Using COI (Cost of Inaction) to Defeat Your Buyer’s Status Quo Objection

As go-to-market leaders,
what can you do to make change more attractive to those you’re selling to?
We’re talking all about overcoming the status quo
in this episode of Closing Time.
Hey everyone, I’m Chip House. CMO here at Insightly.
Welcome to Closing Time, the show for go-to-market leaders.
I’m joined today by Jen Allen.
Jen is co-founder of the Social Social Community,
sales keynote speaker, and currently heads
community growth at Lavender.ai. Welcome, Jen.
Thank you so much for having me.
I’m so excited.
Yeah, absolutely.
So, Jen, I saw your first post on this topic I think it was back in December.
Time is flying by here.
But you were talking about COI or the cost of inaction
rather than ROI as being something that salespeople need to focus on.
Can you explain that a little bit?
Sure.
So I spent my entire career as a salesperson,
like a front line salesperson, and I was always taught that
customers buy because of the value or benefit that you deliver.
Right.
So when I thought about how I sold and how I tried to compel them
to want to buy from us,. I focused a lot on the ROI case.
So, we’ll 15x your growth or whatever the case may be.
What I failed to appreciate, though, just as humans,
we often respond far more urgently
to the avoidance of risk as opposed to the realization of a benefit.
So, for example,. I have a wedding in just over a month.
I have been telling myself for the last six months
that I’m going to get in shape for it and I have a compelling event
I have a reason to lean into it, but every day I wake up
and I hit the snooze button on my alarm because I’m not in bad
enough shape that I’m like, It’s going to be awful if nothing changes.
And I think sometimes we forget it’s the same idea with buyers.
So cost of inaction isn’t focused on if you do something, you get this.
It is focused on if you do nothing differently.
This is what it is costing your business, not just financially,
but in terms of risk, lack of engagement, whatever the right metric might be.
Yeah.
You know, as sellers and marketing people, it seems like
we focus so much on here’s the benefits, here’s the ROI, right?
So we kind of forget about being in the shoes of the buyer
and what kind of emotions they might be going through.
And of course, most people are just sort of predisposed to not changing.
Right? That’s always easier, it seems.
So tell me about what you think the first thing is
that a seller needs to do to help the buyer work through change.
So the very first thing is we need to look at the buyer’s business
through the eyes of the buyer, not through what we have to sell them.
So, you know, when I was selling sales training,
I was always looking at a company saying how many salespeople do
they have and how big of a deal would it be if I were able to sell them?
And that would be my motivation to reach out.
And then I would try to convince them
why we’re the best sales training program in the world.
And they frankly wouldn’t care.
Instead, when I say focus on the buyer’s business through their eyes,
what I’m being
what I’m talking about specifically is looking at how the CEO is talking about
what the business is trying to achieve and how they believe they achieve it.
So it used to be we would only have access to that information
if it was a public company and we could read their annual report.
Now, if you literally go out there and Google the CEO’s name,
plus the company’s name, plus interview or podcast,
they’re having conversations just like you and I are, Chip. Right?
They’re talking about what the business is trying to achieve.
They’re talking about their beliefs and assumptions around how they get there.
And so as a seller,. I have to take a moment
and be curious around what is that customer trying to achieve?
And can I see places where they believe one
plus one equals two, but it actually equals three.
And that is my that is my very first step I’m taking is
where is the problem that my solution solve for showing up in their business?
And am I even convinced that by fixing it, it’s big enough?
Right. Like this was another problem, a misstep I made all the time.
Is I think everybody could benefit from sales training.
But if I was targeting Zoom during the pandemic.
Yeah, there are great account on paper.
They got a lot of salespeople, did they really need to create more demand?
I would argue probably not.
It’s not to say sales training wouldn’t be helpful,
but I think we need to look at that through that lens as to say,
am I going to be up against such a status quo barrier that I’m effectively
I could be doing all the right things but just wasting my time because the problem
isn’t large enough for them to merit solving it?
Yeah.
So I think the first thing you talked about there was like doing some Google
research, right? Actually, to kind of prep yourself.
And we’ve talked about that with other guests.
You know, I’ve had a sort of a similar like a discussion just about doing
the work upfront to understand your buyer’s situation, right?
So you can put yourself in their shoes.. You also talked
a little bit about, you know, fear of change.
I think that was in your post back in December.
And, you know, especially
in this climate, I would think the fear of change is maybe heightened.
It feels like the best thing to do is maybe nothing.
And it could be the worst time to do nothing, frankly.
