Chapter 12

Why Change Whiteboards

Sixty-five percent of decision makers will give their business to the company that “builds the buying vision.” The other 35 percent said they will conduct a fair-and-square bake-off between the top competitors.

—Forrester Research

Let's take a look at the second whiteboard type, the Why Change Whiteboard. In Chapter 11 we discussed the possibility that a prospect may still be a good candidate for your solution or services, even if on the surface they don't meet all of your baseline qualification criteria, as explored using a Qualification and Discovery Whiteboard. The reality is, they don't know what they don't know.

The Why Change Whiteboard is designed to combat your biggest competitor, which isn't what you think it is. It's not your archrival; in fact, it's a more insidious enemy called “no decision” or “the status quo.” According to sales research firm the Sales Benchmark Index, nearly 60 percent of early stage opportunities fall victim to the status quo. These numbers correlate to Forrester's numbers above. If you can't create a buying vision, most prospects will more than likely keep current course and speed, with a minority going the bake-off route and perhaps ending up choosing one of your competitors.

It's a Messaging Problem

Let's look at these numbers more closely. Even if you did decide a prospect is worthy of next steps after using a Qualification and Discovery Whiteboard, a good portion of those prospects you scheduled follow-up meetings with decided they were okay and didn't need to do anything different by the end of the discussion. You were sure they were at risk or they might be missing something that is negatively impacting their business. After all, why else would they be willing to meet with you?

So how did you manage to convince someone who was concerned their objectives were at risk that they didn't need your—or anyone else's—solution? More than likely, you came in with your typical “why us” company and product-centric sales messaging too early, and they weren't ready to hear about it. It could have been slides, or even a Solution Whiteboard, used prematurely. The reality is that the majority of the prospects you meet with are still asking themselves, “Why change?” and “Why now?” They live in their story, but you insist on telling them your story too soon.

Wake Up the Old Brain

Breaking through the status quo is like breaking a habit. Your brain goes on autopilot when a habit is formed. And the part of the brain that makes decisions to change literally goes to sleep. In order to disrupt this habit (the status quo) and reconsider your current approach, you have to wake up this part of the brain where decisions to change are actually made.

It's called the Old Brain (sometimes referred to as the primal brain or lizard brain), designed to ensure your survival. If your Old Brain senses your survival is in jeopardy, or your current situation is unsafe, it causes you to react and move away from the potential threat and seek a “new safe.” Your first job is to make sure that your prospect's Old Brain is activated and involved in your presentation, so it's good to know what stimulates the Old Brain.

As a survival mechanism, the Old Brain is more motivated to move away from pain than it is to move toward gain. It is more adaptive and emotional than rational. Whiteboard visuals are a great way to introduce a threat, challenge, problem, potential missed opportunity, or unmet obligation, and create a visceral reaction in your prospect that their desired outcome is at risk.

The Old Brain doesn't have the capacity for language. It performs at a very basic, nearly instinctual level. So the key is to present a scenario that motivates the Old Brain to reconsider its current state. Why Change Whiteboards need to be simple but hard-hitting and show clear contrast—the Old Brain craves contrast to make a distinction. You can't just show your proposed new way of doing things; your approach needs to be presented in the context of why the old way no longer works. Again, whiteboard visuals are a great way to demonstrate clear contrast between why the old is bad and the new is good. The ability of your prospect to perceive value and make a decision lies in this contrast.

Why Change Whiteboards create enough status quo disruption that your prospect has to question their current approach and consider doing something different. If you use it right, this type of whiteboard can help unhinge the incumbent product, service, or process before plunging into your Why Us? Solution Whiteboards, which prematurely elaborate on you, your products, and services.

Let's take a close look at the Today versus Tomorrow Why Change Whiteboard using the Cool Road Trucking case study:

 

Figure 12.1 The Today versus Tomorrow Why Change Whiteboard

ACTIVITY—Complete a Today versus Tomorrow Why Change Whiteboard for a Current Prospect

 

You will note that this whiteboard has a series of defined movements designed to provoke the prospect by showing how his or her status quo is unsafe and guide the conversation to your recommended “new safe.”

