Change Agent - Issue 30

Susan Storms belongs in the salesperson Hall of Fame. One day, I sent her to Seattle to make a sales call on a very well-known company. As often happens when you're selling a new idea, there was a lot of resistance to what Storms had to offer. And as usually happens when the company that you're calling on is run by a visionary, there was a lot of confusion among the people whom Storms was meeting with. They were all worked up, trying to guess, or to second-guess, what the boss would do.

Ordinarily, a meeting like this doesn't lead to much at all. It's a wasted day. It's a sleepless night in yet another hotel room. It's $900 spent on a round-trip airplane ticket for no good reason. You just figure that it comes with the territory, and chalk it up to the usual cost of doing business.

But, as I said, Susan Storms is a great salesperson. She was so sold on our product, so sure that this potential client needed the solution that we were offering, that she refused to take "Well, maybe, but not now" for an answer.

So she reached into her briefcase and took out a sheet of paper. Then she turned to the group and said, "Folks, I'm excited about this opportunity. And I'm so sure that it's right for your company that I flew across the country to present it to you." She paused and slowly sipped her Odwalla juice. "You've heard my presentation. You know how this product could change the way you do business. If you were to decide that this isn't right for you, I would totally understand. If you were to decide that you want to go ahead with this right now, then that would be fantastic."

Then she stopped, looked the senior manager in the eye, and asked, "What would you like to do? Go forward or say no?"

And the manager repeated his weasel words: "Well, we really have to look at this more closely and run it by some people, and then we'll get back to you."

Storms knew that they'd do no such thing. She knew that they were severely limited in their "zoomwidth" -- that this was a company that couldn't find a way to try new things, even if those things fell into the category of "old things slightly adjusted to take advantage of new opportunities." She knew that the manager's response was a time-honored technique in severely zoom-challenged companies, and that he was looking for a way to make her go away without really making any decisions. So she turned the paper over.

"Here's the thing," she said. "This is obviously a time-sensitive program, and if you don't commit today, then we're going to have to offer it to one of your competitors. But that could cause all kinds of trouble for all of us. I mean, what if your boss calls my boss later and wants to know why we aren't working with your company? So all I need you to do is initial this sheet of paper that says that you heard the presentation and that you decided not to take advantage of our offer." And she handed the paper to the guy from Seattle.

Now, all the paper said was that his company had listened to the idea, had decided that it wasn't interested and that it was fine to take the idea to a competitor. Simple enough. Guess what? He refused to sign it!

Saying yes was a risk. Saying no was a risk. Signing the release was a risk. In his mind, every single option meant some sort of change. Rather than seeing this as an opportunity to zoom -- to do the same thing as usual, only different -- he saw it as a threat to his position at the company. So he did the one thing that he could do without having to take a risk: He threw Storms out of the meeting.

No, Storms didn't get the sale. And she didn't get the guy's signature either. But that's okay. Because she got the story -- and she got us all a lesson about how to make change happen (or not happen) in organizations.

The acknowledgment that "no decision today" actually means "no" was a brilliant device on Storms's part. Perhaps a braver manager would have viewed this as an opportunity, rather than as a threat. There's something that dealing with change ultimately does make you confront: dishonesty. And dishonesty -- intellectual dishonesty, decision-making dishonesty, not-willing-to-face-the-music dishonesty -- is the greatest enemy that a company can have. We disguise it as "waiting to get more information" or "looking for more input." In fact, the real deal is that we're "not willing to look the situation in the eye and make a decision, right or wrong." And so company after company, individual after individual, people put off acknowledging what they already know, and acting on it. They don't make a decision until they have to -- even if they've already made the decision in their mind, and a delay in making it official means spending more money, making mistakes, and staying up all night to catch up.