Right.
So what’s your perspective on helping them overcome fear of change?
So this was another kind of eye opening moment for me as a seller
because I would have a really hard time
understanding if a business was having a growth problem.
You know, my naive perspective would be why wouldn’t you do everything
you possibly could solve it, right?
So I was having these pipeline
opportunities that went nowhere, and I just couldn’t understand why.
What I was neglecting to consider is the fact that when any of us
make decisions, there’s a rational voice and there’s an emotional voice.
So I may have been the person, let’s play this out,
I’m a customer.
I may have been the person to raise my hand and say, we have a problem
and I want to seek out an alternative way to solve for it.
But as I start learning from the salesperson,
as I start bringing other members of the buying group in,
as I start reading things online, talking to friends,
all of a sudden all these what if thoughts happen?
Right.
So in the rational side,. I’m sitting here saying OK,
but if I do buy this, now I have to build an entire business case, now
I got to herd all these cats in my business and get them involved.
And this is work on top of what I already am doing,
which is probably more work than I would
like because of staff cuts and budget reductions and things like that.
So that’s my rational side.
On my emotional side, I’m thinking, what if I bring in a new solution
to this problem
and everybody in the business looks at me and said, Why did you spend money there?
Or, We prefer the old way.
And so all of a sudden these what if moments start to feel really, really big?
And so I can look an ROI in the face and say, Sure, you might three times whatever.
But what about all this other ugly stuff?
What if that happens?
And so I think this is where we get into this conversation of we have to
before we ever talk about the upside of what our solution can do,
we really have to align with our buyer to say,
Are you really confronting just how ugly your current state is?
Because most of us don’t want to stare that beast in the eye
and it is our job as sellers to illuminate.
Yes, change is scary.
Yes, all these what ifs can happen.
But here’s what I’m certain of.. The way you’re solving this problem
today is costing you this, this and this.
And that’s where I think we have an opportunity as a seller
to illuminate that for our buyers when they’re not looking.
It’s super interesting what you said, appealing to both the rational and the emotional,
because I think we’re so sort of trained to appeal to the rational
and think that that’s going to be
the discussion that we have with a potential buyer.
But the emotional might be way more important.
Right?
And so if you have some element of empathy and you’re thinking about
or at least empathizing with them for, hey,. I know that this is going to be change,
it’s going to be some work for you.
There’s other people you have to convince and I’ll help you do that maybe.
Is that how you maybe help bridge the gap?
Yeah.
I love the way you said that, Chip,
because I think sometimes again,. I’ll just speak personally.
We have a tendency to oversimplify the change that is involved
or the pain that is involved with change, not just buying it, but implementing it
and getting people
to change their behavior, to start using whatever that solution is.
And I think I would show up to calls sounding very naive that I’m like,
of course we do this because we just get through the implementation.
And then these are all the rosy things that happen on the other side.
And my buyer’s sitting there saying,. You have no idea what it’s like
to be in my shoes.
And so I think when we do exactly what you said and say,
let’s look at this ugly thing in the face.
Yes, these are all these things that might go wrong, but I’m going to help you.
Here’s how we’re going to help make sure that we mitigate those risks.
That’s when I feel like, you know,
there’s all this conversation about building trust and credibility.
To me, being able to think and see like a buyer is how we do that.
And relating to those concerns
shows that you get it and that you deserve to be in that room.
Yeah.
So let’s put the name on some of those fears.
So I already talked about,
you know, the fear that they’re going to do a ton of work, right?
So there’s some like loss of productivity
that that they’re probably concerned about,
you know, or opportunity cost
for them, like diving into this, but not something else.
They’re going to have to spend some money.
They’re going to have to convince their finance team that it’s worth the money.
Or if they don’t do their work upfront, there’s going to be
some loss and potential status right in the company
in those can weigh heavy in a buyer’s mind, I’m pretty sure.
So do those,
and anything else that comes to mind, you know, that I didn’t name there.
Now, I think it’s that last one that’s the ugly one.
we don’t really think a lot about.
Political capital is a scary thing to put on the table for
and this is going back to what you just said for a very rational reason.
This is one of the reasons. I think the emotional case
for change has to be equally as strong is because we are asking someone
to raise their hand in an environment that all we’re hearing about are layoffs
and budget cuts and bad things and say,. I want to spend some money.
So I think it’s that political capital that we have to be really mindful of.
People are putting that on the table, and that’s bigger than we often
give it credit for.
Yeah.
