Are Your Prospects Deaf, Dumb & Blind to Their Own Problems?

I find it very interesting that there are a lot of people out there who appear to be deaf, dumb and blind to the problems that exist within their own organization. It’s either that or they simply don’t want to hear, see, or talk about them, or admit that they actually have them.

When you encounter a prospect like this, it makes you wonder if it makes them feel vulnerable, by recognizing that they have a problem, or that they know they have the problem, but don’t know how to deal with it. Either way, unless you can get them to admit that they have a problem, need to fix it, need to fix it now and can’t, or don’t want to try and fix it themselves, it’s going to be very hard for you to get their attention.

Unfortunately, I see a lot of organizations that are afflicted with this issue. I believe that I can tie this in somewhat with my article of last week around Accountability. There are a lot of managers out there who simply don’t want to take accountability for solving those problems that fall under their responsibility to solve. Instead, they hope that it will go away, solve itself or become someone else’s problem to solve.

In the scheme of things, if you are part of an organization that has problems (and every organization does to some degree), and you admit that you have a problem that needs to be fixed, then it is going to take up more of your time to see that this project gets resolved. Most managers have enough on their plates and aren’t sitting around waiting for a problem to fix. So, what we see is that it’s not that they don’t recognize they have a problem; it’s just that they don’t have the time, money or resources to fix it. Unless the problem is so acute that it is negatively affecting their business, it is just more of an annoyance than a real problem that needs to be fixed now. The old adage “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” looms heavy with these managers and if it isn’t a high enough problem to fix, then you don’t have a prospect. Most organizations buy “need to have” solutions way above “nice to have” solutions and if your solution isn’t a “need to have”, in their mind, then you probably are wasting your time

If you are an effective sales person and are able to convince the prospect that you are knowledgeable enough about his business and the problems he has and can get him to admit that the pain he has needs to be fixed now, then you have a prospect. You will also have a much higher degree of success if you can convince him that you will work with him, and the rest of the associated stakeholders, by taking complete ownership of both easing the pain of the problem and the pain/burden of fixing it. At least that’s the way I see it, what say you?