occur in an organization during times of significant change is that leaders under-communicate by a factor of ten, or even a hundred.

In leading change, as in selling, people truly engage as a result of effective communication. Knowing that communication has such a dramatic impact on the change process, here are some things to remember about communication:

• Communicate early and often. Once is NEVER enough. Ten times is probably weak.
• Start with “group” communication tools (meetings and email), but reinforce with one-on-one communication for best results. Email is NEVER enough.
• Now, reinforce yet again with more “group” communication (more meetings, more email).
• Explain the reasons for change and be specific. Answer the question clearly: “Why are we doing this?” And telling someone, “Because I said so,” is just stupid.
• Acknowledge the inconvenience and explain the need to do things differently, especially when the perception is that things have worked fine in the past. Again, explain WHY the change is important.
• Don’t just tell employees WHAT is happening, show them the benefits (both corporately and individually)

If you want people to buy-in to your change and adopt a new direction, you need to pay very close attention to the communication PROCESS.

In fact, you need to learn exactly how great salespeople persuade customers to change. Because when you learn how to sell, you’ll be a far more effective leader, especially when you are required to lead a change initiative.