You have heard the saying, “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?” I propose a new saying, “If you’re so rich, why are you so dumb?” which would be applied to Jeff Bezos and his lost bid to move Amazon’s second Headquarters to New York City. Bezos is guilty of a key sales sin that truly great salespeople would never commit.
He did not fully understand and include all the factions that had a stake in the decision to allow the move.
As Politico noted, “Amazon thought it had locked down support for a new headquarters in Queens, New York by wooing a feuding mayor and governor. What it failed to anticipate was how the neighborhood’s politics would sweep it up in the growing split between establishment Democrats and the party’s insurgent progressive wing.”
“I do think Amazon misread New York. They assumed their consumer popularity translated into a free ticket to gentrify and instead got their lunch handed to them,” said Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First, a non-partisan watchdog group that promotes accountability in economic development.
He Forgot “A Committee Buy is a Committee Sell”
Any sale means some kind of change for the buying organization with ripple effects that go beyond the one or two decision-makers. In the Amazon case, they completely overlooked the local neighborhood people, small businesses, and political factions and thus lost their sale.
In selling, the “Committee” is all affected stakeholders.
- The people who will benefit from your service
- The people who will lose something by the purchase of your service
- The people who will use your service
- The people who will support your service
- The people who sign off on your service
Another key success factor that Bezos clearly overlooked was the Congruence Factor.
According to thought leader Sharon Drew Morgen, author of several books, including best seller, Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell, “Sellers must ensure that any new solution will be congruent with the buyer’s status quo:
- Systems and policies
- Politics
- Culture
Amazon missed how fiercely protective New Yorkers are of their neighborhoods.(For example, many years ago, in my old neighborhood on the upper East Side, the local community board went to court–and won–to have a builder remove (!) the top twelve stories of a new building because it didn’t fit with the neighborhood.)
Amazon also missed how easily aroused New Yorkers can be, like a sleeping bull that becomes enraged after being poked. Shortly after the original deal was announced, the local protests were fast, furious, and very vocal. This deal was not going down without a fight!
Easy to Say. New to Do.
Back to your business.
Navigating the Stakeholder and Status Quo issues requires a strategy and questioning approach different from the usual sales problem/solution method.
Sharon Drew says, “Here’s the question to ask yourself:do you want to sell? Or do you want to help someone buy? They are two different activities, necessitating two distinct skill sets. Sales merely handles one of them – the solution placement end…”
“The critical misunderstood and overlooked skill of the sales process is your ability to help buyers get ready to buy. People don’t become buyers until they manage any disruption that a new solution would incur.”
This new model of helping buyers buy requires different sales preparation and execution, and a different set of assumptions: it assumes
- Buy-In is necessary from all stakeholders to ensure a win-win
- Stakeholders won’t buy anything new or behave differently if the new solution causes them unmanageable harm. (You wouldn’t buy into a robotic system if you thought it would replace your job.)
- Each stakeholder has their own set of givens, beliefs, concerns, and answers. (If you value quiet, you would be against cell phone use in trains. If you value freedom to do business anywhere anytime, you would be in favor of same.)
- Salesmanship demands we lead each stakeholder to discover their own solutions–without our sales bias (If you value quiet, you might finally accept a quiet car on trains, with the other cars being cell phone friendly.)
- Sellers need to approach buying, or buying in, as change management problems, not solution placement activities, and recognize that pitches and pushes merely cause resistance.
Jeff Bezos didn’t do this and lost his deal. You, however, can be smarter. Learn more about Buying Facilitation® from Sharon Drew.
Anne Miller
Words Matter – Make What You Say Pay!
P.S. . I also recommend Sharon Drew’s award winning, thought provoking blog www.sharondrewmorgen.com
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