So the other thing that I thought was really compelling that you said
is that a big piece of this is about helping the buyer realize
that the ongoing costs of their pain today are worse than their fears of change.
Right. Not changing could be worse.
And you have to hold their hands through that, right?
Yes. Yes.
And I can give you a very specific example.
I used to sell against this all the time.
So in my previous job, when I’m selling sales training,
nobody needs sales training, right?
Like it doesn’t keep anybody’s lights on.
But one of the things sales leaders
would neglect to realize is how many of their sellers were wasting
many, many hours chasing deals that ended in no decision.
So one of the exercises I would do with them to help them calculate
that cost of inaction is to say, like, let’s take,
you know, how many accounts your sellers are working on average
let’s take how many hours on average they’re spending on
each of those accounts, and then let’s multiply
that by the 40% of deals that tend to die in no decision.
And now let’s multiply that by the number of sellers you have on your team.
And now what we get is the number of hours your sellers have wasted
just this month on chasing deals that are never going to convert
because you don’t have an intentional solution to that
no decision problem.
And so then it doesn’t become an issue of ROI, it becomes an issue of
how do we take that number, which sometimes was like 10,000 hours
and cut it down to 5,000 or even 7,000 or 8,000.
Right?
And so then I think you get into a much more believable motion of
I believe that we can dice that problem up
instead of these aspirational ROI metrics, which let’s face it, most of us in
our heads are saying that’s your best case customer.
You’re not telling me the average customer ROI.
So that’s where I think sizing that cost of inaction
in terms of hours, time, money, risk.
However makes the most sense for your stakeholder
is essential so that they are looking at the same formula that you are.
I mean, the more you’re talking about this, this seems gigantic to me.
It seems like the most overlooked thing in B2B selling
because as somebody who buys a lot of software
and you know, work with agencies and make those decisions all the time
about where to invest the money, there’s a lot of that that goes into it
because you’re doing the math in your head.
You’re thinking about opportunity costs.
Where else could you invest the money?
And the more that the seller does their work to actually
put their selves in your shoes and really understand
where you’re coming from and that you have other things to spend money on,
you know
what else you might even be considering if there’s enough, you know,
understanding about what a CMO does, frankly, right
I think that that is huge because it’s,
you know, I, I think, you know,. I sell software, you know,
and you’re in a community
now, leadership position for a software company as well.
And so
I know Seth Godin used to compare products
in other industries like, hey, everything’s good enough now, right?
You can have an Audi, you can have a Toyota, you can have a GM.
All of those cars are good enough.
And so there’s so much of the softer side
of selling that’s become more important.
Yes. And I think you know this far better than I do.
I’m just now getting a taste of it
because I think people think I’m a little bit
more senior than I am in this role and I’m getting a lot more outreach.
But it’s wild when you think about the you can almost
just recognize a piece of sales outreach when you see it, right?
It’s that classic formula of here’s who we are, here’s what we do, here’s
how great we are at it, and here’s all the other companies who love us.
Like, you could just, it’s in all of these emails.
So I think even interrupting that and making the focus of our outreach
about the customer.
So when I do an outreach, right, I’m saying, your CEO spoke about this as a goal
and this is what it looks like as an outsider,
it seems like you’re trying to attack it from the angle of.
And then, have you ever considered how this thing over here
might be impacting your ability to do that?
Not sure if it’s worth the conversation or not,
but we’d be super curious to have it if you want to.
And I think what it does is we’ve got to be careful about tonality
of toeing that line, of saying, I know more about your business than you do.
That’s
I think that’s an ugly tone versus saying,. Hey, I’m very curious about this thing.
I do have expertise in this area
and I have something of value to add to the conversation,
but I’m not telling you your business is broken.
I’m not telling you you need to fix something.
I’m simply raising an idea and showing that I’ve got a bit of credibility
on that topic.
So, Jen, would you go as far as to say that COI is the new ROI?
Oh, I would totally.
Now, people are going to hate that and there’s still a time and place for ROI.
OK, let me be super clear, especially anyone in med device
who’s listening to this, because they always come for me on that
you still have to be able to show that it is worth them
investing their money in you, in your business over anybody else.
But to build demand or create demand, ROI, in my opinion, is a
largely ineffective means for that ROI is late stage, COI is early stage.
Great tips.
Thanks so much, Jen.. It was great having you.
Thank you so much.
Great talking to you. Yeah, absolutely.
And I hope to have you on again soon.
And to everybody there at home,
thanks for joining us for this episode of Closing Time.
And we’ll see you next time.