Gaining Consensus is the New Closing

A salesperson reached out to me, asking if I could walk her through the concept of “Gaining Consensus is the New Closing.” She is facing multiple stakeholders, of which the Marketing Director is her Change Champion. She had valuable conversations with him about changing the direction of their B2C strategy. He was enthusiastic about her ideas, but after a week, the opportunity had stalled. She was informed that other stakeholders were not currently interested in discussing a new direction. Instead, their message was: Let’s sweat the assets; change is not good right now.

The 5-step Method to get others on board

This is a typical case (I’m sure you have your own examples) where driving consensus would bring more stakeholders on your side and move the opportunity forward.

How does it work?

One: Get More Stakeholders Involved.

If your change champion is struggling to drive change on their own, the first step is to help them identify the key stakeholders, particularly the Hidden Competitor. This is often someone who has different priorities, goals and ideas and competes with yours and your change champion. Invite these key stakeholders to a series of meetings, not one big one, but small ones – even one-on-one meetings.

Two: Understand their individual goals and priorities.

Of course, Operations always want more money to make their logistics more efficient, and Customer Service wants investment to keep up with their customers’ demands. Finance may want to increase staff to chase unpaid bills etc, etc. Everyone wants something, and has the right intentions.

Demonstrate empathy by acknowledging that these are all important by sharing, if possible, a short story of another customer in a similar situation. Ultimately, people buy from people; empathy is key here.

Three: Focus on the overlap

What do the stakeholders have in common? What do they agree on as a company priority? Most likely, senior management has agreed on these at the beginning of the year. Are they still intact, or have they changed? Bringing the focus back to the company’s goals helps deprioritise individual properties.

Four: Grow the overlap

At this stage, your task is to make a group of stakeholders feel more connected. With your help, their priorities shift from ME to WE. Typical examples of common goals are:

Top Line Growth
Improve the bottom line
Increase net profit
Improve profit margins

Their chosen strategy is the means by which they achieve these goals. And you have different ideas. The more urgent any of these goals need to be achieved (shareholders’ pressures, competitors’ moves etc), the more you can emphasise the need for a WE shift.

Five: Drive the need for consensus

The most effective way is to do two things:

Emphasise the risk of not changing. What would happen to their goals if a shift of thinking is not made now?
Share third-party research that supports your strategy ideas. In other words, you are not selling, you are sharing research trends from credible sources that support their goals.

BE PATIENT

Finally, I advised the outreaching sales executive to be patient. Believe in yourself that you can help your change champion and their company. Without your help, the stakeholders would drive themselves apart, fighting about who should have the highest priority. But through your insights, ideas, and views, they realise how a change catapults their company into new strategic growth and benefits every function. Gaining consensus is the new closing.

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