1. It starts with “grabber” statements. These are typically presented as a series of numbers (in this case, percentages) that have a hidden meaning. Write all the grabbers on the whiteboard before revealing their meaning.

2. The meaning is then unveiled to introduce an unmet, underappreciated, or even unrealized threat to the status quo. In this case, our grabbers are revealed to be industry average data points on produce spoilage, the significant loss of revenue from poor quality, and that temperature variations account for 50 percent of poor quality.

3. It then moves to a visual big picture that paints the prospect's current approach in a painful light. This is presented as a collective understanding of what similar organizations are struggling with based on your company's experience in the market. (Remember, you see more organizations and decision makers who look like your buyer than they do. They expect you to know things they don't and share these insights.) In many cases, food store chains use shipping companies that wait until full truckloads are packed at the source and then driven directly to stores; this causes delays and more temperature variations during transport, leading to rapid spoilage. The dialogue associated with this picture creates an interactive opportunity to determine how similar the prospect's experiences are to the straw man you are presenting. You should then identify the negative business impact created by these “leaks and squeaks” in their status quo. It is critical to visually show these gaps or deficits so the decision maker feels the pain.

4. This creates an urgency to look at possible alternatives. Once the context for change is established, your whiteboard needs to evolve into a contrasting point of view and begin leading the prospect to your new approach. You must show how these imminent and significant problems can be better solved. The visual should clearly depict a different way of approaching the issues, without going into a lot of detail on the solution. And your story must focus on those gaps only you can solve, or that you clearly handle in an advantaged way over the status quo. Cool Road Trucking has a “Less-than-Truckload” approach that ships specific produce types faster, centralizing them at temperature-controlled distribution centers and then dispatching them in full truckloads with the latest temperature-controlled technology. The spoilage point is thereby after arrival at stores, not in transit.

5. To close out this whiteboard, you need to share a customer story with contrast. Your Why Change Whiteboard needs to include at least one story about a customer of yours in the same market that faced a similar challenge and successfully overcame it. This will help your prospects realize they have the same desperate need to change as that company did. Food-All-Right reduced spoilage by 22 percent by doing business with Cool Road.

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ACTIVITY

Using the same account you used for one of the Qualification and Discovery Whiteboard activities, or another account that is early in the sales process, complete the Today versus Tomorrow Why Change Whiteboard structure using the blank template opposite Figure 12.1.

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The Wall Why Change Whiteboard

Let's look at another variant of a Why Change Whiteboard, The Wall. The concept is simple: show how a prospect's current situation cannot traverse a set of typical challenges to fully realize opportunities and stated objectives.

Figure 12.2 The Wall Why Change Whiteboard

1. This whiteboard also starts with grabbers.

2. The meaning is then unveiled.

3. It then moves to confirming and documenting key opportunities and objectives of the prospect, presented in a way that draws parallels to similar organizations.

4. Document the prospect's current situation.

5. The Wall represents the typical challenges that impact all food stores, preventing them from crossing the chasm from the current situation to the opportunities. As with the previous example, once the context for change is established, your whiteboard needs to evolve into a contrasting point of view.

6. Next, you establish a contrasting approach achieved with your solution. In this case, it's all about how Cool Road can help to break through (or in this case tunnel under) the Wall of Challenges.

7. Finally, you can talk about proof points as you did in the previous example. Here again, you'll notice that the whiteboard completely avoids any in-depth discussion of product or solution detail.

By now, your prospect is hopefully convinced they need to take a different approach—they want to change. But now they'll want to know how you will assist them in breaking through the status quo and grasping their opportunities, and why you are the best vendor to help them do it. That is achieved using a Solution Whiteboard, examples of which we will introduce in the next chapter.