Not long ago, I worked with a whopper prospective client (whom I will call Sarah) for over 2 years’ time, strategically and methodically gearing up to implement a sales program that would likely generate a ton of new business for her company. After months of meeting and negotiating, we finally constructed a comprehensive training that stood to increase her company’s revenue by 30% in 12 months. The big day finally arrived, and when the phone rang, I was ready to slap a big red bow on this deal! However, a curveball came my way, and if not for some hard lessons I’d learned from my previous mistakes with curveballs, this 2-year business relationship could have easily crumbled in one 5-minute phone call.
The conversation went something like this: “Chris, I’m sorry to do this, but we have to hold off on the training. How long, Sarah? “Indefinitely. Corporate just put a company-wide strangle on non-budgeted spending for at least six months until we see a consistent uptick in our numbers. They’re scrutinizing every dime I spend, and there’s just no way our proposed program will fly. I was really looking forward to this, but I just can’t swing it right now. I’m so sorry.”
As a business development trainer, I had an explosive reaction in my mind. Here’s what I said to myself: “That’s CRAZY!! This program is EXACTLY what the company needs to get their numbers up! That’s precisely what we’d uncovered in our fact finding! This is why we recommended our comprehensive sales training in the first place! They’re totally shooting themselves in the foot!”
I was as frustrated as I’ve EVER been about a prospective endeavor going awry. Fortunately, a bell went off in my head, and I recognized a habitual pattern of thinking (in myself) and made a conscious choice to steer this whole thing (and myself) in another direction. (See my article – Do you Respond or React.)
Here’s the pattern: I assess the situation, identify the goal, design a plan to achieve the goal, and then revise the plan and make any necessary adjustments. Once I’m confident my strategies are rock solid, I am 100% hell-bent on sticking to my seemingly full-proof plan.
This approach has served me well in a variety of important endeavors, not the least of which—finding the woman of my dreams and co-founding a company that allows me to be a work-at-home dad.
So what’s wrong with this pattern? It’s got a proven track record of yielding desired results. How is this approach problematic?
It becomes problematic when the circumstances (for which I was doing all the goal-setting and strategic planning) unexpectedly change. A lack of flexibility coupled with a severe case of myopia with regard to one’s original plan is NOT going to yield desired outcomes. When the circumstances change, the last thing you want to do is dig your heels in on your original plan—speaking of shooting oneself in the foot!
And this is exactly what was happening on the phone with Sarah and me. We’d both grown overly-attached to our plan, saying things like, “Maybe if we just chop the program into quarterly installments…” and “How about lowering the attendance to just 7 people…”
We went back and forth, trying desperately to put that “square” of a program into the “round hole” of our new parameters, and nothing was working. Even though the primary goal hadn’t changed (to increase revenue by 30%) there was no funding for the program we’d identified as the “perfect solution.” Our plan was simply unfeasible—and neither of us was willing to let go of our original plan and ADJUST accordingly.
What we needed to do, (and what I eventually did) was take the time to go back to square one and focus on the facts of this new situation, and thus, on the new goals at hand. This required two things: mutual trust, and letting go of my agenda—even if it meant losing the sale of this particular training program.
After 45 minutes on the phone with Sarah, I was able to gather some detailed information, allowing us to proceed with a new action plan. She had only 60 days to turn the business around and increase her numbers. Her sales team (of 25) was in serious need of intensive group coaching, but corporate was watching her budget closely, and she couldn’t spend that kind of money in one fell swoop. So our idea for the entire team, (or even part of the team) to receive coaching, was out of the question.
So we devised a solution for addressing her budgetary restraints by spreading the payments out over 12 monthly installments. Next, rather than pulling her entire staff out of production (which we realized, in retrospect, would have caused production to dip) we changed the format from group coaching to one-on-one training.
Lastly, to insure the quickest results in the shortest amount of time, Sarah would hand-pick a limited number of participants to enroll in the intensive, 30-day coaching program—individually.
To date, our new plan has yielded a 50% bump in production per person, per month! Needless to say, we are both stoked with the success of the program; however, none of this would have been possible had we not been willing to abandon our original plan entirely and face the facts of the new situation, and identify the necessary changes for our action plan.
Here are a few key questions that helped set the stage for us. I asked Sarah the following:
- “Are you willing to take everything we’ve previously planned OFF the table in order to discover what you need at this point in time—even if that means you don’t engage the services of my company right now?”
- “What are one or two things that must happen to turn things around for you?”
- “Even if my company can’t provide the solution—If you could do absolutely anything you wanted in an effort to solve the challenges you’re facing right now, how would that look?”
Circumstances and goals often change unexpectedly—and the quicker you can shift gears and devise a new action plan, the more successful you’ll be. It’s difficult to abandon a long-standing plan—especially when you’ve spent months working on it; but the fact is, there is simply NO reason to hang on to a plan that no longer applies to your current circumstances.
The downside of letting go and starting over is you may discover it’s not possible for you to provide a solution to the new challenges, but that’s okay. By showing your willingness to do the right thing—you’ve proven yourself to be a trusted advisor, and for that reason, you will most likely be called upon for future endeavors. That said, by giving full attention to the new set of circumstances, you may very well discover an opportunity to uniquely address the new set of challenges at hand. And that’s exactly how it all panned out with me and Sarah. We shifted gears, came up with a re-configured game plan, and generated results that were far better than those projected with our original plan!
